Information about who is trying to influence our government should be available to the public with as few restrictions as possible. At a minimum, empowering the public to know about who has access to power (and how they try to influence that power) should include details about who lobbies, who is being lobbied, and what is being lobbied about.

The state of municipal lobbying disclosure varies greatly from one town/city/county to the next, with some municipalities disclosing detailed, structured data about lobbying activity online and others continuing to wrangle with paper and file folders. As we explore the role that open data plays in a broader municipal context, we decided to take a closer look at lobbying data, in particular, to see not just what a complete suite of our ideal open lobbying dataset would include, but to examine the political levers that affect the openness of this data and the kinds of accountability and context that can result from its release.

To this end, we've created a Municipal Lobbying Data Guidebook to help local policymakers and advocates create stronger lobbying disclosure. In this guide, we've attempted to answer several questions we feel are important to creating a roadmap to meaningful municipal lobbying disclosure. This is not meant to be the complete source for recommendations related to municipal lobbying data or lobbying reform. Rather, this is an exploration of what is possible, with ideas for how to make possibilities into realities.

Lobbying disclosure should provide a meaningful check -- and balance -- on the world of influence. To do that, the transparency it creates must be proportional to the influence that it seeks to uncover, with attention paid to the completeness, timeliness, and openness of the information that is ultimately disclosed.

This Guidebook is only a first step in articulating and exploring these issues and will feed into our analysis and review of municipal lobbying data and related disclosure initiatives. As we learn more (and hear from you), we plan to refine this guide and to promote best practices.

We welcome your feedback.

City hall is a living metaphor for the way citizens and government exchange information. People visit their city hall to do everything from paying bills and signing marriage licenses to participating in city council meetings and registering businesses. Regardless of the political structure a municipal government might have or whether that government is a city, town, borough, or something else, the local seat of government is itself a hub of information. Understanding what goes on there is key to seeing how a municipality structures its data and shares information with the public -- and hints at what the future of these exchanges will look like as these governments incorporate more technology into their daily operations and services.

The city hall of Takoma Park, Maryland, is one particularly active hub of citizen and government exchange. Here, city hall houses not only the city manager, city council meeting rooms, and administrative units of the local government, but also the police department, computer labs, and various public recreational facilities and classes. (Yoga, anyone?) Although some of these offline operations and data holdings are in the process of transitioning online (especially when it comes to making public meetings more accessible), Takoma Park is a picture of a local government at the crossroads between the old vision of open government -- with its door literally open -- and the new, which calls for open data, open processes, and digital services in real time.

Suzanne Ludlow, Takoma Park’s city manager sums it up in the video below: “How do you take a town that’s doing well, but then do the next step?”

As we continue our work on local open data, we wonder: How do you interact with your local government? Let us know by sharing a picture of your city hall on Twitter with the hashtag #opencity!

What if the information that you usually have to “FOIA” or ask your government for under your state’s public records law was made “easily accessible on a single, centralized, searchable resource hub”? That’s the question Utah State Senator Diedre Henderson asked yesterday in a blog post introducing the work going into Utah’s first open data legislation.

Sunlight has been working along with Senator Henderson and a coalition of open government advocates, local technology experts, and others over the last month to help define the principles and important questions that this legislation will address. I’ve included the outlined principles below, but you can find the full narrative about them in Senator Henderson’s post here.

Looking over the approach the coalition decided to take, we are thrilled to see that Sunlight’s Open Data Policy Guidelines have played such a strong role in helping the coalition define the goals for their legislation and think broadly about the role of open data in state operations.

This bill comes at an interesting crossroads in Utah’s history: At the same time that the government has turned concentrated attention toward their web presence and data publishing, it has also acted antagonistically towards its public records law (known locally as "GRAMA"). In 2011, the state legislature came very close to rolling back the amount of information that lawmakers had to make public about their official communications and correspondence, prompting public outcry. Although the proposed changes were ultimately defeated, it was an eye-opening experience for members of government and the public alike. As part of the reconciliation process, a working group of legislators, staff, open software experts, and representatives of the media and public conducted a series of studies to better understand the needs and challenges faced by all parties in seeking (and sharing) public information, with a particular eye toward electronic disclosure.

