I just discovered DARPA's Policy Analysis Market project.  The idea has me wondering what the place is for market based deliberations solutions, and when it's appropriate to give actors a self-incentive that isn't already inherent to a situation. 

There's a strong argument to be made for the predictive power of markets, and their stabilizing incentive structures, but their application beyond economics hasn't really been worked out yet.  Some examples of market-like political models include Fantasy Congress, and National Journal's Political Stock Exchange.

When success isn't able to be neatly defined as profit (as in financial markets), and when motivators and strategies are as complex as they are in a legislature, sometimes, paradoxically, it's profitable to operate at a loss.  Indeed, one could suggest that all non-profits are the pure form of incentives being isolated from broader incentive structures.

(hat tip to this tweet from "hytmal"; my initial response is here)

This is very cool. Our friends at VoterWatch have just launched a new 'Transparency Recap' -- a regularly updated overview of what bloggers are saying about government transparency and accountability. In their first roundup, VoterWatch highlights Sunlight's latest project, PublicMarkup.org (thanks!), a post from Free Government Information on a report about the National Archives' plan to provide online access to the Founding Fathers papers, All Things Whistleblower's reporting on the raid on the Office of the Special Counsel and on the home of Special Counsel Scott Bloch and the soft launch of the Center for Responsive Politics' newly redesigned OpenSecrets.org site.

We love roundups like this for keeping updated on the news that matters the most. Make sure to add VoterWatch to your feeds!

Now boarding, El Al nonstop flight to Israel. Please make sure your suitcases of money are properly secured in the Prime Minister's house. William Jefferson eat your heart out. An investigation into corruption in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office led to a search of Olmert's house where suitcases of money were found. The suitcases, containing hundreds of thousands in American dollars (I know what you're thinking, American dollars, aren't they worthless now), came from New York businessman Morris Talansky, referred to in coded transmissions as "the Laundry Man." Olmert denies any wrong doing, claiming that the money was for campaign purposes. Judah Grunstein at World Politics Review makes about the only observation one can:

I don't know a whole lot about Israeli campaign finance laws, but I imagine that suitcases full of cash that go undeclared until a police raid on your home probably violate them.

Back here in the states, the Department of Justice opened a new investigation into the possible misuse of congressional staff by two offices. Reps. Jane Harman and Neil Abercrombie were accused of using congressional staff to do campaign work by a former staffer who recently plead guilty to fraud charges. It is a violation of House rules for congressional staff to do campaign work unless it is on their own time. This may also violate federal law statutes regarding the solicitation of political contributions from employees.

Both Harman and Abercrombie denied using staff for campaign work. It should also be noted that these violations rarely go anywhere. If anything, members get a slap on the wrist, which in congressional terms is a politely worded letter that stops short of admonishment. The House Ethics Committee should investigate this alleged misuse of campaign staff. They did recently when Rep. John Conyers was alleged to have forced a staffer to do campaign work and they should do so again. I'm not holding my breath though. (Sigh.)

This afternoon I attended a talk by Aneesh Chopra, the Secretary of Technology for Virginia, hosted by New Media Strategies.

Chopra described his rather unusual job, a sort of newly styled state-CIO position, and gave us his vision for government and the development of the surrounding areas in the process.

Chopra began by listing the three priorities in his job as a cabinet member under the Governor. He sees his job in thirds. The first third deals with tradition IT manangement (are the servers working). The second third is his role as emissary and cheerleader for technology in government, soliciting, recognizing, and fostering creative new ideas, like combining forms to orient agency workflow toward a citizen-centric model. In his description of this aspect of his work, Chopra really shined, probably a sign of someone engaged in something new and constructive, full of ideas, and seeing potential everywhere he looked. He said "just scratching the surface" and "really simple things" repeatedly, more signs of someone enchanted by the possibilities of technology, and in the right position to make things happen. About including the public in his work, he said:

We have failed to tap the hidden talent of the uncredentialed.

I've tried to say this before in other ways--distributed expertise is disconnected from policy creation, etc--but his formulation captures the real potential for transparent and receptive institutions. Chopra sees analysis from bloggers as having huge potential for stimulating reform (and should check out the Open House Project), and, as I often do, bemoans the focus on the political and wonders about people's capacity to add to substantive policy debate and deliberation. His plan to integrate public policy ideas amounts to a small e-suggestions box for now, but Chopra is certainly deeply involved in the practical fight of how to make Virginia's government function more effectively though technology.

He's not just trying to get the government running smoothly, though. Chopra sees the development of the IT sector of our area's economy as the third major goal in his work, and has grand ideas to test about how young people given a real chance and a computer might find their way into the new tech economy.

Virginians are lucky to have such a proactive visionary leading their tecnological development.

Every week I climb into the depths of the local political blogosphere to find the Sunlight. I use this series to highlight local blogs that do a great job of covering local, state, and Congressional political news. This week I have highlights from Hawaii, New York, Tennessee, New Hampshire, and Florida.

Last week I participated in a panel at the Center for Global Development with Scott McNealy, Chairman of Sun Microsystems. Dave Witzel, a visiting senior program associate at CGD and I shared the Q and A session with McNealy, and while the three of us approach the issue of transparency from very different perspectives, there was no disagreement about the answer to the basic question -- whether sharing and openness is a good thing, does it really matter?

The obvious answer was "yes." McNealy articulated a whole host of reasons why it matters, not only to his company, but also for the rest of the world.  Dave and I amplified his core thoughts. But for the most part the audience, made up of people from international agencies, foundations, non-profits, think tanks, consulting firms, academia, and publishing, appeared a bit dubious, or perhaps, it was just the first time that they had been exposed to the notion of what sharing and openness means in the 21st century. There is alot of education to be done.

Dave has a detailed write up about the event here.

