Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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The future of libraries
This article in the New Republic by Lisbet Rausing takes a look at the future of libraries and knowledge and the obstacles preventing scholarly knowledge and research from reaching the wider public over the web. I’ll just selectively quote below. The whole article is worth the read.
Look at JSTOR (if you can). There you find the evidence-based, source-critical foundations of sociology, anthropology, geography, history, philosophy, classics, Oriental studies, theology, musicology, history of science and so on. They are all closed to the public. It is wonderful, of course, that high-energy physics and string theory are open to all. But is it not ironic that we have opened the gates only to that scholarship which few professors, let alone members of the public, have the cognitive capacity and appropriate training to grasp?
The opportunity costs for society are self-evident. But what about the opportunity cost for scholars? For example, the public has set itself the task to rewrite knowledge for the public domain through Wikipedia and the like. Should not these sites be hyperlinked with JSTOR? By excluding the public from their scholarly literature, academics make it impossible for amateurs to use sound research methodologies, critically examining evidence by cross-referencing and source analysis. Scholars then critique the public’s output for not being sufficiently academic. Academics commonly refer to the occasionally wobbly scholarly standards of Wikipedia as proof the public does not wish to pursue scholarship. Might it not instead prove that they do not let them? (Continue reading…)
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Excellent Local Wiki Resource
Loudoun County in Virginia just launched a new wiki to collect community news and information. Loudounpedia is run by the Loudoun county library system and has sections for local government information, blogs, job board, recreation and other community related activities.
The government section now has all information regarding the election including a Google map of polling places. This is an excellent resource for the community and the choice of a wiki allows people to edit it with their own knowledge making it a resource that is owned by the community.
h/t to the Municipalist
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New York City Hearts Open Source
Government Techonology reports on New York City’s Open Source Solutions Lab at the City University of New York (CUNY). The project is a collaboration with Intel and Red Hat to test open sources solutions for government information techonology. The goal of the project is to help provide New York City’s public sector with the most cost-effective and flexlible technology for government needs.
New York City deserves some praise for creating a resource to help move government to better information technology solutions. This program, along with the Open Source Lab in Oregon, is helping government take steps to actually create software that meets the needs of agencies and can also create better resources for citizens.
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Knight Foundation Seek to Find Out What People Want to Know
Via PJNet.org, last week the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Aspen Institute announced that they are funding a $2.3 million study to see if citizens are being provided the information they need in order to participate in a democracy. The goal is to find out is the information needs of communities is being met and to recommend solutions if they are not. According to the Knight Foundation press release:
“The business models we’ve relied on to provide news and information to our communities are stressed and changing. New platforms offer an astounding array of choices, creating the most connected world we have ever known with the greatest volume of available data,” said (Alberto) Ibargüen (Knight Foundation president and CEO), a longtime newspaper executive and former PBS chairman who also chairs the Newseum board. “But as those choices proliferate and as those virtual communities connect us globally, the need for local, reliable, contextual civic information remains and, I believe, is being met less and less effectively.”
I think this is long overdue. The need for transparency in government isn’t just about getting the powers that be to open up, but to also make that information readily available to citizens so they can use it to keep tabs on their representatives. It will be interesting to see what information people feel they need and how they are receiving it. Needless to say, I look forward to the results of this study.
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Turkey Sandwiches, Ron Paul, and Internet Democracy
In July 2003 Vice President Dick Cheney was in Columbia, South Carolina for a fancy sit-down lunch with 150 big-money donors willing to kick in the maximum $2,000 to the reelection campaign of Cheney and President George W. Bush. Dick Cheney was to raise $250,000 from this exclusive group of black-tie diners in one afternoon. This would be an ordinary event for any campaign and lost in the pages of history, but this fundraiser is remembered for another reason. And that reason can best be symbolized in the form of a turkey sandwich.
Prior to the Cheney fundraiser, supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean were gathered online at the Dean’s Blog for America trying to figure out ways that the campaign could continue its small donor driven campaign fundraising success. One idea floated about was for the campaign to try and match the Cheney fundraiser dollar-for-dollar in online donations. The day of Cheney’s fundraiser the campaign posted a picture of Dean, eating a turkey sandwich while blogging, on their site asking supporters to chip in what they could to match the black-tie Cheney event. By 12:30 the next day the campaign had raised over $500,000, or twice as much as the Cheney event netted.
