Last night the Sunlight Foundation's award-winning Sunlight Live platform covered the State of the Union with context and fact-checking from Sunlight's Reporting Group and teams from the Huffington Post, National Journal, CQ Roll Call and the Center for Public Integrity. It was an exciting evening and we're honored so many of you chose to join our coverage for Obama's speech, the Republican response and the Tea Party followup.

More than 10,000 people tuned in and, while at times we were nearly technically overwhelmed by the response, our talented Sunlight Labs team held us together. The engaged viewers left over 1,000 comments and we published more than a third of them to be answered by the reporters or shared with other visitors. Hundreds of folks camped out on the site hours before the speech, indicating their preference to watch on our channel. As best as we can measure, 2,308 tweets and 908 shares on Facebook sent fans to Sunlight Live.

Here are some excerpts from the various news coverage our Sunlight Live project received:

Roshan Nebhrajani from Medill's School of Journalism joined Sunlight in our office and reported on the experience:

A group of 14 reporters gathered at the Sunlight Foundation, all centrally connected by one crucial link — a heavy-duty extension cord — as they typed through dinner to provide interactive coverage of the address to nearly 2,000 viewers. [...] visitors to the Sunlight Foundation’s site engaged in online conversation. One said: “This is perfect. Like sitting in the room, watching with a bunch of smart, informed people.”

GOOD Magazine initially promoted the White House live-stream online but switched to support Sunlight Live after learning the extent of our coverage:

While we indeed support the government smartly using technological advancements to spread information, in this case, we're going to direct you away from the White House's stream and toward the Sunlight Foundation's live blog. Not only will Sunlight be streaming video of the address, reporters from CQ Roll Call, the National Journal, the Center for Public Integrity, and the Huffington Post will be on hand to fact-check and offer context as the president speaks. We can almost guarantee that the information provided will be more objective and less dry than what the White House is offering. Happy viewing.

Fast Company did a roundup of all the various ways to watch the State of the Union and highlighted the collaborative and real-time reporting during Sunlight Live:

Traditionally, we’ve had to wait for the networks’ post-game shows before anyone starts to dissect the accuracy of various statements made by the president or the opposition. But last night, the Sunlight Foundation—in partnership with The Huffington Post, National Journal, CQ Roll Call, and the Center for Public Integrity—posted real-time fact-checking during the course of the addresses.

MediaBistro has an article about the new dawn of real-time fact checking that points to the work of the Sunlight Foundation and the Sunlight Live event:

Gone are the days when political junkies would have to wait for a speech to be over before talking heads could endlessly parse each word. [...] with our incredible shrinking news cycle and the rise of participatory journalism, the approach only makes sense.

It was a great team effort at Sunlight and we loved working with our partners from the Center for Public Integrity, National Journal, CQ Roll Call and the Huffington Post. Thank you to everyone who helped make this Sunlight Live event a success and we hope you join us for future coverage.

Photo by Nicko Margolies

Tonight the Sunlight Foundation will cover President Obama's 2011 State of the Union using our award-winning Sunlight Live platform of real-time investigative reporting. We will provide real-time transparency of the annual State of the Union and make our analysis participatory in a way we couldn't have before the Web. We invite all citizens to join us and submit questions as we live-blog, fact-check on-the-fly and provide contextual analysis about the influences shaping President Obama's statements at the moment they are spoken.

The unified Sunlight Live page brings together the speech's live streaming video, contextual data, reporting and social media. Sunlight's Reporting Group is joined by The Huffington Post, National Journal, CQ Roll Call and the Center for Public Integrity. We believe this expanded and accomplished team will be the most comprehensive live coverage available with insight to the proposals, people and policies mentioned during the speech. The Sunlight Foundation is committed to sharing this platform and encourage others to embed it on their own sites.

The fun begins at 8:30 pm EST at http://www.sunlightlive.com.

We hope you join us.

This Sunshine Week was a particularly successful (and busy!) time for Sunlight. We helped usher in new transparency legislation, launched a nation-wide grassroots campaign, launched a new design contest, joint led a crowdsourced search for government data, met with editorial boards and more. No wonder we’re all exhausted this Friday afternoon.

