Government Resources

FirstGov: The one-stop Internet site consolidates 20,000 government Web sites -- some 27 million web pages -- into one. --AP
American Law Sources Online (ALSO): "The purpose of ALSO! is to provide a comprehensive, uniform, and useful compilation of links to all on-line sources of American law that are available without charge. This site contains additional links to sources of commentary and practice aids that are available without charge (or available at a reasonable charge from governmental and nonprofit providers)."
Center for Public Integrity: "Called a 'watchdog in the corridors of power' by National Journal. The Center's mission is to provide the American public with the findings of its investigations and analyses of public service, government accountability, and ethics-related issues." Includes the The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Center for Responsive Politics: Follow the money. "The Center for Responsive Politics is a non-partisan, non-profit research group based in Washington, D.C. that specializes in the study of Congress and particularly the role that money plays in its elections and actions. The Center conducts computer-based research on campaign finance issues for the news media, academics, activists, and other interested observers of Congress. The Center's work is aimed at creating a more involved citizenry and a more responsive Congress."
DefenseLink: The official web site for the Department of Defense and the starting point for finding U.S. military information online.
FECinfo: Lycos Top 10% review: If U.S. government officials really are for sale, this is the general ledger. FECInfo is the single most comprehensive Website for finding campaign finance data. Run by a former Federal Election Commission employee, Tony Raymond, FECInfo delivers raw data and summary stats for Congressional campaigns since 1994, and individual contributions since 1980. Want to check how much Microsoft's PAC gave, and to whom? No problem. Did Kevin Costner really give $1,000 to...Phil Gramm? It's all here.
FedStats: "More than 70 agencies in the United States Federal Government produce statistics of interest to the public. The Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy maintains this site to provide easy access to the full range of statistics and information produced by these agencies for public use."
Federal Bulletin Board: Free downloadable files, files, and more files. Federal agency files, Agency Federal Register (FR) and Code of Federal Regulation (CFR) files, Commerce Business Daily Information (CBD), Federal Depository Library Information (shipping lists of documents sent to libraries), and Supreme Court Decisions.
Federal Web Locater: The Center for Information Law and Policy provides this omnibus resource for federal government information on the Web. Organized by: Legislative Branch, Judicial Branch, Executive Branch (with Departments), Independent Agencies, Quasi Official Agencies, and Non-Governmental Federally Related Sites
GovBot: A specialized search engine to help you find government information developed by The Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. "The CIIR GovBot has gathered 1,017,616 web pages from U.S. Government and Military sites around the country. "
Government Documents in the News: "Documents in the News identifies issues about government making news headlines and web sources with additional information." A project of The University of Michigan.
GPO Access: The Government Printing Office provides free online access to: Government information databases - Individual Federal agency - Tools to assist you in finding Government Information - Collections of Government information available for free use at a library near you.
How to Effectively Locate Federal Government Information on the Web: Sherry Dedecker and Patricia Cruse, librarians at the University of California, San Diego have prepared an online interactive tutorial called "How to Effectively Locate Federal Government Information on the Web. Each module has an explanatory section, links to sites, and a set of questions and answers.

TRAC On-Line: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) "is a nonprofit organization at the Newhouse School, Syracuse University, which helps reporters find and analyze data about federal law enforcement agencies. It provides datasets on-line, on tape or diskette (i.e., U.S. Justice Dept records, IRS records, etc.); performs research on federal agencies for media; and provides training."
Transparency International and Transparency International - USA Program: "A non-governmental organisation dedicated to increasing government accountability and curbing both international and national corruption." Among the resources at these Web sites are full texts of Working Papers and the "Corruption Perceptions Index", a "poll of polls" measuring public views of the extent of corruption in 85 countries
United States Constitution Search: Not just another raw text of the Constitution, but a search engine that allows you to search for words and phrases and get back a list of links to the location within the text of your search terms.
United States Government Information and US States' Government Information: The University of Colorado at Boulder has augmented the U.S. Government documents distributed to major libraries with their own acquisitions and made this simple and useful listing of links everything from "Administrative Law Decisions" to "Green Book: Entitlement Programs" to "Patents & Trademarks" and "Year 2000"
US State and Local Gateway

Other Governments and United Nations Resources

United Nations Scholars' Workstation at Yale: Journalists will probably be most interested in the "Research Approaches" set of choices toward the bottom of the page that organizes Internet access by UN Organizational Structure - by Research Topic - by Geographic Area - to Biographical Information and to Current U.S. Legislation.
Foreign Government Resources on the Web: The University of Michigan's library has assembled and organized a comprehensive gateway to government information from most of the world's nations.

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