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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State Government Online
There was a terrific op ed in the Maryland section of the Washington Post this weekend by two locally based activists who were writing to demand that the Maryland legislature, and the state Board of Public Works get with the transparency picture.
Reforms should start with the General Assembly’s online legislative tracking system. “Up-to-the-minute” access provides nearly instantaneous information on the bills and proceedings on the House and Senate floors, but it is available only to those in state office buildings and the couple hundred lobbyists willing to pay $800 a year to get these updates faster than once a day…
Posting committee votes online is a necessary step forward, and one that will help ensure voters can hold their legislators accountable for the decisions they make. But why wait until after the fact? To influence the process, citizens need to be able to participate more reliably. They should be able to watch committee proceedings, sign up to testify online and check the order in which bills will be heard at least one day in advance.
Yes indeed. These are great suggestions and honestly — and hopefully — could be made by activists across the country. But there’s no reason to stop with demanding real time, online access to legislative or spending bodies. Why aren’t all government agencies required to make all public information online, and why not make it all available online in real time so the information can be used to inform the process? This should be government’s default when it comes to information. Why is government not routinely using all the new web and mobile based technologies as a means for engaging citizens in a two-way dialog with them, or to provide services for them when they are needed? (You’ve got to love the story of Mayor Cory Booker helping out one of his consitutents in response to a Twitter plea.)
Sunlight is very interested in learning about current best practices in the states along these lines. Tell us what you know in the comments below.
One goal for this year: We’d like to see activists in every state demanding the same kind of openness that Heather Mizuer and Ryan O’Donnell have asked from their government officials.
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What Data Do You Want? How Would You Use It?
Based on the Open Government Directive issued by the White House yesterday, American Public Media is asking its National Public Insight Network to find out what kind of data people would really like to see. Here’s a link to their survey.
Minnesota Public Radio has already begun to ask its listeners this question: What Data Do You Want? How Would You Use It? And the answers they are getting are serious, thoughtful and informative. Here are some recent submissions (each from a different contributor):
I would like to be able to able to “drag and drop” any type of event data – such as legislative voting records of a bill, purchases by an agency, crime report in my neighborhood, right on to my Google home page to get updates in real time. There are many standards (RSS/Atom etc.) that make this easy to do…
NRCS data. Billions of dollars go to federal farm subsidy programs and the FOIA forbids sharing specifics of that data, even among agencies. The federal info could be very valuable to state agencies working on pollution control projects and also represents a major lack of transparency in a federal program…
I would like to see very clear and very precise information on private donations to our elected officials. Specifically how much money, goods, and services were donated and what interest group the donations represent. I would like this information made public as soon as the donations are made – not several years after a vote was taken on an issue…
Information about contributions to political parties that are over $1,000 and an easy way to access what earmarks are attached to bills passed by congress, better yet a system that connects earmarks with contributions in the same data base…
This is really good stuff. There’s a meme here. Online. RealTime. Data.
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The House and Senate’s Public — But Not Online — Documents
Over the last month, Sunlight has examined the document collections of the Office of the House Clerk and Office of the Secretary of the Senate to find out what they have. There seems to be an even split between public documents that are available online and those which you have to visit their office to read – or are not publicly available at all. Here is our list of House and Senate documents, which contain summaries of what we found.
The Senate makes available a handy report listing all of their public documents, but you have to goto their public record’s office to obtain a copy. (We’ve uploaded the 2009 version.) The House doesn’t have an equivalent report, although they do make available a bookmark listing some of their resources. Both offices charge a per-page printing/copying fee ($0.10/page for the House and $0.20/page for the Senate). Neither office lets users make copies of their electronic files, whether in whole or in part, even though many files are available in electronic format on dedicated computers in their offices. (Continue reading…)
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Success! Senate to post expenditure reports
The Senate is going to follow the House in posting their office expenditure reports online for the public to view. Yesterday, Sen. Tom Coburn offered an amendment to the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act requiring the Secretary of the Senate to post all expenditure reports online.
Coburn’s amendment has elements that are both better and worse than the House’s efforts to disclose office expenditures. The better is a lot better: reports will be posted in a searchable, itemized format. (The House plans to only post PDFs.) Unfortunately, we won’t get to see those reports until the 2011. Coburn’s amendment delays disclosure, likely for the Secretary of the Senate to build infrastructure for disclosure, until the start of the 112th Congress, or 2011. The House will begin disclosing later this year.
Below is the language of the amendment: (Continue reading…)
