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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Tip of the Hat to THOMAS
In May 2007, Sunlight called on the Library of Congress to “create stable links” to legislative documents published on THOMAS. This recommendation was part of a suite of recommendations to improve that public legislative database, first established in 1995. Although painfully obvious to mention, when hyperlinks are not permanent, people cannot share links to legislation with one another. The old URL dies after a matter of minutes.
The Library of Congress partially addressed these concerns by creating “handles” — stable hyperlinks to legislative information — a year and a half later, in October 2008. THOMAS didn’t automatically give users these handles. Instead, users had to follow a complicated set of procedures to modify the URL. Few people knew of the feature, or how to take advantage of it.
Not until November 2009 were our permanent hyperlink concerns addressed, by a source outside goverment. Web designer Asa Hopkins created TinyThom.as, which automatically converts THOMAS URLs into stable hyperinks. He also created a handful of useful tools. Although easy to use, not everyone knew that TinyThom.as existed.
It wasn’t until this week that the Library of Congress fully addressed our request for permanent hyperlinks. LoC announced a “new toolbar, found near the top of most THOMAS pages, [that] allows users to save or share a permanent link via bookmarks, email, or social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. The toolbar also includes quick links to subscribe to THOMAS RSS feeds and to print.” LoC has also added a few other bells and whistles, including a top 5 list of frequently searched for bills. (Continue reading…)
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Show Us The Data: Most Wanted Federal Documents
On the occasion of Sunlight Week, our colleagues (and grantees) at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and OpenTheGovernment.org are releasing “Show Us The Data: Most Wanted Federal Documents” (PDF), a report based on the results of a survey funded by Sunlight and a Web-based collaborative tool created by Sunlight Labs. It cites documents and data that the federal government should make easier to find and to use, and recommends policy changes to make government more open.
Similar reports OTG and CDT have compiled in the past have shown national security concerns lead to too much secrecy. But not any more. Here’s a list of the top 10 most wanted government documents, according to the survey:
1. Public Access to All Congressional Research Service Reports
2. Information About the Use of TARP and Bailout Funds
3. Open and Accessible Federal Court Documents Through the PACER System
4. Current Contractor Projects
5. Court Settlements Involving Federal Agencies
6. Access to Comprehensive Information About Legislation and Congressional Actions via THOMAS or Public Access to Legislative Information Service
7. Online Access to Electronic Campaign Disclosures
8. Daily Schedules of the President and Cabinet Officials
9. Personal Financial Disclosures from Policymakers Across Government
10. State Medicaid Plans and WaiversThose involved in writing the report include Patrice McDermott and Amy Fuller of OpenTheGovernment.org and Ari Schwartz, Jud Watkins, and Heather West of CDT. Sunlight’s own Bill Allison, Ali Felski, James Turk and Clay Johnson lent their hands in making it all happen, as well.
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OpenCongress: New Features
The folks at OpenCongress, a Sunlight joint project with Participatory Politics Foundation, are making great strides at building the place to go to find the exact information about every bill, issue, person, and vote in Congress. They already run circles around any other site, including Thomas, the Library of Congress site, in terms of ease of use and content.
Earlier today, OpenCongress announced the addition of 13 new features (this team is amazingly prolific!) and a site redesign giving you more information about bills, their sponsors, and other ways for individuals to track their interests in Congress. Many of the changes and additions came from your ideas. We’re really trying to respond too how you want to use the site. Some of the new features OpenCongress is most excited about are the ones involving input from users, such as the rating of the “most useful” news articles, blog posts, and user comments. The idea is for users to help “filter up” the best information on the Web about what Congress is up to.
Be sure to check it out.
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The Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21st Century Way, Please. Now.
It’s quite surprising, but the UK’s House of Commons does not put the text of its bills on the Web in a user-friendly manner, making it bloody difficult — as they would say — for British citizens to know what’s really going on in Parliament when it comes to legislating.
Earlier today, our friends at MySociety.org, the U.K.-based nonprofit that builds Web sites to open up government and its services to benefit citizens, launched a campaign to convince Parliament to embrace the Internet Age.
The goal of the Free Our Bills campaign is to have Parliament put the text of bills online. The effort is titled "The Nice Polite Campaign to Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21 Century Way, Please. Now." (We’ll give it an award for simply being the best named campaign ever.) How polite and British. (American style would be something like "Just Do It.")
As a Telegraph editorial from Sunday says, "this sort of initiative – non-partisan, volunteer-led, and driven by geeks using cheap technology cleverly does (much) to increase transparency and accountability" in the U.K. David Cameron, Conservative Party leader, endorsed opening up the workings of Parliament in a video statement, saying "I think that publishing bills in a way that works on the internet makes good sense — people should be able to see what Parliament is doing, what legislation means and how their MPs are voting." Here! Here!
Never thought we’d say it but Parliament has some catching up to do with Congress when it comes to openness and transparency in this arena. Here in the States we have Thomas, OpenCongress.org, Congresspedia, and other online transparency tools, but even these sources hardly touch all the information that we should have about Congress.
Congratulations to our co-conspirators at MySociety. I think you’ve got another successful project underway.
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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.