Here’s a more granular look at what we accomplished this week:

For Sunlight’s Communications team, Sunshine Week began early, with extensive outreach to editorial boards, reporters and columnists. This strategy paid off, as Sunday’s kick off of Sunshine Week by newspapers across the country included many mentions of Sunlight’s work. (You can read all of our mentions on our site -- and note we’re still updating the list.)

On Monday, John Wonderlich, Gabriela Schneider and I met with an editorial writer Washington Post to discuss initiatives we support that would further improve public access to government information including the Public Online Information Act.

That bill was introduced at a press conference on Tuesday (under a transparently clear sky) on Capitol Hill. I joined Rep. Steve Israel and the Personal Democracy Forum’s Andrew Rasiej (who is also an adviser to Sunlight) in announcing this landmark legislation. You can watch our press conference if you want to know more details about this groundbreaking legislation.

On Wednesday, Sunlight Labs launched our fourth official contest: Design for America. Part contest, part festival, the Design for America contest's intent is to inspire the design community to tell great stories about how our government works, what our government does, and what it could do. It's a contest as much about possibility as transparency, and with categories ranging from infographics to web design, there's plenty for all to compete.

Also on Wednesday, we joined the Center for Public Integrity in crowdsourcing our Data Mine project, a new online series identifying inaccessible or difficult to use information from the federal government. We need your tips on what federal government records, databases, and filings should be open to the public – join us to help so  you can continue to read about public government data that we still can’t access. Follow  Jim Morris’ posts on the Reporting Group site, like his most recent  report.

On Thursday, Sunlight’s Engagement team kicked off our new Public=Online campaign . Jake Brewer led a roundtable discussion at Google’s D.C. headquarters, with Jose Antonio Vargas from Huffington Post; Jim Harper from Cato Institute and WashingtonWatch.com; Ginny Hunt from Google’s Public Sector Lab and Ryan Hopkins of Public Square Project in Pittsburgh. Public=Online is a completely non-partisan campaign with the first goal of making government transparency a major issue in the upcoming mid-term elections. We hope you’ll sign the pledge and join us.

I traveled to Boston that day to meet with the Boston Globe editorial board, speak with fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and at an MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media Forum.

Our Engagement team also organized a Sunshine Week Blogswarm, in which about 50 bloggers across the country pledged they would blog about the importance of transparency to them. Look for a "Local Sunlight" blog post early next week by Nisha Thompson with a roundup.

Today, John Wonderlich joined White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, Norm Eisen, and Jim Harper from Cato and WashingtonWatch.com (which I should note is a Sunlight grantee) at the OpenTheGovernment.org “Building Transparency” panel at the Center for American Progress.

Whew! What a week.

Here are some of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and allies over the past week:

CQ Politics' Richard Rubin reports how House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (N.Y.), already beset by a series of ethics investigations, recently disclosed more than $500,000 in previously unreported assets. Rubin notes that earlier this year, Bill Allison, Sunlight's senior fellow, found similar problems with Rangel’s previous disclosure reports. According to Bill’s analysis, Rangel failed to report purchases, sales or his ownership of assets at least 28 times since 1978 on his personal financial disclosure forms. Assets worth between $239,026 and $831,000 appeared and disappeared with no disclosure of when they were acquired, how long they were held or when they were sold, as House rules require. “I understand being sloppy, missing an asset once or twice,” Bill said. “But what this shows is he doesn’t take financial disclosure seriously. How else can you year after year have these inaccuracies? It doesn’t look like there is a lot of care put it into compared to other members. It makes people suspicious when all of a sudden you double your wealth. Without knowing how a member accumulated that wealth, people are going to ask questions.” The New York Times' David Kocieniewski reported on Rangel's discrepancies and quotes Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, saying the New York lawmaker’s haphazard approach to his finances had undermined his credibility in Congress. “Sloppy bookkeeping is not a valid excuse for a sophisticated member of Congress who is chairman of the committee that handles complex financial issues like the tax code,” she said. Glenn Reynolds, at his popular "Instapundit" blog, has followed the various Rangel stories and picks up on Bill's Real Time Investigations post responding to the CQ Politics report.

