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 York Senate’s Big Google Adventure
The New York Senate’s strides toward greater transparency hasn’t stalled since we last visited them. A huge step forward was just announced with the latest portal, Open Legislation. This site is a legislation search engine modeled after the simplicity and function of Google.
I love that you can search legislation by sponsor, committee, by recent actions and/or votes. This is a great way for citizens to navigate a system as complex as the New York Senate. It makes me believe that the creators thought a great deal about user experience and how people search – and for a government site that is a huge accomplishment. What is really exceptional is that they didn’t stop with search but also allow commenting on legislation and is available in formats like XML and JSON. And to put an extra smile on your face the whole site is under a Creative Commons license.
I really encourage people to go digging around, find ways to improve the site and let them know. Given that it’s in beta there is still some room for improvement but what a great start!
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White House Takes Huge Step Toward Transparency
Early this morning, the White House took a huge step toward a more transparent government by announcing a historic new policy to voluntarily disclose White House visitor access records. Each month, records of visitors from the previous 90-120 days will be made available online.
From the President’s statement:
For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis. We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside it. Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process.
Aside from a small group of appointments that cannot be disclosed because of national security imperatives or their necessarily confidential nature (such as a visit by a possible Supreme Court nominee), the record of every visitor who comes to the White House for an appointment, a tour, or to conduct business will be released. Read the full policy here.
The Administration has also agreed with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) to settle four pending cases requesting specific White House visitor access records, including those dating from the Bush administration (read the transmittal letter here). We have provided CREW with the records relating to their requests….
You can read all the details of this new policy at Norm Eisen’s blog.
There are a couple of important things to note. First, I understand that the president was personally involved in pushing this new policy forward and that generally around the White House there was not a lot of sympathy for this dramatic change. This is very significant and illustrates a fundamental commitment by this president to the campaign pledges he made toward openness of government.
Second, the White House has given itself wiggle room in that they will exercise discretion in deleting the names of certain visitors — personal friends, national security related meetings, and for some other reasons. We are going to trust them to make the right decisions. (We don’t need to know, don’t want to know the name of Sascha and Malia’s friends as one example.) One misstep and the good will we are offering them right now goes out the window.
Third, there is a substantial delay in making this information available to the public, 90-120 days. This latter point does give me some considerable pause. I understand that it will take at least 60 days for the Secret Service records to make their way to the White House and then some time to clean the data of personal information like social security numbers and phone numbers, but I would also bet it would be pretty darn easy to design a system that could provide that information on a daily basis. (Why shouldn’t the White House have access to the back end database that the Secret Service uses on a daily basis?) Hopefully, the White House will look into technological fixes for what they now assume will be a manual review and cleansing of the records. Real time, online is the standard to which we should hold all government information. That’s what “public” information means in the 21st century.
That critique aside, this is indeed a historic step. This kind of disclosure pioneered by the White House can keep government strong, keep citizens informed, provide an opportunity for all of us to monitor at close hand the work of the White House, providing an insurance policy for our citizens against those who want to keep them in the dark.
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Finding Bills Online
It would be nice to know why the Government Printing Office takes so long to take a bill and put it online so that I can access it on Thomas. Yesterday, I tried to read the lobbying and ethics reform bill currently being debated on the Senate floor, bill number S. 1, and found that it was not online at Thomas because it takes a day or two for the GPO to print a bill. Of course, S. 1 was introduced last week but the GPO says that it might take longer when a lot of bills are introduced at once (members of the House introduced over 300 bills last week, Senators introduced over 100). Is there some actual explanation for this delay other than aimless bureaucracy and backwards computer technology. If I had just drafted a bill I could post the entire thing on this blog right now, but for some reason Members of Congress cannot post bills immediately online?
It's been four work days and not even a third of the bills in the House have been posted to Thomas and only S. 1 and a couple of other bills related to renaming a recreation area and increasing judicial pay, out of nearly 200 bills in the Senate, have been posted. Last year, Rep. Brian Baird (D-Washington) introduced a resolution, H. Res. 688, that would have required all bills to be placed online 72 hours before a vote. Baird's resolution garnered 34 cosponsors including the Democratic Policy Committee Chair Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.). In the Senate Sen. Barack Obama introduced the CLEAN-UP Act (S. 2179) which also mandated a 72 hour online posting time for bills before they came up for a vote. Obama's legislation attracted nine cosponsors.
If the new House and Senate leadership are serious about changing the way Congress does business this issue should be brought up for debate along with the other ethics reforms that we will probably hear debated on the Senate floor today.
