Senators Tester and Cochran, champions of common sense legislation that would require senators and senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports, yesterday offered a version of their bill as an amendment to the STOCK Act. Sunlight applauds their effort and wrote a letter to all senators urging them to support the amendment.

Sunlight has long supported the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, a much needed and long overdue remedy to the absurd system in place in the Senate. Currently, senate candidates file their quarterly campaign finance reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who then prints them out on reams of paper and delivers them to the Federal Election Commission. The FEC then inputs the information contained in those reports into its computer databases. The archaic and costly process delays public access to information about who is funding Senate campaigns, sometimes until after the election takes place.

By contrast, senators’ counterparts in the House, as well as presidential candidates and PACs, have, for years, electronically filed their campaign finance reports directly with the FEC, avoiding the wasteful, duplicative and opaque senate system.

Versions of this Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act have been introduced with significant bipartisan support in multiple prior congresses. No Senator that we know of has ever publicly opposed the legislation. Yet it has not been enacted because it has been the victim of politics. Senator Mitch McConnell has repeatedly demanded that a vote on the electronic filing bill be linked to a vote on unrelated proposal that would, if enacted, actually decrease transparency by posing burdens on groups filing ethics complaints against any sitting senator.

By offering the electronic filing bill as an amendment to the STOCK Act, there is a real opportunity to make this piece of legislation law. We hope it comes up for a vote and that every senator supports it. There is no reason not to.

Letter to the Senate on Electornic Filing Amendment 2012-02-01-1

Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched a campaign urging Senators to voluntarily file their campaign finance reports electronically. Presidential candidates and candidates for the House have filed their campaign finance reports electronically with the Federal Election Commission for over a decade. The reports let the public know what special interests, lobbyists or out-of-state donors might be funding a candidate’s campaign.

U.S. Senators have exempted themselves from mandatory electronic filing of campaign reports, holding fast to an archaic system in which they file their reports with the secretary of the Senate, who prints them out and delivers them to the FEC. The FEC spends about $250,000 and untold hours having the records typed in, line by line, to its databases. This isn’t just inefficient spending of our tax dollars, it’s a waste of time that denies the public real time access to information that can help shape and inform their opinions about the people they will be voting for in November.

Legislation has been introduced to mandate electronic filing by Senate candidates, but the common sense Campaign Disclosure Parity Act has long suffered as a sacrificial lamb in the world of political gamesmanship and its passage is far from certain. Ultimately, a legal mandate will be necessary to ensure universal electronic filing, but until then, senators and Senate candidates can voluntarily file their campaign finance reports electronically, shining a bright and timely light on campaign finance information while decreasing the chances that errors will occur when the data is re-entered.

Only a handful of Senators currently file electronically. The rest should be embarrassed at their complacency and willingness to live in the dark ages. Campaigns already have this information in electronic form, and the FEC makes it easy to file electronically. Supporters of transparency, please call your Senators and ask them to use the net.

To read more about e-filing, check out our handy resource page.

*Photo by Steve Rhode

The Federal Communications Commission announced a new initiative that demonstrates that the agency understands and welcomes full disclosure. As of June 1, the FCC began requiring that details about ex parte communications—meetings with agency staff where only one side of an issue is present to make its case—must be filed electronically. Not only will transparency at the FCC be improved, but the initiative serves as an example of how transparency should work throughout government.

According to the FCC’s general counsel, “disclosing the contents of oral ex parte contacts on the record ensures that interested parties, the public, and the Commission staff all have complete information about the data and arguments that are presented to Commission decision-makers.”

Makes sense to Sunlight. An ex parte contact at the FCC sounds a lot like a lobbying contact on Capitol Hill. Nothing wrong with it, but details need to be disclosed so that interested parties have a chance to know who is saying what about important public policy issues. We’ve called for improving disclosure of lobbyists contacts by, among other things, including naming the Member of Congress’ office with whom the lobbyist met and providing details of the lobbyist’s request. It sounds a lot like the FCC’s requirement that ex parte notices must list of everyone who participated in the meeting and a summary of all data presented and arguments made.

These types of disclosures will improve the dialogue at the FCC and would do the same for Congress. Fundamentally, lobbyists are educators. More disclosure about meetings would ensure that decision makers have a more complete understanding of all sides of the issue at hand.

Naysayers who say that agency communications are different than lobbying Congress should look to the example of Sen. Gillibrand. She publishes all of her official meetings online the day after they occur. She knows that if a voter sees that she has met with a lobbyist whose views they oppose, they can contact her office to make sure their viewpoints are heard too.

