The White House has moved to cut staffing at the CIA and the National Security Agency early in Trump’s second term, forcing the agency to do more with less.
Dammit, I liked using the World Factbook.
I seriously doubt that they’re saving all that much money. They have to gather the data anyway for CIA use; this just meant that the public got to benefit from some of it too.
I seriously doubt that they’re saving all that much money.
I also bet this is correct - if you look at how they collect the data, they don’t do any first-hand investigation of basic info that is clearly shared or copied from other USG agencies. They’re editors. This probably puts like 4 people, 2 of which I bet are perpetually near retirement, out of editing jobs. And it’s not like they’re saving server or web hosting time when they also host huge amounts of declassified archives.
they don’t do any first-hand investigation of basic info that is clearly shared or copied from other USG agencies.
Specifically the World Factbook people probably don’t, but I’m sure that least some of the estimates will come from the CIA, because they’re going to be the ones who are going to be responsible for same.
But what I’m saying is that they aren’t going to be closing the analysis guys down, just the public publication of that information. And the analysis part is going to be the bulk of the budget.
I will stand corrected in that apparently some of the photos were taken by their people. But things like economic data or demographic data come from the State Department. State used to put out all these policy documents and reports which were all original sources of USG data. I’m seeing Archive.org is overloaded to look at the Factbook sources page, but IIRC, they give a lot of credit to other sources.
Dammit, I liked using the World Factbook.
I seriously doubt that they’re saving all that much money. They have to gather the data anyway for CIA use; this just meant that the public got to benefit from some of it too.
I also bet this is correct - if you look at how they collect the data, they don’t do any first-hand investigation of basic info that is clearly shared or copied from other USG agencies. They’re editors. This probably puts like 4 people, 2 of which I bet are perpetually near retirement, out of editing jobs. And it’s not like they’re saving server or web hosting time when they also host huge amounts of declassified archives.
Specifically the World Factbook people probably don’t, but I’m sure that least some of the estimates will come from the CIA, because they’re going to be the ones who are going to be responsible for same.
But what I’m saying is that they aren’t going to be closing the analysis guys down, just the public publication of that information. And the analysis part is going to be the bulk of the budget.
I will stand corrected in that apparently some of the photos were taken by their people. But things like economic data or demographic data come from the State Department. State used to put out all these policy documents and reports which were all original sources of USG data. I’m seeing Archive.org is overloaded to look at the Factbook sources page, but IIRC, they give a lot of credit to other sources.