Yesterday, the House of Representatives hosted its 2013 Legislative Data and Transparency Conference.  More than 100 people attended, with speakers from inside and outside government discussing how legislative information can be improved to meet the needs of internal and external uses. The wide-ranging conversation included discussions on improving current sources of information, bringing new information online, exploring different technologies, looking at the international scene, describing how data is being used by different stakeholders, and what appropriate preservation of data should look like.

The conference was streamed live, with a lively twitter discussion that has been archived by Rob Richards here (CSV). Archived video from the conference will be made available shortly, most likely here. Here's the agenda, speaker bios, and a link to the 2012 conference.

Hosted by the Committee on House Administration, this was the second year in a row that the House of Representatives has held this event. Considering the ongoing success of these conferences and its great usefulness to all the participants, we can only hope there will be another conference next year.

On Wednesday, legislation to bring federal spending information into the daylight was favorably reported by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The DATA Act, which would improve and expand public reporting of federal spending information, has lost a few of its bells and whistles since it passed the House last Congress, but likely  gained the ability to move in the Senate.

The House version, introduced by Reps. Darrell Issa and Elijah Cummings, now more closely mirrors a Senate counterpart introduced by Sens. Mark Warner and Bob Portman. This bi-partisan bi-cameral effort bodes well for its future.

As we've written before, only congressional pressure can drive real spending reforms, at least these days, and the mere threat of the DATA Act has encouraged the administration to start to pay lip service towards spending transparency. But it's not enough. Information on grants obligations is still unusable three years after we began highlighting its deficiencies, even with some congressional prodding. It's time to go to the next level.

The DATA Act will bring more datasets online, including actual spending information, so we can verify whether the reporting is accurate. It will require the use of consistent identifiers, so we can compare apples to apples. And it will empower the creation of standards so that everyone reports what they've got,  and we're all on the same page.

While the legislation is not a panacea, it goes a long way towards empowering all of us to truly follow the money, including many government officials who are often left in the dark. It's probably the biggest bite of the apple we can hope for at the moment, while laying the groundwork for further improvements. Our friends at POGO have identified 10 questions that USASpending.gov cannot answer ... and we hope that the DATA Act will help the government finally get a passing grade.

As the legislation has previously passed the House, it seems likely to pass again, much to the House's credit. We can expect to see real fireworks in the Senate.

Legislation that would require virtually all agency reports to Congress be available online in one central location advanced out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee yesterday on a voice vote. The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act, originally sponsored by Rep. Mike Quigley and enjoying the bipartisan support of Committee Chairman Darrell Issa and ranking member Elijah Cummings, will need the sign-off of the Committee on House Administration before it can get a vote on the House floor. In March, 26 organizations wrote to the Oversight Committee to express their support for ACMRA.

The legislation, which garnered the approval of both committees last Congress but did not receive a vote last Congress before time ran out last session, would make agency reports to Congress more transparent. It directs agencies to give the Government Printing Office the reports they file with Congress (with appropriate redactions), and for GPO to make those reports available online in open formats for bulk download after a short time. GPO has expressed support for taking on this role. The legislation was tweaked slightly so that the repository will not include mention of reports whose very existence is classified.

Companion legislation was introduced last Congress by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman and ranking member Susan Collins as well as committee member Tom Coburn. It is hoped that current HSGAC Chairman Tom Carper and ranking member Tom Coburn, along with other senators, will re-introduce legislation in the Senate. Earlier this year, Senator Coburn attempted to attach a version of ACMRA as an amendment to the budget resolution.

The common-sense measure will make it easier for members of Congress, their staff, federal agencies, and the public to gain access to these reports that help reveal how the government functions.

The amended legislation is available here.

Eight groups, including the Sunlight Foundation, sent letters to the House and Senate, urging Members of Congress to adopt legislation closing down the loophole that allows so-called social welfare organizations to engage in political activities. The murky law was at the root of the controversies surrounding the IRS’s improper targeting of certain groups’ applications for 501(c)(4) status.

At congressional hearings this week, many members of the Senate Finance Committee and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee raised the issue of fixing the broken IRS rules that allow social welfare organizations to engage in substantial electioneering activities. Many noted that engaging in campaign activities is explicitly contrary to the law that says such organizations must engage “exclusively” in social welfare activities. Campaign activities are not “social welfare” activities.

