Wikipedia is the world’s most successful model of citizen engagement and collaboration. It began ten years ago as an experiment in information that challenged the top down approach to developing encyclopedias and now boasts millions of active users with 400 million visits a month. Its staggering popularity ultimately proved the power and wisdom of the crowd in developing online resources well beyond simply creating an encyclopedia.

From the very beginning of the Sunlight Foundation, we were impressed by the philosophical ideals of Wikipedia and sought that kind of access and collaboration to government information. This shared ethos brought Jimmy Wales, the founder and public face of Wikipedia, to our advisory board and soon after our founding we pursued a wiki model for Congressionally oriented research.

The first project the Sunlight Foundation launched in April 2006 was Congresspedia, a collaborative wiki project with the Center for Media and Democracy that was designed to shine more light on the workings of the U.S. Congress. It was an explicit homage to Wikipedia and operated on the belief that a healthy democracy is built on a public informed about the inner-workings and connections of government and its officials. The Congresspedia project followed relevant public figures and tracked special interests in the wiki collaborative writing format that Wikipedia popularized ten years ago. That project eventually became part of Open Congress (which Sunlight proudly supports as its core funder) where the Transparency Hub page is a great collection of resources coordinated by Sunlight’s policy director John Wonderlich and our policy counsel Daniel Schuman.

Happy 10th birthday Wikipedia!

Our colleagues behind OpenCongress are unveiling some significant new features to make it easier than ever to keep track of your legislators and the issues you care about. What's being unveiled today will provide great depth to your experience on the site.

Fans of Congresspedia (which has now been merged with OpenCongress) can now collaborate on the new OpenCongressWiki to share knowledge about every senator, representative and major piece of legislation in Congress. What was formerly housed at Congresspedia is now exclusively on OpenCongress, so make sure to reset your bookmarks!

OpenCongress now has video! Get better context for what was said on the House and Senate floor, courtesy of Sunlight grantee Metavid, the open source video archive of the U.S. Congress, and the YouTube hubs for the House and Senate.  Think of it this way: Metavid is to C-SPAN as OpenCongress is to THOMAS. Now, for every senator, representative, and major bill in Congress, OpenCongress shows you embedded video footage of relevant floor speeches, official announcements and more.

There is a new new inline bill commenting feature, so now it’s now easier to give precise feedback on legislation in the appropriate sections. For every bill in Congress, you can now make comments and spark discussion on specific blocks of text within a bill. Just scroll over any section of bill text, and the option to leave a comment will appear. After you leave a comment, a marker will show up next to the block of text you commented on so that everyone who reads through the bill knows that they can click through to view your comment.

Get the full scoop on these features and more from OpenCongress.

Enamored as I am by Twitter these days, here's a useful item, a government twitter directory. BearingPoint, the McLean, Va., -based management and technology consulting firm, is compiling lists of Twitter links to state and local government, federal government, contractors , journalists and industry/academics. Might be nice to see this all in a widget.

And along the idea of sharing good information...over the weekend, John Wonderlich , Sunlight's Policy Director, wrote about several lists he and his team have been compiling. For instance, they've just posted at Congresspedia a list of access points for House of Representatives Web publications and primary source information that affects the House, with a description of the content each one provides. He's working on a Senate version too.

Our friends at Change Congress have asked their members and supporters to take a survey to help them decide what they should be focused on for the coming year. And a number of questions they asked dealt with government transparency: Are earmarks fundamentally wrong or just need to be more open and transparent to the public? What's one thing that would create a more open and transparent government? And finally, should lobbyists have a role in government? All good questions.

Japhet Els, Change Congress' political director, lists some of the responses they have received. Regarding earmarks:, "I believe that if earmarks are going to exist, they ought to be transparent." Another, "Nothing is 100% wrong or right. Earmarks have their use and full and timely transparency should check abuses." We agree with these sentiments. That's why we worked with our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense to create Earmark Watch, where we've placed over 3,000 earmarks online, and ask citizens to research them.

Regarding reforms to foster transparency, one respondent wrote, "All info must be available on the web within a short time." That's a great idea. Since Sunlight's founding in the spring of 2006, this is what we've been doing. We have assembled and funded an array of web-based databases and tools including OpenCongress.org, Congresspedia.org, FedSpending.org, OpenSecrets.org, Public Markup and others. These sites make millions of bits of information available online about the members of Congress, their staff, legislation, federal spending and lobbyists. Regarding transparency, another person wrote, "I would suggest a daily e-mail to all constituents listing the complete activity of an elected official the day before." Again, we agree. That's why we built Punch Clock Campaign, where we've asked all candidates for congressional office - challengers and incumbents - to promise, if elected, to post their daily schedules on the Internet. Lawmakers who agree to share their schedules, including who they've met with and why, show that they are responsive, open, transparent and above all accountable, leading to greater public trust. Regarding lobbyists: "This is a tough one. Our democracy and principle of freedom of speech pretty much demands that we not eliminate lobbying altogether. At the same time, it badly needs reform. Don't have a clue how to approach that reform." Here's an idea, total transparency, where every lobbyist visiting a member of Congress or the executive branch to influence government policy or vote should be required to register online about the meeting with all sorts of relevant details about the meeting. The listing should include the name of the lobbyist, who he or she represents, the amount the client pays the lobbyist, the meeting's purpose, a listing of specific policy or bills discussed, what the lobbyist is asking the official to do, and a list of campaign contributions made by the lobbyists and the client. The transparency provided would go along way to prevent lobbying abuses.