This story about a turkey sandwich shows the essence of how Web-centered politics change the equation in communications and outcomes in campaigns. As Dean himself said, “We had people whose job it was to read the blogs for feedback and ideas and we developed a feedback loop that allowed us to do these incredible events. The two-way conversation was key – you can’t just talk, you also need to listen.” After the impressive money haul pulled in by the Ron Paul for President campaign on November 5th, an idea sprung by campaign supporters and subsequently embraced by the Paul campaign, I decided to check out what on earth was going on in this decentralized Web-based campaign. My first stop was Ron Paul Forums where I found over 400 people currently viewing the Grassroots Central sub-forum.
I originally stumbled into the Ron Paul Forums when I began writing this post. Googling around for the image of Dean eating the turkey sandwich I saw a link to the RP Forum. The discussion thread, this was from July 2007, began with a retelling of the turkey sandwich story and then continued to ask what ideas the supporters could contribute to the campaign. One of the first suggestions happened to be that the campaign post all campaign contributions in real-time on the front page of their Web site. The poster wrote, "A ticker on www.ronpaul2008.com that shows the ammount that he’s raised is a must, especially in demonstrating that he actually has a good chance at winning and that your donations aren’t just a waste. I could see his donations sky rocketing with this." I had stumbled across another turkey sandwich. Everyone knows by now that Paul adopted this idea to show his campaign contributions as they were coming in on his Web site and everyone knows about the supporter generated money-bomb that brought in $4.3 million on November 5th. These ideas were both pulled from the Paul supporter community.
The Ron Paul online community is incredibly lively and filled with ideas about how to best use the fund raising power of the community to raise the profile of the little known Texas congressman. While November 5th, chosen to coincide with Guy Fawkes Day, is the most well known of these "money bomb" events where the community organizes a mass fund raising event it is not and will not be the only one. November 11th was intended to be another million dollar fund raising day but topped out at $200-250,000. The Paul community chose Veteran’s Day weekend as a "money bomb" day to highlight that the anti-war Paul has received more contributions from active U.S. military than any other candidate. The next day on the community organized fund raising schedule is set for December 16th in commemoration of the Boston Tea Party. Supporters talk of raising anywhere from another $4 million to upwards of $10 million on this day. T-Shirts are being made, Web sites created, and a massive amount of energy is being expended by a groups of individuals who are not on a campaign payroll to raise as much money as possible and bring more people into what they consider to be the "Ron Paul Revolution".
In many ways the tales of turkey sandwiches and Guy Fawkes Day fund raisers explain a shift in our politics that goes beyond the amount a campaign can raise from its supporters. The changing nature of technology has allowed information to flow in multiple directions at once allowing unburdened access to communication channels to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Supporters, who may well be experts in a particular field or have lived the problems that politicians discussed, can offer much more than financial support or ideas about how to increase financial support. They can offer a way to deal with and control information.
The problem of information has been one of the greatest problems facing politicians and the government since the dawn of the industrial age. How do we deal with all these issues; all this information? No one person can read every single bill introduced in Congress and no one person can write every policy statement issued for a campaign. Politicians rely heavily on their staff to read bills, write opinions, create policy positions, and hone messaging. Certainly, we as voters accept this as fact and understand that our politicians are both responsible for the decisions of their staff, as they will ultimately sign off on these decisions, and reliant on the talent and wisdom of those that they employ. By tapping into the creativity and experience of citizens, constituents, communities of interest, and experts through networked communication technology the politician can distribute the burden of information by decentralizing their information consumption operation. Think of it like a wrestler falling with every part of her body hitting the mat as opposed to landing on her side or shoulders. There is a significantly reduced risk of injury when the impact is distributed through the body instead of one part, the side or shoulders, taking the full impact. Distributing information consumption allows more information to be consumed at a lower cost and with added benefits of insight that might otherwise would have been absent.
