With much of the Middle East a cauldron, seemingly stable allies in the region can get free passes from Washington. Consider longtime U.S. ally Jordan.

The Hashemite Kingdom blocked access to perhaps as many as 300 "unregistered" media websites without any public comment from Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who has more pressing human rights issues: trying to prevent a "complete and total Syrian implosion."

To that end, the U.S. is weighing an extended stay for Patriot missile batteries and F-16 combat aircraft currently in Jordan for military exercises.

And that's not the only American assistance that the government of King Abdullah II is anticipating: there is a total $670 million in U.S. aid promised to Jordan this year, according to foreignassistance.gov. The greatest share, $310 million, goes to “peace and security” programs, most of which go to counter-terrorism efforts.

by Carrie Tian, policy intern

NEWS: 

• NY state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will require dark money disclosures by nonprofit organizations in the state. Any group that spends at least $10,000 to influence NY elections will need to disclose details of its activities, including electioneering at the federal, state, and local levels.  (Wall Street Journal)
• Scrutiny of the IRS continues, as a Treasury Department audit of the agency revealed exorbitant conference spending, including a single conference in 2010 that cost $4.1 million. The exact price of the conference is unknown because the IRS - which demands detailed financial records from taxpayers - did not require its management to track conference costs. (POLITICO)
• The police force of Boynton Beach, Fl., recently adopted the MyPD app, a nationwide app that allows citizens to submit tips directly to their police department and stay abreast of local safety updates. The Boynton Beach PD also polled its Facebook followers about where to install additional officers and maintains active accounts on Youtube, Twitter, and Pinterest. (Government Technology)
• Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius came under fire for making calls  to companies regulated by HHS, including Johnson & Johnson and Kaiser, asking for their support of Enroll America under Obamacare. Sebelius responded that she was following the legally-authorized precedent of establishing public-private partnerships. (ThinkProgress)
• Majority Leader Eric Cantor unveiled cosponsor.gov, a site that allows individual citizens to indicate their support for pieces of legislation introduced by sitting members of Congress. The site also allows users to track legislation as it moves through the House. (National Review)
• Another newly-launched site is performance.gov, which catalogs federal agencies and seeks to centralize commonly-sought information about each agency, including budget accounts and descriptions of products and services. (Fierce Government)
• Newly-released records indicate that Mayor William Lantigua of Lawrence, MA, spent over $30,000 of taxpayer money to fight the release of records related to legal bills and rental payments. Though Lantigua claims the records contained "privileged" information, FOIA labels them as public documents. (The Valley Patriot)
• As the AP demands lists of the email addresses that political appointees use in official capacities, the debate about secret email addresses continues, over whether they are necessary to prevent officials from being inundated in spam, or whether they make record-keeping unnecessarily arduous and opaque. (Washington Post)

On May 13, I wrote up an analysis of campaign finance data that asked “Did almost 600 donors break campaign finance law in 2012?” Truth is, I wasn’t sure. The bulk data made it appear that way, but as I noted at the outset, “our most troubling finding may be just how difficult it is determine with legal certainty exactly how many campaign scofflaws there are, or how much over the limit they gave.”

In the past week, I have received one e-mail and one letter proving that point. Both came from some rather prominent individuals.

First the e-mail, which was sent on behalf of Charles G. Koch: “The analysis asserts that Charles Koch exceeded the 2011-2012 biennial overall contribution limits and the PAC and party contribution limits,” wrote Missy Cohlmia, Director, Corporate Communication, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC. “We have checked our records at length and request that Sunlight Foundation take Mr. Koch off this list.”

This past weekend, over 11,000 individuals connected under the helm of the National Day of Civic Hacking (NDoCH) -- a series of local #HackForChange hackathons, unconferences, and meeting of the minds that engaged local communities with open data, code, and tech.

From what we can tell, the NDoCH events were magnetic, drawing together participation from local (and traveling) developers, government officials (including a few mayors!), community leaders, and even 21 federal agencies. The vibe of this national organization not only encouraged a sort of: "If you can't hack with the city you reside in, hack with the one you're physically located in," but also further encouraged cross-pollination of civic applications from community to community (For more highlights from the national scene, check out this Storify feed.)

Although Sunlight wasn’t able to attend every one of the 95 events held this past weekend, the events we did attend taught us quite a bit. Below, we’ve rounded up our reflections, recaps, and geeky highlights from the festivities in Baltimore, DC, Montgomery County, North Carolina, and Western Massachusetts.

by Carrie Tian, policy intern

NEWS: 

• State agencies across the nation are having discussions about reducing public access to personal information about politicians. In recent months, families of local leaders have been attacked in their homes. (Government Technology)
• France is revising its anti-piracy law, removing Internet cut-offs as the most severe punishment, and considering alternative recommendations, such as a 1% tax on all devices with Internet capabilities. (Ars Technica)
• As states prepare for the launch of their health exchanges under the ACA, they are hindered by the complexities of the new federal data hub, which would allow citizens to put in their personal information and receive an estimate of their healthcare subsidies. The federal data hub will ultimately need to interact with such disparate agencies as the IRS and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service. (Government Technology)
• New legislation from Singapore requires that heavily-trafficked internet news sources apply for state licenses, which include the condition that the sites remove prohibited content within 24 hours of government notification. (Tech President)
• As the court-martial of Bradley Manning - who released hundreds of thousands of military documents to Wikileaks - begins, the conversation continues to revolve around casting Manning as a whistle-blower or an abetter of Al-Qaeda. (New York Times)
• The Department of Health and Human Services has released its 2011 Medicare data for the pricing of 30 common procedures, further revealing the large pricing spread even within the same regions. (Politico)
• Mainstream social media sites, such as Youtube and Flickr, allow politicians to connect directly with their constituents, but this new access jeopardizes the existence of critical political reporting. (Washington Post)