Halimah Abdullah, with McClatchy Newspapers, reported on a study conducted by the Center for Public Integrity that found more than half the $1.1 million in campaign contributions the Democratic Party's Blue Dog Coalition received so far this year came from the pharmaceutical, health care and health insurance industries. The report cites Center for Responsive Politics data to show how, on average, Blue Dog Democrats net $62,650 more from the health sector than other Democrats, while hospitals and nursing homes also favor them, giving, respectively, $5,680 and $5,550 more. Abdullah used Party Time data to show how coalition members are raising campaign cash at fundraisers.  McClatchy papers across the country ran the story.

Wired's "Epicenter" blog highlighted the Apps for America 2 contest finalists. Government Computer News quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs' director, discussing the finalists.

Russia Today reported on ProPublica's and Sunlight's Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker, which allows anyone to search the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) to quickly learn what governments are lobbying our government and about what. "It's amazing how much lobbyist really do have an impact on public policy," Bill Allison is quoted as saying. "You can follow lobbying campaigns online and see policies changing." The whole interview can be listened to here. The blog of the Legal Times also highlighted the Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker, which they write "creates ways to search those records by legislator contacted, country, lobbying firm, client and issue. Previously, the filings were only available online via a Department of Justice Web site as non-searchable .pdf files."

MAPLight.org launched Money Near Votes, "a new government transparency tool making it easy to track special-interest contributions to legislators given within a month, a week, or a day of when a vote occurred." This new tool promises a new level of transparency by honing in on the role special interests play in shaping public policy. "Never before have these 'well-timed' campaign donations been highlighted in such an exhaustive, easy-to-locate format," MAPLight asserts.

Early this morning, the Center for Public Integrity released their updated version of its States of Disclosure report. It’s a very helpful ranking of financial disclosure reporting of each state’s legislature, gauging their level of transparency. The Center has conducted similar surveys a couple times before over the past decade, but this is the latest and the most complete. In this incarnation, CPI researchers looked at state statutes, interviewed ethics officials and used a 43-question survey that measures public access to information on legislators’ employment, investments, personal finances, property holdings, or other actitivities outside the legislature.

Check out their interactive map where you can see what grade each state received and the details behind the grades. And I admit that I was surprised by the leader of the class…Louisiana, one of only three states to receive an A grade. Somewhat less surprising, Washington State ranked #2 and Hawaii at #3. Since CPI’s last report, 14 states improved their disclosure laws, but 20 still received a failing grade. And three states have no disclosure laws whatsoever.

Congratulations to our friends at the Center.  Go check it out!

Today, May 8th, marks the 125th birthday of Harry S Truman, our 33rd president. He once said, "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Amen, Mr. President.

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:

Monday morning, Tom Lee, a technology director at Sunlight, appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” taking questions about Recovery.gov, the Web site set up to track spending under the federal government’s economic stimulus program. Tom is working on SubsidyScope, a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, that looks at the role of federal subsidies in the economy. Below is the video of the segment:

Speaking of Recovery.gov, Matt Kelley with USA Today reported that the Web site won't have details on contracts and grants until October and may not be complete until next spring — halfway through the program. Kelley quotes Greg Elin, Sunlight’s chief evangelist, saying people accustomed to getting easily searchable information quickly could be frustrated. "If we have to wait until October to get the information or to the end of the year to get a powerful recovery.gov site, the Obama administration will have missed an important opportunity."

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, in an op-ed titled "Ways to Protect Our Democracy," highlights the work of Sunlight and Sunlight Labs, and mentions the Apps for America contest. Vanden Heuvel quotes Gabriela Schneider, "This is the next generation of civic engagement…We see it as a way to revitalize democracy. The transparency work is a catalyst for the greater democracy reform movement."