We've written fairly often about unbelievable situation over the Federal Election Commission. Always regarded as a toothless watchdog even in the best of days, since there's been a partisan stalemate over new appointments, it's been totally neutered. 

Now, Paul Kiel reports that the Bush Administration has offered a so-called compromise. The most controverisal nominee -- Spakovsky --  remains a nominee, and an administration spokesperson told the The New York Times that they would accept a separate vote on him. In the meantime, the administration has submitted a new nominee to replace FEC Chair David Mason, one of the two setting commissioners.

Cory sez:

My latest column in Locus Magazine, "Think Like a Dandelion," came out of a talk I had with Neil Gaiman about the bio-economics of giving stuff away for free. Mammals worry about what happens to each and every one of their offspring, but dandelions only care that every crack in every sidewalk has dandelions growing out of it. The former is a good strategy for situations in which reproduction is expensive, but the latter works best when reproduction is practically free -- as on the Internet. 

But the disposition of each — or even most — of the seeds aren't the important thing, from a dandelion's point of view. The important thing is that every spring, every crack in every pavement is filled with dandelions. The dandelion doesn't want to nurse a single precious copy of itself in the hopes that it will leave the nest and carefully navigate its way to the optimum growing environment, there to perpetuate the line. The dandelion just wants to be sure that every single opportunity for reproduction is exploited!

Think about government data in just that way.

The Politico published a pretty interesting analysis that used data from the Center for Responsive Politics to show how green energy interests are upping in pretty dramatic ways the amount of money they spend lobbying Congress. Despite these large increases, however, they remain vastly over spent by the oil and gas and coal mining industries. Think of it as the arms race applied to the world of money and politics.

The alternative energy industry has increased their lobbying outlays eightfold over the past ten years, going from $2 million to almost $16 million. For instance, the American Wind Energy Association spent over $815,000 on lobbying efforts, and the National Biodiesel Board spent more than $1,235,000.

In the month since PublicMarkup.org launched, we've gotten 121 comments on our draft reform legislation, the Transparency in Government Act of 2008. The media and blog coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable, but not without a healthy dose of skepticism.

The main questions we've faced attempt to locate the bill within a traditional reform process: Who will sponsor it? When will it pass? What are its chances?

As I wrote when we started encountering these hesitations,

As it stands now, though, we're happy to not have all the answers about where the bill is going. Just like legislation itself, we're not pretending to know the best strategy for the bill, and we recognize that best ideas will be the ones that can benefit from a large community of experts and stakeholders.

Now that we've gotten some real feedback about the bill's provisions, we can make some decisions about how to advocate for the package's implementation. (more)

After previewing it first, I attended last Wednesday’s Hearing by the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee about “Secret Law and the Threat to Democratic and Accountable Government.”

For fuller coverage, see FireDogLake, the Guardian, ACS Blog, or the statements and testimony from the hearing (set off on the upper right).

While my coverage will be far from complete, I find the process of taking and then preparing my notes from committee hearings to be a great way to digest what was presented, and to start to work through some of the issues that relate to open government and accountability, which lie at the heart of this hearing. (more)

LegiStorm, the Web site that shares Sunlight's goals of making Congress as transparent as possible, via their blog reports on how Roll Call used LegiStorm's congressional data to show how Christopher Riley, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, violated House rules by exceeding the amount of side income a staff member can make. Riley was being paid by his bosses' reelection campaign, as well as receiving a congressional salary. As Deal's chief of staff, Deal earned a large enough salary that qualified him as a "senior staffer." House rules limit such staffers to $25,000 in outside income annually. Riley's income had greatly exceeded this amount, LegiStrom's data revealed. In response to Roll Call's inquiries, he returned $90,000 to Deal's campaign. Deal said he was unaware of the House rule limiting outside income.

Earlier this week, Roll Call published a story that used LegiStorm's financial disclosures to reveal a potential conflict of interest with an energy business owned by Rep. Steve Pearce. The paper reported that Pearce sold his assets of his oil services company for $12 million to an energy company that had testified before a panel he co-chaired. Pearce's personal financial disclosure listed the value of the company at $1 million to $5 million.

I have highlights this week from Delaware, North Dakota, New York and Earmark Corner.

It's one thing when the information about who your neighbors give campaign contributions to is public, but it's quite something else to know what every citizen earned and what they paid in taxes. Don't panic it hasn't happened here in the U.S. but the Italian government published it all. And yup, the government's web site was taken down after a formal complaint from the country's privacy watchdog.

The release of the information was one of the last acts of the outgoing centre-left government and has shocked many tax-shy Italians. . . . But it was also hugely popular, and within hours the site was overwhelmed and impossible to access.

The finance ministry described the move as a bid to improve transparency.

The transparency ploy has generally been regarded as an end of term sour grapes move.

In its May issue, Conde Nast's Portfolio.com has an unbelievable story about continued financial bumbling by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). Despite spending tens of billions of dollars over the past four years to upgrade its accounting software, the military's business systems are as unreliable as ever. DoD's systems are "so obsolete and error prone" that it doesn't know where large chunks of its $439.3 billion (2007) annual basic budget goes. And that figure doesn't include the vast sums being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to the report, the agency's accounting is so dysfunctional it's impossible for DoD to comply with an 18-year-old requirement by Congress to audit its books. What results is a system that once payments are authorized and money is transferred, there is no reliable way to trace where it ends up. The Portfolio.com article echoes a February article by The (Raleigh, N.C.) News & Observer that profiled DoD's "labyrinth of arcane and incompatible accounting systems." The News & Observer notes that the accounting problems are not new, and quotes Winslow Wheeler, a project director at the Center for Defense Information, as saying if DoD were a public company, "...it would have gone belly up before World War II."