It’s a great sign that former members of this working group are joining together as part of the open data bill drafting process -- and that this process is being made open to the public. Utahns who are interested in getting involved should be sure to take up the invitation to share your thoughts and contribute. (More info here.)

Here are the foundational principles informing the open data bill that Senator Henderson listed in her blogpost:

1. Establish open formats

• Define and standardize open formats for government data
• Require any public information to be posted on the Internet
• Remove restrictions on reuse of information
• Appropriately safeguard sensitive information (as defined by GRAMA)
• Require exemptions to open data policy to be balance-tested against the public interest (as currently defined by GRAMA)

2. Ensure open access

• Create permanent, lasting access to government data
• Publish bulk data
• Create public APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for accessing information
• Remove restrictions for accessing government information

3. Implement thoughtful systems

• Create processes to ensure data quality
• Create a public, comprehensive list of all information holdings
• Define process for continuous publication and updates to data
• Create new oversight authority to review implementation of the requirements

4. Require the publishing of metadata or other documentation

• Utilize best practice considerations in crafting the plan for implementation of the bill itself and all its provisions
• Set appropriately ambitious timelines for implementation
• Ensure sufficient funding for implementation
• Empower the creation of binding rules to implement the new policy
• Incorporate public perspectives into policy implementation
• Define process for future review for potential changes to this policy or law

5. Mandate the disclosure of specific new information (as defined by GRAMA)

• Identify public data not currently made available online
• Define and implement process for making additional public data available
• Define timeline and benchmarks for accountability
• Define best practices for implementation of e-filing processes

6. Encourage accountability

• Recognize existing best practices of accountability, efficiency and openness
• Review best practices and encourage broader implementation
• Invite civic engagement
• Build on existing public accountability policies to best utilize existing information hubs
• Define and implement structural data standards and format review

If you caught yesterday's announcement, you may have noticed a new major focus for the Sunlight Foundation: local government transparency. Broadening our focus to include municipal transparency is both a natural extension of our work and a unique opportunity to explore and deepen our general understanding of the ways in which individuals and governments need, produce, and exchange information. Over the past few years, we’ve occasionally addressed local issues, but we have never made a concerted effort to explore what openness at the local level really means or the implications such work could have for transparency in national and international contexts.

Municipalities are important because, in a sense, people live more of their lives in cities than in countries. We may call our nation state “home” when we need to describe the broadest context of where we’re from, but our days and nights are spent working and living and sleeping in the reality of cities and towns. Cities and towns plow and mend the roads that line our commutes, zone and police our neighborhoods, grant permits to our parades, and create and clean our public parks. Whether or not you have a family or a business or a bike, the decisions made by your local government affect the fabric of the world you physically live in.

This remains true, even when our attention is directed elsewhere: Much of our political activism and ideological identity are focused on national issues. Certainly, for Americans, our sense of being a citizen is tangled in our sense of the national-level issues that often dominate our public consciousness - our understanding of which freedoms we fight for, which party we vote for, and the four year stretch between the only ballot box we think we’re supposed to care about.

To be clear, the federal government has a profound impact on our lives and is the primary expression of the sovereignty of a people. But to ignore the role played by local government would be to miss out on the richness of what local governments create for us.

Our local governments aren't just last-stop service providers for our federal government. They’re the foundation upon which all political representation and participation is built. Cities and other local governments present an unparalleled opportunity for us as citizens to see our needs, frustrations, and ideas recognized and acted upon, our values made visible, and our interests reflected in the society that surrounds us. Our cities are essential drivers of commerce and innovation. Our towns are critical to our understanding of interdependence, community, and history. Municipalities are the heart of our culture and our society, and there is no reason why they should not also be at the heart of our vision for open government.

In all of Sunlight’s work, we try to balance contributing new ideas and solutions to important problems while also supporting and learning from the great work being done by our peers and mentors. As we expand our scope to local issues, we’re looking forward to learning from efforts we already know about, such as the work done by our friends at Code for America, and the work of new allies we have yet to meet.

A snapshot of what you can expect from us: Over the next year, we're going to be exploring what the landscape of open data and open access to information looks like in America's cities and municipalities. In addition to ramping up our desk-based investigations, monitoring, and commentary, we're going to get creative, exploring bigger questions about municipal government and the impact of local culture through a variety of media and in-person visits. And as we start to pursue this work, we’re looking forward to working with and hearing from you.