If it results in a clarification of the law, the IRS debacle will have a silver lining. But there is still a great deal of resistance to efforts that would ensure that groups that engage in political activities disclose their donors. Chairman Issa of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee rejected the idea that it was appropriate for his committee to address the question of any possible fixes—begging the question: what happened to the “reform” part of his committee? And in the Washington Post today, Senator Mitch McConnell uses the IRS case as a twisted justification to endorse dark money in our elections. His sanctimonious criticism of transparency measures ignores Supreme Court precedent as well as decades of support (including his own) for disclosure as a narrowly tailored method to address political corruption.

(It’s also remarkably hypocritical that McConnell would use the 1958 Supreme Court decision in Alabama v. NAACP to justify his position. That case prohibited government mandated disclosure of membership lists--not campaign finance records--when, on balance, threats to the group’s first amendment rights were thought to outweigh the public’s interest in disclosure. McConnell was less than concerned about the NAACP precedent when, under his direction, he repeatedly blocked an electronic filing bill in the Senate by insisting on an amendment that would require membership organizations disclose their members’ names any time a group filed an ethics complaint against a sitting senator. Apparently McConnell has his own balancing test, heavily weighted towards his own interest as opposed to the public interest.)

Narrow changes to tax law would ensure that groups intending to impact our elections disclose their donors, while fully protecting the anonymous speech of organizations that are legitimately engaged in social welfare activities. Clarifying the laws would also decrease the likelihood of future instances of improper targeting by the IRS.

The influential Committee on House Administration released a letter yesterday that endorsed the principle that "the documents of our democracy should be available to all Americans electronically, in perpetuity, and for free." The letter, signed by every member of the committee, rejected a recommendation made in a flawed report issued by the National Academy of Public Administration, which had called for the Government Printing Office to consider charging "end uses" for online access to government documents made available through the online portal FDsys.

The Committee on House Administration oversees GPO, and the letter is a clear signal as to how GPO should proceed. The letter is also another example of the Committee's deepening emphasis on making the government transparent and accessible.

The NAPA report was requested by Congress as part of a long-range operational review of GPO. Unfortunately, despite dozens of interviews and a ten-month study, NAPA failed to contact key "end-users" who are responsible for republishing and widely disseminating public information, such as GovTrack.us, WashingtonWatch.com, the Sunlight Foundation, the Center for Effective Government, the Internet Archive, Public.Resource.Org, and the Legal Information Institute. These organizations are leaders in disseminating government-held information online to the public at no cost, and NAPA would have done well to learn from their expertise and see whether it could be applied to GPO.

Instead, NAPA's report misstated and omitted parts of the history regarding imposing fees on public access to electronic information. It omitted a discussion of how third parties, like the non-profits identified above, further GPO's mission to "produce, protect, preserve, and distribute documents of our democracy." It failed to examine how charging end users for electronic access would destroy the ability of non-profit organizations to obtain and re-transmit the information, thereby placing greater burdens on GPO to fill the gap and weakening public access to crucial information.

We applaud the Committee on House Administration's continued support for public access to governmental information. While it is unknown whether the letter has broader applicability to data being sold by GPO outside of FDsys, such as that listed here, it is important that information on FDsys remain available to the public at no cost, a position affirmed by the Committee.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.

Jason Hibbets is the project manager at Red Hat and lead administrator for opensource.com. He has been applying opensource principles in neighborhood organizations in Raleigh, NC  for several years, highlighting the importance of transparency, collaboration, and community building. Follow the rest of his thoughts at @jhibbets.

Have a great idea to improve your city? Want to flex your creative and/or techie muscles? Want to spend two days networking, collaborating and maybe win some cash?

CityCamp NC, an event to promote citizen participation and innovation, will be held on May 30-31 at the James B. Hunt Jr. Library on the NC State University Campus in Raleigh. CityCamp NC will be followed by a Nation Day of Civic Hacking event hosted by Raleigh’s Code for America Brigade on June 1. Alisha Green and Rebecca Williams from Sunlight’s Policy team will also be in attendance.

This year, CityCamp NC will award a top prize of $3000 plus a consulting session with Jason Caplain at Bull City Venture Partners to the winning team. A second and third team will be awarded prizes of $1000 and $500, respectively.

Photo credit: City of Raleigh, NC

The event is $5 for students and government employees (appropriate ID must be shown at the door) and $10 for all others.

Time is running out! For more information and to register, visit http://citycampnc.org.

Disclaimer: Sunlight Foundation is one of the sponsors for CityCamp NC 2013.

Interested in writing a guest blog for Sunlight? Email us at guestblog@sunlightfoundation.com