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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New Batch of White House Visitor Logs Released
Last Friday, the White House released a new batch of visitor logs covering last October, fulfilling a pledge they made last month. Over here at the Sunlight Labs, we took the logs and added them to the handy online, searchable database we created last month, so that you can see for yourself who is coming to the White House and why.
This is the first full month that has been release by the administration and adds almost 100,000 new records for October. As we mentioned back in January, this is a positive step by the Obama administration, and we are happy to see that they are committed to releasing this data in a timely basis.
We still don’t know how many records are being withheld, and for what purposes. It would be nice for the White House to release at least a number, and ultimately a justification (read: national security) for why those names have been redacted. None the less, this is still part of a much larger, unprecedented level of transparency on behalf of the administration.
One of the other problems with the White House visitor logs is that there is no real accurate way to ensure that if you see a “Samuel L. Jackson” in the logs, it’s actually the actor. It could just be another Sam. That’s why we caution you, when you are reading through the records and doing your own independent research not to jump to conclusions. Otherwise, happy hunting!
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“Put it on CSPAN” Translated
Public appetite for transparent health care negotiations is driving us toward more transparency.
While Congress has rightly responded to that public pressure by posting bills online for 72 hours, the public dialog about the process of shaping health care legislation is more focused on transparent deliberations.
President Obama’s promise to put healthcare negotiations on CSPAN, in combination with the question of formal conference proceedings, has become shorthand for several more fundamental questions. Formal requirements for public proceedings, while sometimes appropriate, are far short of what we should all be aiming for.
Firm requirements for public deliberations, since they are essentially prohibitions on private speech, are probably inappropriate for issues like health care in Congress. Since you can’t require those negotiations to be public, Promises and Requirements are downgraded to Suggestions and Inducements.
Maybe that’s why it’s been so easy to ignore what’s possible for health care deliberations. Since President Obama promised deliberations on CSPAN, shouldn’t we all focus there? It’s right to focus on a Presidential candidate’s promises, and they should mean something. But if it turns out to be a failure, that doesn’t mean we should all just go home. By focusing too much on requirements and promises, we’re missing out on a chance to conceive and create public dialog that does work.
That’s the realm that we shouldn’t be ignoring. Where hard and fast requirements can’t deliver what we’re all looking for, we should focus on thinking of what can deliver it. “Put it on CSPAN!” should start to address those more basic questions.
We’ve all been so focused on the precise language of President Obama’s campaign promise — did he or didn’t he keep it? — that everyone was gobsmacked by last Friday’s appearance before the House Republican retreat.
Since the appearance was almost universally welcomed, why haven’t there been calls for just such an appearance? Because the public dialog has been focused on evaluating promises and procedures (the realm of the requirement, which is ultimately insufficient for public deliberations) rather than on what we actually want to see.
That’s what was shocking to me about last Friday. Not just that the President and House Republicans were engaged in an honest, unscripted public debate, but that it wasn’t orchestrated beforehand, or the direct result of public pressure.
House Republicans and President Obama innovated in the face of diffuse public pressure.
We live in a world where live streaming, immediate clippable archives, and all manner of new public interaction are now possible. We should balance our judgment of the world of public deliberations requirements (conference committees, or exaggerated promises) against the world of what is possible and desirable.
We should also remember that inducing public deliberations into the public sphere is exactly the point of much of our politics. Sunday talk shows, discharge petitions, Dear Colleague letters, caucus meetings, and editorials are all, in their own way, attempts to cajole, drag, and otherwise induce a policy conversation into the public eye.
Of course, our new technological capacity is having an effect on each of those spheres as well.
We advocate for a 72 hour rule precisely because it empowers all of us to take part in a more substantive, valuable public dialog. Government information empowers participation, and the Sunlight Foundation exists to empower the public through access to information.
As technology leads us to have higher expectations, and politicians are forced to respond with new methods for including the public, we should all respond with better expectations about the possible and the desirable.
If we don’t, we’ll become more susceptible to fake public engagement, and lose the chance for new technology to lead to a better relationship between citizens and their representatives.
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President Obama on Influence Peddling
President Obama’s weekly address explained on his administration’s efforts to combat influence peddling, and the steps it is considering taking in response to the Citizens United decision. It will be interesting to see to what extent these themes are reflected in the State of the Union speech this Wednesday, and how they translate into policy. The Sunlight Foundation will, of course, remain focused on the transparency implications.
