Sunlight Foundation

Weekly Media Roundup - May 1, 2009

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

David Herbert with the National Journal (subscription required) wrote about the grades new media experts from across the political spectrum gave the Obama administration’s Web presence. The experts gave WhiteHouse.gov an average grade of C+. Although they mostly see it as an improvement from the previous administration's site, many noted that it remained a one-way forum and suggested it be opened to allow comments and other interactive features. Herbert quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, "This occasional use of interactive tools" is impressive, but "90 percent of the time the site is pretty straightforward, as it was under [George W.] Bush." Recovery.gov, the administration’s site where citizens can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds, fared even worse in the Journal's poll, averaging a C. The most common gripe about the site, Herbert writes, is that it's "the view from 30,000 feet," as Micah Sifry, senior technology advisor for Sunlight and Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) co-founder, told him. Without providing on-the-the ground details, Recovery.gov offers taxpayers few tools for staying on top of where their money is going, reviewers said. Recovery.gov has competition in the form of privately-operated Recovery.org, which has "more granular data and a real search tool, which one assumes we'll eventually see on Recovery.gov," Micah explains. "I don't think it's fair to compare this site to other Web sites yet, as it's just weeks old," Micah added. "Let's take another look in three to six months, OK?"

Chris Lefkow with Agence France-Presse gained a different take by interviewing academics, technology analysts and nonpartisan groups on the administration's technology efforts. Lefkow writes that they all said the first "tech president" is off to a good start. Lefkow quotes John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, "their first pronouncements are very encouraging,” and added that the challenge, however, is going to be the implementation. Andrew Resiej, Sunlight’s other senior technology advisor and PDF co-founder, said the administration been doing as much as it can to fulfill its promises in regards to transparency and technological innovation. “However they've been constrained by decades of industrial-age rules and regulations and procurement protocols that are handicapping the speed at which they can implement that vision," he said.

Declan McCullagh at CBS News' "Political Hotsheet" blog also wrote about how President Obama's follow through on his transparency vow is receiving mixed reviews. In the post McCullagh highlights how Sunlight's Our Open Government List is allowing users to vote on what's most important to see in the 120-day review. McCullagh reports that the winner so far is formal data standards, which would allow programmers to extract government databases to be incorporated in their own applications. McCullagh also mentions that Sunlight hosted TransparencyCamp.

Dan Eggen at The Washington Post wrote about how some of the nation's largest defense contractors, labor unions and trade groups are forging an alliance to try to stop the Obama administration from cutting certain weapons programs. They are arguing that the proposed cuts would threaten 100,000 or more jobs. Eggen cites Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) data to show the defense sector’s influence in Washington, where it gave nearly $26 million to congressional candidates last year and spending $150 million on lobbying.

The New York Times republished Robin Bravender’s piece from Greenwire exploring President Obama’s regulatory actions taken during his first 100 days in office. Bravender quotes Gary Bass, OMB Watch’s executive director, "In most instances, the administration has moved away from a presumption of government secrecy to one of government openness, and Obama has scrapped some of the most damaging revisions of the regulatory process that Bush and his team imposed on the nation." The article highlighted OMB Watch’s “Advancing the Public Interest through Regulatory Reform” report (pdf), which is one of two reports, both released on Tuesday, assessing the Obama administration’s work on government transparency and regulatory reform at the 100-day mark. The second report, titled “21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda” (pdf) looked at the administration’s follow through on transparency and openness. Overall, the reports state that the president and his team have made significant progress in both the right-to-know and regulatory areas, but much more work needs to be done.

Carol D. Leonnig with The Washington Post reported that U.S. Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, got the Pentagon to spend about $30 million on “the little-used airport named for him so it can handle behemoth military aircraft and store combat equipment for rapid deployment to foreign battlefields.” Most of the improvement, Leonnig writes, were funded through appropriations approved by Murtha's subcommittee, and have not been used for their intended purpose. The article includes comments by Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.  "Nobody wants to say no to Congressman Murtha or make him mad because he controls defense appropriations," she said. "Murtha wanted an airport, and he knew he could get one. It's like he's a billionaire, except it's not his money."

Robert O'Harrow Jr., writing at The Washington Post's "Government Inc." blog, writes about a new report from the Inspector General for TARP, which says the bailout is growing more complex and costly, and is operating with no clear leadership. O'Harrow highlights and extensively quotes from Anu Narayanswamy’s Real Time Investigations report that found the program is shrouded in secrecy, making it difficult to determine who is managing it.

