In January of 2007, freshman Democratic congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand became the first member of the House of Representatives to post her daily schedule on her official web site, a historic step for transparency in Congress. At the time, many feared that this level of transparency would harm her reelection prospects in a mostly Republican district. Those fears turned out to be wrong. Last night, every non-retiring candidate posting their daily schedule online was reelected to Congress, proving that transparency does not harm electoral prospects.

Since Rep. Gillibrand’s daily schedule went online, eight other lawmakers (including Sen. Jon Tester, the first senator to post a daily schedule) began posting daily schedules - you can view a map of their meetings here. They include Reps. John Doolittle, Dennis Rehberg, Kathy Castor, Jan Schakowsky, and John Yarmuth and Sens. Tester, Max Baucus, and Bill Nelson. Of these lawmakers, Rep. Doolittle retired and Sens. Tester and Nelson were not up for reelection. Reps. Rehberg, Castor, Schakowsky, and Yarmuth and Sen. Baucus all joined Rep. Gillibrand in winning reelection.

From her first day, Rep. Gillibrand has been a leader on operating a unilaterally transparent congressional office. Aside from posting her daily schedule, she was among the first lawmakers to post on her web site a list of her earmark requests and her personal financial disclosure. Since then, unilateral transparency (the disclosure of information not required by laws or congressional rules) has become much more prevalent throughout the House and Senate.

Today, over forty lawmakers disclose their earmark requests to some degree, while dozens more provide some lesser form of earmark disclosure. Others post their personal financial disclosures and travel reports.

The movement towards transparency continues unabated. The proven ability of transparent lawmakers to win reelection provides further space for more lawmakers to operate in an open and transparent manner.

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The House of Representatives voted on a bill to improve the way Inspectors General perform their work monitoring spending in executive branch agencies. Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand thought the bill might be improved by adding a provision on transparency. Sunlight helped her find an amendment—already part of a bill Senator McCaskill has introduced—that would require that each agency provide a link on its homepage to its IG’s homepage. The amendment also requires that IG reports are posted in a searchable, sortable, downloadable format and be available online no more than one day after the reports are made public. Another piece of the amendment provides that the IG’s website have a method by which the public can report waste, fraud or abuse in an agency.

This amendment shines light on the important work of Inspectors General and it has the potential to save taxpayer money by allowing the taxpayers themselves to report when they think an agency is engaged in wasteful or improper spending. By offering this common sense amendment, Rep. Gillibrand, who already posts her schedule, her personal financial disclosures, and her earmark requests online, can put another notch in her transparency belt. The amendment passed by voice vote, which means that her colleagues also recognized how important and non-controversial greater transparency is.  Hopefully more Members of Congress will follow Ms. Gillibrand’s lead when it comes to making their own work more transparent. Ms. Gillibrand and a handful of other Members know that greater transparency builds trust with their constituents, fosters accountability, and simply improves the way our democratic institutions work.

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