Ron Paul and Howard Dean are both examples of politicians that relied not only on the votes and money of their supporters, but their ideas and creative energies. This same wealth of knowledge and experience can be tapped for legislative purposes, as indicated in the experiments by Dick Durbin and Ed Markey to reach out to blog communities for help in crafting a bill and asking questions in a hearing. Sen. Chuck Schumer has asked the Daily Kos community for their advice on Senate candidates for the upcoming 2008 elections. The House Judiciary Committee posted online all e-mails received from the White House and the Justice Department related to the purging of U.S. Attorneys so the public could aid in the investigation. There is little doubt that the investigations by the community at TPM Muckraker helped the investigation and acted as a source for the media.
The Internet has enabled politicians to tap into a great wealth of knowledge and provided a door into the process for the public. Manuel Castells and Araba Sey write, "by changing the direction and the content flow of information through the use of the Internet, the range of political actors is broadened, new avenues of collective mobilization may appear, and a different format of debate may take place, transforming the political scene that had been framed by the one-way communication systems of the mass media era." Everyone can make a turkey sandwich and politicians should be ready to take a bite.
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Global Warming Committee Brings Public into the Committee Room
Update: You can watch Markey ask a question from the online community here and here.
More and more members of Congress are using the Web to reach out to public constituencies to bring them into the processes in Congress. We saw this back in August when Sen. Dick Durbin went to the blog OpenLeft to discuss crafting a national broadband bill with members of the public. Yesterday, Rep. Ed Markey, the chairman of the Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence, posted a diary on the blog Daily Kos soliciting questions and concerns from the community to be used in a committee hearing on the
By adding a public element to the hearing the committee was able to create buzz in the environmental community and further open committee operations, which are the backbone of legislative activity, to the public. This will hopefully become a more regular activity among committee chairs and other members as they seek to use the Web to bring thoughtful and intelligent members of the general public in to help provide information outside of the normal think tank/lobbyist channels.
While many castigate the potential of amateur ability to provide accurate and consistent information the truth is that informed communication is occurring among individuals outside of the regular channels that serve as knowledge bases for Congress. The discussion in Markey’s Daily Kos diary is a perfect example. Here are a few great questions and comments that the commenters provided to Markey.
- “how much did letting the hills grow wild in wetter years contribute to the fires? Should CA go back to regular controlled burns? and how could they do that without violating the Clean Air Act? I’m curious about this.”
- “What about potential fires in other areas? I live in
- “How much influence do the big timber companies have on the Administrations Forestry policy How many meetings have Administration Officials had with big timber companies and what was discussed. Congressman, here is a link to a Global Warming and Wildfire study: STUDY: Global Warming and Wildfires Keep up the good work. We could use another 100 of you in Congress.”
- “Since a great deal of these fires occurred on federal owned lands, it would be instructive to learn if the federal agencies charged with managing those lands had performed their duties adequately or if they were adequately funded to do so."
- “We should recognize that wildfires are part of the natural system, that there are many ways that humans affect that system (fire fighting practices, land management, building codes, sprawl, arson, etc), and that Global Warming is a general (contextual) contributor to worsening wildfire. (All things being equal, Global Warming makes the wild fire situation worse, but there are many things that we can do about wildfires even in the face of Global Warming.) Within this context, are there ways that we can change our forest management and fire fighting practices that would lead to a healthier wild fire situation (less likely to cause major crises like last week’s) while also improving cutting America’s carbon footprint? And, if there are such practices, are they appropriate not just for the
I’d suggest visiting the comments section of this diary to view the whole discussion that took place.
Clearly these responses demonstrate that online constituencies have a high-level of knowledge that can contribute to the work of members and committees. Despite protestations of “direct democracy” and the “cult of the amateur” there is a place in the 21st century governing process for direct public involvement beyond grassroots engagement and voting (not that those are things you shouldn’t be doing).
We’ve seen online groups whip votes in the Senate on the Restore Habeas Corpus Act and telecom immunity. The Porkbusters coalition and the Sunlight Foundation have led separate highly publicized campaigns to out secret holders through distributed research and reporting. The NRCC is currently holding contests to allow the public to build their message for 2008. And now we are beginning to see a format for the public working with their members by providing them information that currently is only funneled to Congress through the usual suspects, lobbyists, think tanks, and party committees.
The Sunlight Foundation talked to the New Media staff of the committee about beginning this process. We are really excited to see members and their staffs take innovative steps into a new era of public involvement in the democratic process.