As part of our initiative around procurement, we've been meeting with several experts, inside and outside the government, to get a broad perspective on contracting in the federal government. Many agree that federal procurement suffers from problems, whether it's over-budget, over-time contracts, the limited pool of government contractors, or the over-reliance of government on contractors to perform core governmental functions. What is the real source of these problems and how can we overcome them? Well the answer is pretty complicated, but over the last several weeks, the picture is coming into focus. Across all of these conversations we've had, there are several themes that have consistently stood out. Since we're making an effort to blog about our work as we go, I wanted to step back and summarize what we've learned. While there will be a host of problems specific to one agency or type of procurement, these themes seem to apply across the government, and aren't necessarily as earth-shattering as you might think.

Last summer, Sunlight released a series of Open Data Guidelines in reaction to a surge of municipal open data policy making. In anticipation of revamping these policies this summer (to add fresh context, ideas, and exemplary language) and in reaction to a recent surge in open data policy collaboration as evidenced by the interactive Project Open Data and the newly public (beta) Open Data Stack Exchange (or maybe more accurately in reaction to the Meta Open Data Stack Exchange...), we wanted to provide a roadmap to the world open data resources and recommendations that are available to put these resources in context of their evolution over time–a guideline to Open Data Guidelines, if you will. The first step in navigating the open data guidelines out there is to examine the chronology of how they surfaced.

The timeline below provides a landscape of current open data policy guidelines, guidance, and principles that exist and showcases the chronology in which they have manifested, each guideline often directly building off of (or crafted in reaction to) its predecessor. Looking at these guidelines in context exposes the pragmatic and technical evolutions in thought that have occurred under the banner of open data pursuit: from the foundational drive to define what information is legally available (through FOIA and other public records laws) to the trailblazing concept of proactive disclosure (where "public" access means "online" access) to establishing the qualities that make data more accessible and usable (emphasizing structured, bulk data, unique IDs, and APIs). The dialogue for discussing open data policy guidelines has itself evolved from the gathering of smaller open government groups of: Open House Project, Open Government Working Group, the Open Government Initiative, and early collaborative efforts such as the Open Gov Handbook, to the editable Project Open Data and the Q&A Open Data Stack Exchange.

Instead of scheduling brunch plans or enjoying a lazy afternoon this weekend, close to 40 women took over the Sunlight conference room this past Saturday for an all-female software training program conducted by GeekChic. Here at Sunlight, we were happy to host the training and help cultivate more developers in the DC community with the hopes of increasing awareness of open data and turning these future developers on to our APIs and databases.

While many our developer colleagues were participating in the National Day of Civic Hacking, a number of us were here writing our first lines of code. In the seven-hour training intensive, we covered the basics of command line, learned to write and execute code in Python, got our style on with some basic CSS and HTML training as well as created our first web app on Django. (Whew, that was exhausting just recounting what we did.) Six Sunlighters, with a range of tech know how, participated in the training and here’s what we learned (and real life testimonials on why you shouldn’t be afraid to learn to code!). If you are interested in partnering with Sunlight to host technology workshops, please contact events@sunlightfoundation.com.

NEWS:

• After losing ally John Kyl (R-AZ) in last years election, the online poker lobby is looking for new Republican friends on the hill. Harry Reid is a big fan of internet poker, but the deck appears stacked against passage unless a non-Nevadan Republican joins the game. (The Hill)
• Over the past 16 years Thomas Donohue has turned the US Chamber of Commerce into a lobbying powerhouse, research organization, and supreme court advocacy group. He's also raised a ton of money and pulled the Chamber far into partisan territory. (New York Times)
• Marco Rubio is using his PAC to raise money for Chris Christie. Both men appear interested in a 2016 White House bid, but helping each other now might be the best for both short term as Christie (POLITICO)
• President Obama is heading to California to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, but he's also planning to fit in some fundraising time among important discussions with the Chinese leader. (The Hill)
• Sallie Mae shareholders rejected a proposal that would have boosted its voluntary lobbying disclosures and information about giving to trade associations. While the proposal did not pass, it did garner a significant amount of support. (POLITICO)
• The OMB released an important inventory of federal programs across 24 departments last week. The inventory, the first of its kind, lists over 1,600 programs. (Government Executive)
• Former Obama administration officials are starting to cash in on their former experience as the President faces some high profile decisions. Top aides, who face restrictions on their ability to directly lobby the administration, have landed in high profile gigs as consultants, speakers, and media advisers for firms working on hot button issues like Keystone XL. (Washington Post)

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.

Sharon Paley is the "chief operator" at gb.tc (formerly know as Greater Baltimore Tech Council.) Dedicated to helping improve her beloved hometown through innovation and technology, Sharon has been instrumental in building Hack Baltimore, a platform created by gb.tc and the City of Baltimore encouraging every citizen to develop innovative solutions for civic betterment. You can catch Sharon's podcasts and blog posts at gb.tc or follow her @sharon_paley.

I like to take this page from Vince Lombardi’s playbook:

“People who work together will win, where it be against complex football defenses or the problems of a modern society.”

What more modern way to tackle the problems of a society than the civic hackathon. They are great opportunities to learn about how our own government works, develop new tools that enable governments to work better, and make a difference in the community and world we live in.