Some highlights from the weekly address are after the jump. (Continue reading…)
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A Watershed Moment in Transparency and Accountability
I was out of town earlier this week when the Open Government was released and so I am just now weighing in with a few thoughts. Without being too over the top (OK maybe I am) I think this Directive potentially represents a watershed moment for democracy, the likes of which can forever change the relationship between the government and the public it serves.
This Directive acknowledges that the Internet is the right, proper and primary medium for communicating information to the public, and that “the public” is key in helping determine the policies, directions and priorities for government’s work. In doing this, the Directive requires each executive agency to create an online portal designed to promote important agency data and provide a place for citizens and agency officials to work together.
Every citizen – from web developers to journalists to a real estate agent in Kentucky or mother in Colorado — has something to gain from this new initiative. If you care about the health of your children, the safety of your workplace, the crime in your streets, or corporate accountability you will have new information to inform yourself and discuss with those who represent you.
Business will have a lot of new data to base their decisions on. Real estate agents and developers will be able to see migration patterns by income when the Internal Revenue Service releases their database of tax-filer migration from county-to-county or state-to-state. This will aid in decisions on where to build, what kind of market to expect and what type of people live where. Similarly, data released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development on public housing will not only help reveal slum lords, but also help renters or buyers locate Section 8 density when deciding on a neighborhood to move into.
Here are some more examples:
• The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to release a real-time online database providing up to date information on flight delays and cancellations. This database will take existing FAA data and combine it with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to allow the public to be able to easily access online the status and causes of airport delays and cancellations.
• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating Virtual USA, an information-sharing system that will reduce lag time in responses to emergency situations. This system will likely save lives and empower local authorities with better information to reduce the costs of emergencies and disasters.
• The Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) will release raw data and “report cards” on Veteran’s Administration hospitals empowering current and former military service members and their families to know the quality of care that they are getting when they go to a given VA hospital.The Directive will also help citizens hold their government accountable through new avenues of government disclosure and citizen engagement. For example, the Department of Justice is collecting and publishing agency reports on their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compliance. Each agency report will include information on how long it takes to process FOIA requests and which agencies are most successful at fulfilling FOIA requests from the public (and consequently which agencies are not as well).
The Directive also requires each agency to allow citizens to request data to be released by agencies and placed online. This process will enable citizens to continue to press officials to make their data as open as possible, and that call for more information will have an affect far beyond the executive branch.
The General Services Administration (GSA) will be releasing a full database of all federal advisory committee members that can be mashed up with lobbying records and contribution databases to show the influence that resides on these important bodies – and we can similarly expect Congress, states and municipal governments nationwide to feel pressure to release information. That is, if the public demands it.
It will be our responsibility as citizens to monitor the data quality reported by agencies and the timeliness of the reporting requirements. Just like all previous open government moments, this one will require constant public engagement to ensure that will be all that it can be.
Sunlight is bullish on this Directive because we believe it will make permanent the idea that open government means an online government. In the digital age how can it mean anything else?Even if you don’t realize it yet, the plan laid out in the Directive will impact you, so we hope you’ll join us during this exciting to begin a this new dialogue with government. What we have now is a plan. And it is a plan that will require public engagement to ensure that the policies it lays out are enacted and undertaken to make our dream of an open government a reality.
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New Stimulus Lobbying Policy Released
As promised by the White House, new stimulus lobbying policies have been released by OMB.
The new guidance clarifies restrictions on lobbying, lifting a more general limitation on meetings between federally registered lobbyists and administration officials, and clamping down on all communications regarding awards for carefully tailored time periods.
We’re particularly excited about this announcement:
A web tool is being developed to facilitate disclosure of lobbyist contacts concerning the Recovery Act, and the tool will be available shortly for your agency’s use.
…given that we’ve long advocated for better real-time disclosure of lobbying contacts online, going so far as to mockup what such a system might look like.
I’ve embedded the document below. H/t Ellen’s and Gabriela’s twitter feeds.
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White House Publishes Staff Salaries
As ProPublica just pointed out on Twitter, the White House today released staff salaries, as they do each year.
