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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Sunlight.Live Recap: How We Did It
During the bipartisan health care summit on Thursday, Feb 25, Sunlight tried something new by connecting a live political event to the government data and information we work to make more accessible every day. The hope here was to give real-time context to statements made by public officials using government data, and let the numbers do a little more of the talking than just the politicians.Dubbed “Sunlight.Live,” our coverage of the joint Republican and Democratic event far exceeded our expectations, thanks to all of you.
These are a couple of notable stats that we think thoroughly debunk the notion that the public is disinterested in un-biased data-centric coverage of politics: (Continue reading…)
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The Little Things We Take For Granted
So, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer announced that they were going to place the final health care bill online for 72 hours prior to consideration yesterday. Where did they decide to do this? Twitter. And no one raises a hackle at all. It’s just accepted that this is a valid announcement of an important transparency policy. What better way to demonstrate how far Congress has come in terms of social media use and transparency than to have the Speaker of the House announce a transparency policy on a widely-used social media site.
It wasn’t too long ago that lawmakers weren’t even allowed to officially use Twitter, let alone any social media site, to communicate with everyone else. The Sunlight Foundation was at the forefront of changing that policy starting in 2007 and culminating in rules changes in 2008. John Wonderlich summed this all up way back when:
In May of 2007, the Sunlight Foundation released the Open House Project report, which included an entire chapter on the issue of Franking Reform. That chapter, prepared by David All and Paul Blumental, has guided our advocacy and discussions of web use restrictions since then.
Those discussions simmered until earlier this summer, when tensions between Members of the Franking Commission briefly escalated (the part of the Committee on House Administration that handles Web restrictions). This summer’s discussion caught some media attention, and unsettled some web-savvy Representatives, and ultimately engaged both parties’ leaders in the House.
The Sunlight Foundation capitalized on the chaos, creating the first twitter-based petition in the site letourcongresstweet.org, which amassed twitter-based signatures, and displayed vigorous support for updated rules from online communities across the political spectrum.
While House officials maneuvered publicly, the Senate passed similar reforms with a bit less fanfare. As recently as last week, agreement looked unlikely from the House committee, with Roll Call reporting that an attempt at negotiations ended in “an emotionally charged hearing and a breakdown in negotiations.”
That’s why we were suprised and delighted to get word from the Committee on House Administration that a new agreement had been reached. This measure wasn’t just a slight rewrite, however. The new guidelines represent an enormous change, one which has new media staff from both parties glowing.
And now we just take for granted that serious policies are announced over Twitter. Personally, I think that is awesome.
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Visualizing Twitter’s Political Zeitgeist
Back in mid-November, I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the kickoff of Medialab Prado’s Visualizar ‘09 event in Madrid, Spain. The theme of this year’s Visualizar seminar was Public Data, Data in Public, a topic near and dear to Sunlight’s heart. The program kicked off with a day of public proposal presentations followed by a day of presentations from a variety of visualization visionaries, including Aaron Koblin and Stamen. Following the 2 day seminar, the real work began as the guest tutors and collaborators got to work on their proposed projects. Two weeks later, they presented the fruits of their labors. One such project to come out of this year’s Visualizar ‘09 is New Political Interfaces, from Barcelona’s Aer Studio. This projects presents a pair of flash based visualizations focused on politics and is based on data pulled from Twittersphere.
Their first visualization compares various topics to determine correlations between what is being discussed by politicians, bloggers, and the traditional media outlets. Consider it a sort of visual political zeitgeist, through a twitter lens.
(Continue reading…)
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This Week In Transparency – June 12, 2009
Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this past week:
Federal law prohibits lobbyists and those that hire them from giving gifts or campaign contributions to congressional lawmakers. No such law exists prohibiting them from spending unlimited amounts to honor lawmakers or contributing to non-profits connected to them. Quite a limitation on the distinction, if you ask me. However, Congress passed ethics rules in 2007 requiring for the first time that lobbyists must report all such payments. On Monday, USA Today’s Fredreka Shouten and Paul Overberg reported on the paper’s comprehensive analysis of lobbying reports that found 2,759 payments, totaling $35.8 million, were made in 2008. They quote Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, “It’s another example of the many pockets of a politician’s coat.” The spending amounts to an “end-run” around campaign-finance laws “that are designed to limit the appearance of undue influence.”
(Continue reading…)
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Vote Report India
Chris Van Buren at Internet & Democracy Blog has an interesting post today about how social media is being used in India to help ensure that country’s general election that kicked off last week is fair, or as fair as an event involving 700 million voters can be. Vote Report India is a “collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform” where users contribute direct SMS, email and Web-based reports on voting irregularities and other problems. The platform then aggregates those reports with news stories, blog and Twitter posts, photos and videos on an interactive map.
The idea is that this effort will bring more transparency and accountability to the month-long, five-phased election, dubbed the “worlds largest democratic event.” Vote Report India’s inspiration is Twitter Vote Report, which monitored voting problems and irregularities during last fall’s presidential and congressional elections. Our friends at TechPresident were instrumental in developing Vote Report, which just won a Golden Dot Award from the Institute for Politics, Democracy, & the Internet at George Washington University.
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Transparency 2.0
Nick Troiano at SocialGovernment.com has an interesting and important post about government transparency, the 2.0 version. Nick was reflecting from a discussion featured by the National Conference on Citizenship titled “In Transparency, We Trust?