The U.S. Senate announced this week that it was going to start publishing roll call votes in XML, an online format that’s easily reusable by other programs. XML allows the data to be manipulated and organized in such a way that public interest groups can get a much more thorough picture of Senate voting patterns. In writing about the move, the Politico’s  Victoria McGrane quoted John Wonderlich, Sunlight's policy director, as saying the Senate’s decision was “spectacular.” The Examiner newspapers editorialized that the move signals the Senate had finally joined the 21st Century. As encouraging and important as this step by the Senate is, I’d hold off on that designation until senators start disclosing campaign finance data online and in a timely manner.

The New York Times’ Stephanie Strom highlighted the campaign to get Congress to release to the public Congressional Research Service reports, highlighting the efforts of Open CRS, Center for Democracy and Technology, OpentheGovernment.org and Sunlight.

Jeanne Cummings at the Politico wrote about “lobbyist contact” disclosures posted on government department and agency Web sites. She made note of a review conducted by Paul Blumenthal, Sunlight’s senior writer, that found only 14 of a possible 29 departments and agencies have created Web pages to disclose lobbyist inquiries. On March 20, President Obama issued a memo to all agencies involved with the distribution of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requiring them to disclose all communications between lobbyists and agency officials. John Fritze with USA Today wrote that Obama’s effort to make lobbying more transparent has shed little light on the behind-the-scenes, special-interests lobbying thus far. He quotes Melanie Sloan, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, "We're looking to have more disclosure, not less. If this was supposed to give us more disclosure, why is it that you're not seeing lobbyist communications?"

Mother Jones' Jonathan Stein profiled Lisa Rosenberg, Sunlight’s government affairs consultant, terming her "K Street's worst nightmare" and "the lobbyist lobbyists hate." He wrote that Lisa is "not your average influence peddler," but does the "unthinkable" by lobbying for more oversight and regulation of lobbying. Stein quotes Lisa, "I have no friends...My lobbyist colleagues are cringing at the things that I do."

Joshua Zumbrun at Forbes.com wrote about six ways Uncle Sam can help rescue newspapers. One of his proposals is for the government to help ease newspapers into nonprofit status, citing the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity as examples of nonprofit organizations that are already making an impact.

Thanks, and see you next Friday!

The Center for Public Integrity’s PaperTrail blog highlights a new report on international government corruption that’s set to be released tomorrow (Wednesday). Global Integrity, started as a project of CPI but now independent, is a respected nonprofit that tracks international government corruption trends around the world, and they are releasing their 2008 report on national anti-corruption practices in 57 countries.

Unregulated political financing has emerged as the top problem in each of the Global Integrity’s reports, which they started writing three years ago. The group’s Global Integrity Commons blog writes that this year’s report will show that unregulated money in politics is the greatest corruption threat facing most countries, regardless of income levels.

The report also features a new “corruption watch list,” which profiles countries at significant risk for serious, high-level corruption. They include Iraq and Somalia in the report for the first time.

Wednesday at 10:30 am EST the group will host a teleconference on the report. You can find out more details, including call information, here.

Last month, I blogged about the Center for Public Integrity's brilliant expose' "Shadow Government," dealing with federal advisory committees, the secret, multi-layered and unaccountable bureaucracy that influences much of the federal government with precious little oversight and largely no record of their activities. There are over 900 committees, boards, commissions, councils and panels that advise the various agencies of the Executive Branch and the White House, meant to offer government expert opinions on various topics.

To recap, the Center's investigation found:

• committees packed with industry representatives;

• members are added or removed for political reasons;

• subcommittees and working groups are created allowing decisions to be made behind closed doors; and

-         records are sealed if they exist at all.

Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News blog reports that, on Wednesday, the House passed a bill that would amend the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (FACA).  The new reform is meant to strengthen the public disclosure provisions of FACA, which was itself a reform devised to bring more openness to the advisory committee process.

Aftergood quotes Rep. Henry Waxman, one of the bills sponsors, as saying the purpose of the bill is to put an end to White House task forces operating in total secrecy.  If passed, the bill will require the White House "...disclose whom they meet with and what recommendations they receive from special interests," Waxman said.  Specifically, "This bill says that task forces like the Vice President's energy task force must come out from the shadows." We'll keep an eye on this important piece of reform legislation as it heads over to the Senate.