NEWS:

• A new paper on the UK's open government data policies looks into ways that open data can be monetized and recommends an National Data Strategy. Groups have weighed in questioning the paper's focus on economic growth at the expense of transparency.  (Tech President)
• The NRA PAC kept up a strong fundraising pace during the first quarter, pulling n more than $1.2 million. They have nearly $7 million cash on hand. (Roll Call)
• A day after asserting that his office is exempt from state public records laws Virginia Attorney General, and candidate for governor, Ken Cuccinelli is backing off the controversial statement. Staff attorneys had been claiming the exemption when they responded to public records requests and Cuccinelli has asked them to stop the practice. (Washington Post)
• K street isn't letting the string of scandals stinging the Obama administration, and sucking up lots of oxygen in Congress, get in the way of their priorities. Lobbyists are still working on issues like the farm bill, immigration, and the internet sales tax. (The Hill)
• A new database put together by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune tracks travel by Members of Congress during 2012. While Afghanistan was the most popular destination, members also spent a lot of time in Spain and France, tending to take a few extra days in those more scenic locales. (Washington Post)
• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is suing the IRS over the agencies internal rules on reviewing 501(c)(4)'s for nonprofit status. The suit would force the IRS to bring its rules in line with federal law that says 501(c)(4)'s need to be exclusively "social welfare" organizations. (POLITICO)

NEWS:

• Former New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg (R) locked down a gig in the private sector. He will serve as CEO of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a major Wall Street trade group. (The Hill)
• Florida released a new smart phone app to coincide with the current session of its legislature. The app, which has been downloaded nearly 3,500 times, allows users to find and share bill summaries, meeting notices, information about their legislators, and more. (Government Technology)
• Former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer (D) is rumored to be considering a Senate run, but he hasn't let that stop him from taking a new job in the mining industry. Schweitzer is going to chair the board of the Stillwater Mining Company. He was first elected to Stillwater's board only three weeks ago. (Washington Post)
• In an effort to investigate information leaks about North Korea the Justice Department delved deeply into the life of Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen. The DoJ obtained his telephone records, tracked his movements through State Department security badge records, obtained a search warrant for his personal email account. (Washington Post)
• An investigation of subsidies given by the DC government to property developments over the past decade shows that more than a third of the $1.7 billion in breaks doled out by the city went to ten developers that donated huge amounts of campaign cash during the period. (WAMU)
• Russia is stepping back from it's 2012 "letter of intent" to join the Open Government Partnership, instead saying that it will pursue open government "on its own terms". Russia's questionable record on corruption, press freedom, and more had made its interest in the OGP slightly quizzical to begin with. (Open Government Partnership)
• State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company is officially jumping into the political arena with a new PAC. While the company has a long history of giving from it's employees, it had previously been one of only nine companies in the Fortune 75 without a federal PAC.(Roll Call)

Today, the White House is issuing a new Executive Order on Open Data -- one that is significantly different from the open data policies that have come before it -- reflecting Sunlight's persistent call for stronger public listings of agency data, and demonstrating a new path forward for governments committing to open data.

This Executive Order and the new policies that accompany it cover a lot of ground, building public reporting systems, adding new goals, creating new avenues for public participation, and laying out new principles for openness, much of which can be found in Sunlight's extensive Open Data Policy Guidelines, and the work of our friends and allies.

Most importantly, though, the new policies take on one of the most important, trickiest questions that these policies face -- how can we reset the default to openness when there is so much data? How can we take on managing and releasing all the government's data, or as much as possible, without negotiating over every dataset the government has?

NEWS:

• It's official, reported lobbying by firms dedicated to the task was down almost 4% during the first quarter of 2013. Overall, lobbying appears to be down slightly more than 1% over the fourth quarter of 2012. (Roll Call)
• There has always been a healthy traffic flow between high level Washington operatives and high paying jobs on Wall Street, but recently volume has picked up significantly. Major banks including Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, and more are turning to Washington for talent, reversing a trend that often saw policy makers looking to Wall Street for economic understanding. (POLITICO)
• There is a progressive revolt being staged against Facebook. A number of liberal groups are upset with the way that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's political group, FWD.us, is approaching the immigration debate and are pulling their ads from Facebook to show their disapproval. (Tech President)

NEWS:

• Now that Mark "I'm back!" Sanford has revived his political career all eyes are likely to turn to the race in Massachusetts to fill John Kerry's seat. After early polls suggest that the young GOP candidate may be competitive against the Democratic nominee Karl Rove's American Crossroads is looking to spend money on the race. It remains to be seen if other outside groups will join them. (The Hill)
• The insurance industry is lobbying hard for the federal government to approve more disaster aid for states that boost their building codes. The BuildStrong Coalition hopes that Congress will pass legislation before the summer storm season begins. (The Hill)
• Support from Washington, DC based groups wasn't enough to push Elizabeth "I lost to that guy?!" Colbert Busch over the finish line and into the House of Representatives. Despite this outside spending advantage, Colbert Busch was thoroughly trounced by her deeply flawed opponent Mark Sanford. (Public Integrity)

NEWS:

• The Information Technology Industry Council just picked up two high profile members. Samsung and Facebook join Apple, Google, Microsoft and more as members of the group, which will likely lobby on privacy, cybersecurity, and more for the companies. (The Hill)
• Lobbyists have been deregistering in waves over the past couple of years and there are a number of reasons why. Planning, PR, grassroots lobbying, and buying TV ads have all become more common place and don't have to be reported. Meanwhile, the Obama administration's open disdain for lobbyists has driven some more into the shadows.  (NPR)
• Lobbyists like to build up their contributions to help build their relationships with members of Congress. The trend is apparent with a number of freshman and their lobbyist bank-rollers. (Roll Call)