USA Today published an editorial about how the federal government, when faced with the option of making information public or hiding it, is predisposed toward concealment. Federal Web sites are usually full of data, the editorial says, but are also notoriously hard to navigate. It mentions Google's new tool, Google Public Data, it launched this week to make it easier to search federal sites. Congressional sites can be even more inscrutable, they write, and mentions and links to Sunlight’s Senior Fellow Bill Allison's Real Time Investigations report regarding U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers disclosing their earmark requests, and how many responded by burying the links or posting unreadable pdf files. Kim Hart with The Washington Post also wrote about Google’s new tool, and quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs director, saying he’s encouraged by it.

Joab Jackson with Government Computer News wrote about how through mashups and Web apps, third parties are remixing and making innovative use of government agencies' information. Jackson quotes Clay as saying there are a lot of developers who are eager to get access to government data. "The nongovernmental sector will likely always have more talent and artistic capability than inside the government," Clay said. The article discusses Sunlight Labs' Apps for America contest, as well as Sunlight’s role in developing OpenCongress.org, OMB Watch’s FedSpending.org, CRP’s OpenSecrets.org and EarmarkWatch.org. Jackson also highlights Josh Tauberer's work at GovTrack.

Federal News Radio interviewed Clay about Data.gov, new federal CIO Vivek Kundra's soon to launch central repository for government data and research, and links to Sunlight Labs' mock up of the site.

Thanks, and see you next Friday!

Transparency Week Thoughts as Published in USA Today

I'm delighted to have had an OpEd piece published in USA Today today:

How powerful is the Internet in getting crucial safety information out to the public? In one case, that information went out 707 times per minute. That's how often, on average, people seeking information about salmonella-tainted peanut butter clicked on a website and widget sponsored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over a six-week period a total of nearly 44 million hits.

This was exponentially more than the number of people who called agency hotline numbers. By typing the brand or bar code of a product into the search engine, parents everywhere could find out if the peanut butter sandwich they were putting in their kids' lunch bags that day might contain salmonella.

Yet, the peanut butter problem also shows how far we have to go to prod government to make information available to the public. This week — Sunshine Week — news organizations shed light on how the public benefits from knowing what the government is doing, and why. And the Internet increasingly can play a role in providing more information to expose crises such as the salmonella story.

Recently, the story has unfolded about how one peanut-processing company, Peanut Corp. of America, could operate in filth with poorly trained employees and ignore its own tests showing salmonella infestation. We also found out that the only way the FDA could obtain copies of those testing records was to invoke terrorism laws. If the public had access to those records online, perhaps the illnesses of 19,000 people in 43 states and nine deaths could have been avoided.

Online resources also can help explain why the FDA can't get inspection records more easily. Through OpenSecrets.org, which tracks campaign contributions and lobbying expenses, we can find out that food processing and sales companies have contributed nearly $95 million to federal candidates and parties over a decade. Those companies also spent more than $29 million last year on lobbying. The industry has often blocked efforts to strengthen FDA's authority.

The salmonella story shows the many ways we are on the cusp of pushing for a government that is truly transparent. We now have the technological tools not only to get information out to the public, but also to help expose why there's a problem in the first place.

It's no accident that President Obama has made transparency a major part of his stimulus plan. He recognizes that conveying information to the public about how their money is being spent will enhance accountability. If done well, this approach can turn passive citizens into activists who help ensure that government works. With more newspapers laying off reporters and closing their doors, the Internet is allowing others to augment the press' function in watchdogging government.

There's a mighty appetite for this information. Last September, when the House took up the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill, House servers crashed after Speaker Nancy Pelosi posted the text on her Web site. When people did get their eyes on the text, they read it eagerly. Over the course of about two weeks, nearly 1,000 comments were posted on PublicMarkup.org, a site enabling the public to examine and debate legislation. Thousands of bloggers pored over the bill to find examples of earmarks, such as a reduction in taxes for wooden-arrow manufacturers.

A few years ago, bloggers known as the "Porkbusters" helped expose Alaska's "bridge to nowhere." This project to connect the tiny town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) to the even tinier Island of Gravina (population 50) cost some $320 million and was funded through three separate earmarks in a highway bill. Exposure created a huge furor and essentially stopped that earmark.

To take advantage of the full power of the Internet, there are some simple things every agency should do. All data should be made available in formats that are open, searchable and "mashable." That way, creative programmers can more easily create new ways of looking at things. For example, the EarmarkWatch.org map shows thousands of earmarks in the fiscal 2008 defense-appropriations bill layered over a map of the country.

