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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On Oversight in Public
(cross posted from our Google Group)
Jon Henke wrote the following provocation, and I decided to respond to the whole list, since it’s a topic I think many here will be interested in. (I asked his permission to post in full.)
(Continue reading…)
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Tweet On Dear Friends Tweet On
Wednesday night, we launched Let Our Congress Tweet so citizens could voice their demand that Congress should be allowed to freely connect to us on the Internet, even on sites that don’t end in .gov
How would people respond? Can Twitter really be used to influence lawmakers? Well let’s just say that tweets can get pretty loud! As of right now, we have almost 400 tweets and great support in the blogosphere, including a great plug on the Twitter blog. Mark at Mashable.com does a great job summarizing how this controversy got started and why it is important. However, Tim O’Brien at O’Reilly said it best “This is much larger than just letting Congress Twitter, this is about letting social networks help to evolve the very concept of governance.”
This is not nearly the end, fair friends. We are on a roll with new tweets all the time and even more members of Congress using the medium. I think the comment from Mr. Christopher Glenn sums it up “…I wasn’t even aware who my representative in the House was, and now I’ve got a direct line to a real live human being that’s representing me in government, so I can let him know if I disagree with him, and why, and he can fill us in on what he’s voting for, what’s going on in Washington and heck, what he had for lunch if he likes. And that’s awesome.”
Yes, Chris, it is awesome. So keep on tweeting and tell all your friends to join the movement!
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Visible Discussion of the Invisible Hand
After a few posts on the Open House Project blog, the conversation about the CITP paper “Government Data and the Invisible Hand” has taken off on the OHP google group.
The dialog has featured prominent voices struggling to define what government’s role in online governance should be in the digital age, and is absolutely worth reading through.
Thanks should especially go to the papers authors, for writing a very provocative piece, and for David Robinson for engaging in a discussion about its implications.
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Public Medicare Data
(from the OHP blog)
Add another tally to the list of public conversations about federal data availability.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of Health and Human Services, is hosting another in their series of “Open Door Forums“, to discuss Medicare Part D Data regulations. (See here for CMS’s description of the new rule and its data availability implications, and here for an example of coverage of their conference call, and for conference call details.)
This is the nitty-gritty of public data availability. A new public project has created a complex and rich public data resource, detailing the ways that the federal government spends money on drugs through Medicare.
The compromise here isn’t obvious. Whole scale release of the data would violate probably both beneficiary and commercial privacy, so that isn’t really an option. This is, however, public data, with a very clear public benefit. A very large and new public program is generating a huge amount of new and potentially useful information about the way we use prescription drugs. CMS is struggling with how to balance privacy/commercial concerns with the public good involved in releasing the information.
Clear federal information availability guidelines would probably be helpful in cases like this, where there’s an immense stake for everyone involved. Insofar as the information is public, then it should ideally be available for bulk public download and analysis, given that that arrangement doesn’t violate other concerns. Negotiating a new terrain of public data benefits and pervasive data will take measured dialog and analysis (as I wrote on Friday), so it’s heartening to see an agency engaged with the communities affected by their work. I wonder if there’s a place for the public access community within the debate around Medicare data, although my knowledge of health issues makes opinionated involvement impossible.
For other examples of similar officially sponsored public conversations about public data, see the USPTO’s Public PAIR discussions, the EPA’s recent webcast, Sen. Durbin’s broadband dialog, Rep. Honda’s new education legislation, the development of the original e-gov act (partially done online), and the Open House Project.