The same principle is at work with the FCC’s ex parte rules. The FCC gets it. Hopefully Congress will too.

The Sunlight Foundation and a dozen other bipartisan organizations are seeking Senators who are willing to be among the first to embrace the most modern of trends in the upper chamber—voluntary electronic filing of their campaign finance reports.

Senators Boxer, Cochran, Cornyn, Feinstein, Leahy, Lugar, and Sanders electronically filed their campaign finance reports with the FEC during the last reporting period. Senator Gillibrand recently announced that she too will begin filing electronically on July 15, the next deadline for filing FEC reports. Any senator who supports transparency should join this small group and commit to filing their campaign finance reports electronically starting in July and continuing to do so for every reporting period thereafter.

Failing to file electronically is inexcusable. The FEC makes voluntary electronic filing easy. Senators, or their campaigns, can simply download the agency’s free filing software and contact the agency for an ID and password. In fact, senators who served in the House prior to coming to the Senate are likely to have already filed electronically. Electronic filing has been mandatory in the House for years.

Voluntary filing will never obviate the need for a change in the law. For that reason, the letter also asks senators to cosponsor S. 219, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, introduced by Senators Tester and Cochran. The law would modernize the archaic system in which candidates for the Senate file their FEC reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who then prints them out and delivers them to the FEC, only to have the FEC re-enter the information into its own computer databases. The system costs hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars each year and denies the public timely access to information. Unfortunately, efforts to mandate electronic filing have been stymied since the bill was first introduced in 2003. It is imperative that the legislation is enacted to ensure that all Senate candidates file electronically.

Until the law passes, we urge senators to demonstrate their leadership as well as their support for transparency and openness in Congress by embracing voluntary electronic filing.

The following groups have joined Sunlight calling for voluntary electronic filing and support of the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act: The Campaign Finance Institute, The Campaign Legal Center, The Center for Responsive Politics, Common Cause, Fix Congress First, Judicial Watch, MAPLight.org, OMB Watch, OpentheGovernment.org, Public Campaign, Public Citizen and US PIRG.

Group Letter to Senators on Electronic Filing

Now here is an interesting argument about the legitimacy of the term "open government". In her "Why "Open government" is terrible branding (or whatever happened to participation and collaboration?)", Nancy Scola questions the use of the buzz word while pointing out the Obama administration's attempts at using technology to show accountability. But if you are like me and often inter-changeably use open government with transparency, Scola advises that we should instead engage in innovative ways that expand the term to include transparency, participation and collaboration, instead of just playing a watchdog role that limits us to keeping tabs on what should be transparent. Rebbecca Wilson shows us how we can do this...

• Wilson makes a compelling case for why Waukesha county in Wisconsin needs transparency and accountability in elections. She details the recent race for the state's Supreme Court justice where both candidates are now considering a recount. Her discussion highlights the importance of not entrusting an entire electoral process with only one election official -- as it was with the county's clerk Kathy Nickolaus -- because such a process breeds public distrust in the system. And in a way of offering solutions, she suggests a routine audit of the electoral process especially when paper ballots are used and reporting election results on election night. More on Save our Votes.

• Westchester County in New York is looking for transparency in little know places - small contracts. In the spirit of letting the taxpayer know where their money is going, legislator Sheila Marcotte is asking the county's board of legislators to put the small contracts (which add up to big money) on line. She hopes that by so doing, the often disguised county budget spending will be put to light. Gerald McKinstry shares more on Yorktown and Cortlandt region.

• Arizona has discovered a way out of preventing bankruptcy triggered by payroll obligations and promoting transparency at the same time. Inspired by a Goldwater Institute report that recommended a method of bidding out city services that requires the bidder to take on the responsibility of employee benefits,  SB SB1322 has been introduced to address the state’s fiscal status. Goldwater’s Nick Dranias, who is certain that this is a “managed competition approach,” is asking Governor Jan Brewer to support the bill. Why is Dranias sure it will also give the public access to information of exactly how much city services cost? It’s all on the State Brief.

• Cook County in Illinois has created an open data portal with aggregated public data in a machine-readable format. Erika Slife shares that once the page is ready, both the public and computer programs will be invited to develop new tools that customize data. The Chief Information Officer for the county, Greg Wass has already put aside money for the webpage, which is still in its development stages. See how this project is going to make the Cook County website easier to use on Clout Street.

