Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of The Washington (D.C.) Examiner, and strong  ally of Sunlight’s thirst for more transparency of information, attended the Personal Democracy Forum 2008 conference in New York, to appear on the panel that I convened. It was his first, and based on the refection he posted to his blog, it sounds like PDF has a new convert. Mark reports that it was not only quite memorable, but he also became infused with “a heightened sense that we are on the cusp of profound, even revolutionary changes in government and public policy thanks to the Internet.”  He adds that, as a conservative, he doesn’t use the word “revolution” lightly.

He writes that two things struck him at the conference: one being the staggering magnitude of the possibilities as a result of the explosion of information technology, and the other being how progressives have embraced this revolution quicker and more thoroughly than conservatives.

Mark, as a good classic conservative, fears what he calls “Leviathan,” or “the all-powerful central government.” Seeing how inept the federal government is currently with information technology it’s very easy to get lulled into a false belief that there is no way it could ever get so deviously savvy to pose much of a threat. But of course Mark is correct to fear the potential of an Orwellian Internet-empowered centralized power. You’ve got to believe that sooner rather than later the feds will wake up and embrace this technology. The question is, will it be used for good or ill? And here at Sunlight, as well as with our friends and colleagues, we are dedicated to opening up the government with these new tools so that we can achieve a much more robust democracy, preventing Mark’s monstrous scenario.

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Late last week, after the Sunshine Week Lessig lecture, the always thoughtful Beth Noveck — law professor and director of both the Institute for Information Law and Policy and Democracy Design Workshop, and friend — compared the Lessig speech to a June 2007 speech, by open-source-licensing crusader Eben Moglen.

Beth said Moglen is an optimist who is inclined to trust people’s ability to collaborate and work together. She wrote that his take on government is revolutionary and evolutionary. Lessig is a pessimist, she says, full of dismay at the state of the body politic, yet wants to preserve the status quo ultimately. (I’m not sure I completely agree with the assessment of Lessig as pessimist but that’s not the point I want to make right now.)

Beth says that the best approach is a mash-up of both approaches:"Lessig’s orientation toward action and pragmatism with Moglen’s boldness of vision." She advocates that we take a whole new look at government institutions and governance, and start using technology to empower citizens in order to fundamentally change the way government works.

We need to stop viewing our institutions of government and governance as static and reified in their current form and, instead, start asking, not how to use technology to make Congress more transparent but how to use technology to make us more powerful.

I don’t want to blow up Congress (well, I do but that’s for another day) but to extend its intelligence by connecting the power of the network to the structure of the institution and to change fundamentally the way government works.

The idea that all we are good for is to blog about what happens in Washington or even to make maps and mash-ups of when and with whom the politicians went to lunch is to ignore the larger opportunity to get involved with making the science that contributes to our understanding of public health and obesity, analyzing the data about global warming, participating in the drafting of policies about these and other fields and overseeing the work of those who implement them through citizen juries assigned to every official.

Even though Sunlight is doing mashups of earmarks on Google maps and lobbyist meetings with lawmakers, and developing fun ways to visualize data, Sunlight is already heading in the direction that Beth suggests: experimenting with ways to engage citizens in research and in the shaping of government policy. We have a major new launch scheduled in this arena for next week.

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Sunlight is extremely happy to formally announce today an investment of $2 million from Omidyar Network, a mission-based organization established by Pam and Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay. This is the second such grant Sunlight received from Omidyar Network.

Omidyar Network’s investment will support Sunlight’s operations and grant-making to organizations that create "Web 2.0" tools that make information about the workings of Congress and the influence of money in politics more accessible to citizens. Since our founding in 2006, Sunlight has awarded more than $3.1 million to organizations who use the Internet to make Congress more open and accountable to the public. Read the full press release here.

We are also pleased to formally announce that Lawrence Lessig, renowned expert in intellectual property and Stanford University Law Professor, has joined our Advisory Board.

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Larry Lessig blogs today about why he’s supporting Barack Obama for President. There are a number of reasons, including this one:

… a commitment to making data about the government (as well as government data) publicly available in standard machine readable formats. The promise isn’t just the naive promise that government websites will work better and reveal more. It is the really powerful promise to feed the data necessary for the Sunlights and the Maplights of the world to make government work better. Atomize (or RSS-ify) government data (votes, contributions, Members of Congress’s calendars) and you enable the rest of us to make clear the economy of influence that is Washington.

 Here’s a link to the entire policy statement by Obama, and another report.

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Last Friday, Paul posted an interview with Larry Lessig from Danish TV. Today, I received a link to the lecture I heard him deliver at Stanford Law School just a couple of weeks ago. It’s worth devoting the time to watch this. It’s a remarkable analysis. Update: Lessig has now posted the slides.

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Larry Lessig talks about money in politics, public information on the Internet, political corruption, and gives a shout of to the Sunlight Foundation.

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