Trolling the depths of government websites a few weeks ago, I stumbled on the CyberCemetery, a project of the University of North Texas Libraries. Not unlike archive.org, it stores some of the projects long since dead online for research purposes. Most of the sites are from temporary commissions, but they provide an interesting snapshot of programs published online at the end of the Clinton administration and through the Bush administration. Fodder for Friday the 13th.

Documents from the Office of Technology Assessment from 1972 to 1995 have been published on the CyberCemetery site, as have images from more recent projects such as the Citizens' Health Care Working Group, from 2008. Sobering reports warning of imminent terrorist attacks can be found under the Hart-Rudman bipartisan U.S. Commission on National Security in the 21st Century pages (best viewed in Internet Explorer). The "New World of Government-Supported International Finance" (from 2000) can be read for a complex analysis c/o theU.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission.

Although the CyberCemetery is all about dead programs and websites, it does provide a window into the beginnings of open government online and it raises a question: what should current and future administrations be responsible for storing in terms of previous projects? Perhaps Archives.gov should be responsible for providing an online .gov specific version like the Archive.org Wayback Machine with expanded search capabilities.

If part of the problem of history continues to be not learning from it, this would be one way to at least keep the information available for those who might wish to explore it. The devil's always in the details.