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People Are Talking About Electronic Filing
Some people will say that Senate Bill 482, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, which would require the Senate to electronically file their campaign disclosure forms, is not something that can capture the imagination and get people talking. However, Sunlight’s efforts to get this simple, non-controversial bill passed has, in fact, stirred quite a few people into conversation.
We started Pass 482 with a bang by introducing the Twitter Lobby. There are 17 senators on Twitter and we wanted to make sure they heard about this bill and from their constituents who use Twitter. We asked people to tweet to senators “Need your support for Senate e-filing of campaign finance reports. Please cosponsor S. 482!” This novel way of using Twitter sparked some controversy. Smart People I Know thought it could be a good way for elected officials to get feedback if they handle it well. Advocacy 2.0 wonders if we will get a response from the 17 senators. A. Fine Blog has a very thoughtful response to the criticism the Tweet Lobby. By the end, we had Sen. McCaskill support electronic filing and a new cosponsor in Sen. Barbara Boxer. This didn’t stop people from spreading the word that they need to see campaign disclosure forms before Election Day. Blogs from Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire and others have been asking their readers to call their senators and ask them to support S. 482.
The real appeal of this legislation is that it is such a no-brainer that it hits you on the head. Why isn’t the Senate filing their campaign disclosure forms electronically? Won’t this save money and time for them as well?
This bill needs to pass because it is a real concrete step towards real time transparency. Call you senator today and ask them to cosponsor S. 482 and ask your friends and neighbors to call as well. This is a noncontroversial, commonsense bill. If they can’t pass a measure beneficial to them and to their constituents what can they pass?
We can get S 482 passed, together.
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The Feds and Social Media II
Here’s an exciting development! Last week, I blogged about an encouraging report by Doug Belzer at Federal Computer Week, where he wrote about how Twitter, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools are revolutionizing government business. The General Services Administration had determined that Twitter’s standard terms of service is compatible with federal use.
Two days ago, Doug has another exciting article, this time in Government Computer News, about GSA announcing that it has signed agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv that will allow federal agencies to use new-media tools. Agencies can now begin using these tools to better communicate, network and share information via the Web.
Chris Snyder at Wired’s Epicenter blog termed the move, “Web 2.0, meet dot-gov. Dot-gov, this is Web 2.0.” He’s right in calling it a “big step” for agencies attempting to become more transparent and interactive with citizens. “Now that the bureaucratic brush has been cleared, government agencies will be free, for example, to embed videos and create photo widgets that citizens can embed into their MySpace or Facebook pages,” he writes. An example of a government agency already using Web 2.0 tools successfully is the Centers for Disease Control alerting the public about the recent peanut better product recall.
Chris quotes Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and Sunlight’s senior technology advisor, as saying it’s another example of why it really matters who’s president of the United States. “Because we have the country’s first tech president, the speed at which the government can catch up with the private sector and use of technology is exponential.”
Each individual agency will determine their own guidelines for how their employees can use the tools. “The new agreements make it easier for the government to provide official information to citizens via their method of choice,” according to GSA’s administrator, who is in discussions with other new-media providers. They started with these four because of their popularity and large number of users.
We’re excited about this development. You should be too.
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Congress Passes Stronger Authority for TARP Special IG
Yesterday, the House followed the Senate by passing a bill to provide the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) broader authority to investigate and more specific reporting requirements. In the disclosure and reporting department, the bill mandates quarterly reports to Congress from the office of the Special Inspector General and the posting of all reports on TARP recipients online within 24 hours after issuance. Good for Congress for passing this bill.
I should say how this bill came to my attention. Congressman Erik Paulsen, an original sponsor of the bill, wrote a pat-on-the-back blog post for The Hill today, but he never mentioned which bill the House had just approved. Luckily, the congressman is on Twitter so I just tweeted him and asked and he got right back with the bill number–S. 383, by the way. It really is that easy to talk to a congressman nowadays. (It’s also helpful if the answer you want is under 140 characters.)
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The Feds Embrace Social Media
Last week Doug Belzer at Federal Computer Week has an encouraging article about how Twitter, blogs and other Web 2.0 tools are revolutionizing government business. Belzer writes how government managers and elected officials are using social media to network and collaborate online, quickly connecting with audiences like never before.
“If they’re looking for information about an obscure contract vehicle, they can post a message on a messaging service such as Twitter and see if someone can help them learn about it,” he writes. “Or if they run across a particularly useful piece of information on a community-created Web page, they can give it a high rating so others can find it easily in the future.”
Belzer gives five examples of how bureaucrats have used social media “to take care of business,” contrasting this new and effective strategy with how they would have approached the project or problem before Web 2.0 tools were available and in use, with less impressive results.
One of Belzer’s examples, as a un-recovered peanut butter fan, is near and dear to my heart. When salmonella-tainted peanut butter was found in a number of food products, it was the responsibility of the Centers for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration to get the word out about the recalls. In the past, the agencies would attempt to raise the alarm by employing press releases, posts on Web sites, toll-free telephone lines, but the agencies never knew how effective these efforts were at alerting the public. But with this emergency the agencies are using Web 2.0 tools, such as a widgets, blogs, Twitter feeds and other social networks, as well as other social media outreach efforts. The CDC first offered their peanut-butter widget in early February. And since then, Belzer reports, about 16,000 sites, including newspapers, health agencies and personal Web sites, posted the widget, resulting in more than 6.8 million views. “That viral effect is really pretty amazing,” he quotes a CDC information officer as saying. “The reach of the widget grows exponentially.”
The promise of Government 2.0 is just beginning to dawn.