Since 1995, the White House has been required to deliver a report to Congress listing the title and salary of every White House Office employee.
What’s unique about this year’s report is the data that accompanies it, helpfully presented in a sortable chart, which is itself downloadable.
Using Google Spreadsheets, I made the following chart, to see whether my first impression was correct: that many White House staffers were concentrated at either $30 – 40,000 per year, or around $160,000. Turns out my first impression was wrong, and that there’s a fairly even distribution.
This is a step in the right direction, where a simple explanation, accessible chart, and exposed data all combine to give a useful look at something that’s required to be made public.
(Note — please interpret this chart as a stab at making sense by an amateur, and should not represent Sunlight’s visualization work, which far, far exceeds my own.)
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Today is 120 Days Since the Open Government Memo
Today is 120 days after President Obama’s Open Government Memo, released on his first full day in office: January 21st, 2009.
In case you’re wondering what’s formally due today, or whether anything is late, here’s what the memo requested:
I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.
The Directive itself isn’t due today, as has been widely suggested.
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White House Lobbying Meeting: Public Debrief
Colleagues Daniel Schuman and Lisa Rosenberg and I just returned from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where a meeting was held by administration officials to help evaluate the new lobbying restrictions put in place for stimulus funds. Many other non-profits and coalitions represented various viewpoints on lobbying and ethics reform.
The administration, proactively protecting stimulus funds, instituted stringent new lobbying restrictions, banning oral communications from lobbyists on specific spending projects, and placing new disclosure requirements on executive branch employees who meet with lobbyists on stimulus policy.
To me, this looks like an imperfect law (the Lobbying Disclosure Act) being used as a foundation for imperfect lobbying restrictions, in the face of enormous and unprecedented stimulus spending. Whether the restrictions are proportional to the sudden need for competent spending is certainly up for debate. There seems to be little debate, however over whether the LDA is a sufficient vehicle for lobbying regulation. It isn’t. The LDA requirements are easily skirted, enforcement is lax, and many terms are insufficiently defined. (It’s probably fair to say that position was the consensus of the groups present, but certainly not presented as administration policy.)
(Continue reading…)
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New OMB Memo Clarifies Lobbying Restrictions
A new memo from the Obama administration clarifies the strict lobbying restrictions set by the March 20th memo. (The March 20th memo is included below, along with the new memo, m-09-16.)
This memo offers significant detail and guidance, including specific examples of how administration officials should react to specific questions. This document looks like a response to a load of questions that must have bombarded OMB since the March 20th memo. It includes contact information for administration officials, and suggests that they’re welcoming feedback on the policy.
This document should be read by lobbyists and administration officials alike.
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White House Adds Web Access to Personal Financial Disclosures
Sunlight has long advocated for online disclosure of Personal Financial Disclosure Forms (PFDs) of political appointees subject to Senate confirmation.
Until recently, the White House offered only a static chart of appointees, with their positions, and dates confirmed, while the Office of Government Ethics offered a similar chart. Neither offered online access to the PFD statement, but the OGE page did offer this:
The following individuals have been nominated or appointed by President Obama with the advice and consent of the Senate to the offices indicated. Their Public Financial Disclosure Reports (SF 278) and Ethics Agreements may be obtained by completing OGE Form 201, “Request to Inspect or Receive Copies of SF 278s or Other Covered Records” (2006) (Electronically Fillable PDF Version of OGE Form 201) (PDF)
This PDF version of the form has been programmed to be filled in electronically through the use of the Adobe®Reader 6.0 or above and then printed. The Adobe Reader is freely available from the Adobe Web Site.
To access the financial disclosure forms of high level Presidential appointees, one had to find the OGE page, and then submit a form via mail to receive copies.
Not anymore.
The White House has set up a new online request process. This page now moves the request process entirely online, allowing anyone to request a copy of the PFD, and even receive their copy via email.
This is a significant improvement, and lowers the barrier to effective disclosure of essential financial information.
Ultimately, the White House should move beyond a request-based system, and affirmatively post the financial disclosure forms, with any necessary redactions. While this may take a more significant rewriting of the Federal Regulations and Executive Orders that set up the high level financial disclosure system, it would be worthwhile. 21st Century disclosure shouldn’t include certifications of use.
In any case, the online submission form is a significant improvement, and should be applauded.