There is also much Congress should do. For years, the Senate has refused to require members to file their campaign finance records electronically. Instead, they submit their records in paper form to the Federal Election Commission, which must then go through the laborious process of re-converting them back into electronic records at the cost of about $250,000 a year. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., recently introduced a bill that would require electronic filing. The House of Representatives has done it this way for years.

And while Congress has strengthened lobbying disclosure laws, they still don't go far enough. Lobbyists are required only to file quarterly, and then in very general terms. So ferreting out who lobbied on what and why is an exercise in "who done it" long after the fact. Lobbyists should file online daily with whom they meet and what they talk about.

A fundamental shift is beginning. Government is starting to recognize how the Internet can play a transformational role in restoring trust to its institutions and officials. And we, the people, are just beginning to imagine the ways we can use this transparency to demand more accountability.

A Lesson in How to Use EarmarkWatch.org

The NYT ran a really good story on earmarks yesterday, using data from Taxpayers from Common Sense, the same data that's on EarmarkWatch.org.

Bloggers commenting on the NYT story are showing how they are using EarmarkWatch.org to investigate earmarks further.

For instance, blogger Susan Ohanian writes how she tracked Speaker Pelosi's earmarks, since she wasn't satisfied with the level of detail the Times presented in its article.

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Earmark of Aquarius Defeated

Just got word, via Ed Frank of Americans for Prosperity, that an earmark to fund a museum near Woodstock that was requested by both Sen. Charles Schumer and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Columnist Robert Novak noted some campaign contributions in connection with the earmark, which promised $1 million to the Bethel Museum. Novak wrote,

Bethel typifies the earmark epidemic because political insiders are often found pushing pork. The museum is funded principally by billionaire Alan Gerry's foundation, which has annual investment income of $24 million. Federal Election Commission records show that Gerry has donated at least $229,000 to political campaigns, and his wife, Sandra, has contributed $90,000 over the past 10 years (including $26,000 in the last election cycle to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, headed by Schumer). On June 30, the Gerrys gave the maximum $9,200 to Clinton's presidential campaign, three days after the two New York senators put the Bethel earmark into the Labor-HHS bill.
Sen. Tom Coburn and Sen. Jon Kyl sponsored an amendment that diverted the funds from Bethel to the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant program. Incidentally, the Bethel Museum earmark is still up for grabs on EarmarkWatch.org, as are many others. The Earmark of Aquarius isn't the only sketchy one in there, and EarmarkWatch.org gives you the tools to find them.

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Following the Favor Factory

There's more earmark money in Defense appropriations bills than anywhere else, and the members of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee have their hands on the spigots. Over at RealTime, Anu finds something surprising: While three members, Rep. John Murtha, Rep. Jim Moran and Rep. Pete Visclosky took in an average of more than $100,000 in political donations from employees and PACs of the companies to whom they directed earmarks in the first half of 2007, the remaining members averaged a paltry $12,800. Why the disparity? Will the contribution totals from earmark recipients to the campaigns of their benefactors increase when the Federal Election Commission receives the next round of disclosure reports? Are Murtha, Moran and Visclosky more beloved by their earmark recipients?

Find out who gave to the politicians, who got the earmarks and what they were for. Anu relied on earmark data from EarmarkWatch.org (generously supplied by our partners, Taxpayers for Common Sense), campaign finance data from both the Center for Responsive Politics and the FEC.

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More than 400 Researchers Investigate Earmarks Using EarmarkWatch.org

In the week since we launched EarmarkWatch.org, more than 400 citizen researchers have dug into earmarks, answering hundreds of questions, making dozens of comments, and shedding light on everything from what in the world is a naturally occurring retirement community (it's considered to be a low-cost approach to facilitating healthy aging) to finding a potential family connection in a New Jersey museum earmark (the museum is housed in a mansion that was once the residence of the sponsoring member's father). They've asked why Congress needs to earmark $1,000,000 to buy wool socks for the Marines and how exactly New York City's American Museum of Natural History is going to spend $1,000,000 on Advanced Research to Further National Security Goals.

We had 25,000 page views last week (the aforementioned sock earmark was the most-looked-at), more than 100 posted comments or additional research (it looks like the $3,000,000 for a Flat-Rack for the Marine Corps was the most commented on, and no, I didn't know what one was either), and one last factoid that makes me feel there are lots of kindred souls out there: The bulk of our intrepid earmark researchers are doing most of their digging at night. So am I -- EarmarkWatch.org is exciting, educational, and endlessly entertaining.

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