NEWS:

• Jonathan Soros, son of famous financier George Soros, spread his political money around throughout 2012 and early 2013. He gave to young House democrats, poured money into his own hybrid PAC, and supported New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's push for public financing of campaigns. (Roll Call)
• A new project from Freedom House and the International Center for Journalists is drawing attention to the continued violence against journalists in Mexico. The crowdsourced mapping project offers a safe and anonymous way to report attacks against journalists  bloggers, and others. (Tech President)
• What is Open Data? Palo Alto, CA CIO Jonathan Reichental attempted to outline some of his central ideas at an event late last week, covering topics like machine readability and accountability. (Government Technology)
• Despite a recent GAO Report that lacked any strong conclusions about the effect of the political intelligence industry, the practice is making news in Washington. A small Washington firm, Height Securities, is under scrutiny for an alert it sent out to clients on April first about a coming government decision related to medicare. (Washington Post)
• The sequestration is having an impact on the Library of Congress' efforts to digitize millions of books, images, maps, and more. (New York Times)
• Members of Congress normally deal with some strong disclosure rules related to gifts that they receive, but they're allowed to get waivers for special occaisions. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) recently made use of the exemption when celebrating his wedding. (Roll Call)

NEWS ROUNDUP:

• President Obama is notable for his sports watching habits and recently influencers may be taking those predilections into account. Media strategists are offering clients who are looking to target White House officials ESPN as a prime spot for their advertising dollars. (POLITICO)
• After months of speculation President Obama tapped Chicago business baron and major campaign supporter Penny Pritzker to serve as the next secretary of commerce. Pritzker, who is worth north of $1 billion, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for the President's campaigns. (NPR)
• President Obama's FCC nominee is hearing some criticism from Senators over his past life as a cable and wireless company wireless and blog posts suggesting urging broad regulation in exchange for allowing the, failed, AT&T + T-Mobile merger to proceed. (The Hill)
• The White House released the first version of its We The People API to the public earlier this week. Every petition that garners more than 15o signatures will have its data made available in read-only format. Meanwhile, several interesting projects using We The People data emerged from the same hackathon that launched the API. (Fedscoop, Fedscoop)
• Florida passed the first major changes to its state ethics laws in nearly three decades this week. The state also passed new campaign finance regulations. Both moves can be seen as responses to the Sunshine State's low grades on the State Integrity Investigation. (Public Integrity)
• There are, hopefully, only a few more days of headlines from the wacky race to fill an empty South Carolina House seat. Yesterday held more good news for Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who is the beneficiary of more than $100,000 in late ad spending from the House Majority PAC. The PAC has now spent roughly $400,000 on the race. (Roll Call)
• Meanwhile, the newly minted Republican candidate for the open Massachusetts Senate seat has reaffirmed his opposition to "the peoples pledge" which aims to curb the influence of third party spending. Despite signing the pledge, and asking nicely for him to stop, Democratic candidate Ed Markey was the unwanted beneficiary of major outside outlays by a billionaire environmentalist. (Washington Post)

NEWS ROUNDUP:

• USAID is releasing a number of new datasets as well as usaid.gov/developer which will host APIs and datasets. (Fedscoop)
• Lobbyists and corporate interests, including AT&T and Amway, have spent more than $7.5 million supporting the Bush presidential library and other George W. Bush initiatives since the former president left office. (The Hill)
• Ed Markey won the primary to occupy the Democratic line in the upcoming Massachusetts special election to replace John Kerry in the Senate. He had some unwanted outside help from billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer, who spent big to attack his main competition's support of the Keystone XL pipeline. (Washington Post)
• Despite overwhelming public support for a least a little new gun regulation, the NRA and it's money still hold enough power in Washington to effectively block action. (Public Integrity)
• FWD.us, Mark Zuckerberg's foray into politics, has yet to disclose how much money it has raised or where it's funds have come from. FWD.us is registered as a 501(c)(4) and might never have to divulge it's donors, although many big names have publicly backed the group. (K Street Cafe)
• San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is keeping his foot on the technology and open government pedal. In addition to naming a new CIO, Lee signed open legislation that codifies the duties assigned to the city's future Chief Data Officer and updates San Francisco's existing open data law. (Government Technology)
• Opinion: Rich Americans and corporate interests are able to exert outsized control on the political process. New legislation could help fix this problem by amplifying the power of small political donations. (POLITICO)

“Guess Who’s Coming to TCamp” is a mini-series we started last year to introduce some of the faces you'll see at TransparencyCamp. We're now in the homestretch before TCamp 2013, and are highlighting some more international guests and TransparencyCamp scholars joining us in Washington, DC on May 4 and 5.

For the last two years, we invited a number of advocates, journalists, policy makers, developers and others from all over the world to join us for TCamp and a series of informal meetings in the days before TransparencyCamp. This year, we opened up the process for participants outside the U.S. and invited people to join us through an online application process. We had an overwhelming response to the program with over 400 applicants. Thanks to our generous funders, we will welcome 23 people from a wide range of countries. Here`s our map:

Last week we brought you Oluseun Onigbinde from Nigeria, Juha Yrjola from Finland and Pamela Mutale Kapekele from Zambia. Today we'll learn a little bit about Fabrizio Alfredo Scrollini Mendez from the UK (via South America), Amira Khalil from Egypt, Bibhusan Bista from Nepal, Thejesh Gangaiah Nagarathna from India, and Vadym Hudyma from Ukraine.