We welcome today’s guest blogger Matt Rosenberg. Matt is the founder of the non profit Public Eye Northwest and the news knowledge base site Public Data Ferret,a Seattle Times local news partner. You can email him at: matt@publiceyenorthwest.org

From Washington D.C. to Washington state, events conspire to remind us that the quest for open government is still a work in progress. One case in point: Out here in the verdant, drizzly climes of the Pacific Northwest, a recent legislative attempt to ratchet up baseline Web disclosure by local governments and the state ran aground.  Washington State Senate Bill 5553 slipped into a legislative coma after a hearing in the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee on March 24th, never even surfacing for committee vote, though it passed the full state senate by a 48-1 vote. Barring exceptional procedural workarounds, it's dead for this session. The bill would have required local governments and state agencies with a current website to post an agenda no less than 72 hours before a regular meeting, including the full text of any ordinance, rule or regulation to be considered. Emergency meeting agendas would be posted online no less than 24 hours prior; and minutes of all meetings within 15 days after approval, to remain online at least a year. The State Government and Tribal Affairs panel's chair, State Rep. Sam Hunt, declined to respond to questions on SB 5553's demise.

When public organizations become private

Even had the measure advanced, there was no requirement in it or existing state law that a local government body have a website, to help boost transparency on meeting agendas and business items. Yet such opacity can bear ugly fruit, as in the case of the French Slough Flood Control District, an under-the-radar public body north of Seattle in Snohomish County. It was recently called out in a state audit for dealing no-bid contracts to two companies, each partially owned by one of its three commissioners. There is not even a current public office for the district listed online, but I managed to track down the manager at his home phone number. He confirmed the district has no website; no plans for one; and no intention to snail mail or e-mail meeting agendas to anyone who so requests. He said (correctly) that our state's open meetings law only required the body to make known the time and place of its regular and other meetings, but that there is wide latitude in the "how" piece. Usually that approach is smart, but not in this instance.

Other local taxing bodies, particularly water, sewer and other flood control districts, and some hospital districts - though supported with public monies - also do not have public Web sites. Their workings remain invisible to all but the most "ïnside" insiders.

New Jersey's State Comptroller Matthew Boxer had a good idea about how to begin addressing this problem. His office took an inventory of New Jersey local governments on whether they have websites and use them for basic transparency. Boxer's February 2011 report found that the 587 local government bodies in New Jersey had combined annual spending and current debt of more than $5 billion, an amount which underscores taxpayer investment in government and the case for robust online transparency; yet more than one-third lacked websites, and those that had them often failed to include basic information on meetings and finances. All states would benefit from similar inventories of local government transparency infrastructure, and then a robust dialog on next steps.

Initiating transparency at the local level

Trust in government is sensed in the aggregate, and what's close to home resonates especially. Expectations are higher. Public bodies and agencies must come halfway across the bridge by better institutionalizing transparency, but responsibility also lies with the community - not just journalists - to demonstrate concretely why transparency matters. Many cities in Central Puget Sound, the fast-growing metropolitan region surrounding Seattle, are already well on their way to doing their part. Unlike some others here, these actors don't need a state law to mandate the basics of online disclosure, they're already hip-deep in it. They're not only posting meeting agendas online, but also embedding in those agendas many individual links to meeting items such as draft legislation, staff and consultant policy reports, regular spending and budget reports, consultant contracts, inter-agency agreements, and more.

These link-rich local government meeting agendas that are regularly posted online can be mined and the highest value news items synopsized by local newspapers, bloggers, and other stakeholders; or by civic information infrastructure projects like our own Public Data Ferret knowledge base, now a Seattle Times news partner.

We found that a consultant's report to the Woodinville City Council on redevelopment options for a seismically vulnerable city-owned historic property, showed the return-on-investment challenge is so daunting it might be better to brave the preservationists and get permission to tear it down.  A Seattle City Council staff report accented the red ink to be borne by the city if as contemplated, it annexed the adjacent unincorporated community of White Center. There would be $4.6 to $16.8 million more in annual expenses than revenues tied to the move, and one-time costs ranging from $8.7 to $54.3 million, all while the city is grappling with major budget problems. The council later backed away from the annexation after the report was highlighted in online media.  An actuarial firm's report to a Seattle City Council committee revealed that the market value of a major city employee pension fund was $1 billion less than its 30-year obligations and that overly generous terms negotiated by the city needed to be corrected to help prevent taxpayer liabilities from growing larger still.

Other tools are part of the accountability arsenal here. Monthly online news releases from the state on disciplinary actions against health care workers are keyed to an online database with related documents, so that the public can access case histories of providers like the medication technician at a West Seattle assisted living facility who while on duty drank a half bottle of whiskey, smoked a substance police lab tests later showed to be rock cocaine, and passed out in a stairwell; or the irritated nurse in another facility who rubbed a soiled diaper into a resident's face. But the database doesn't allow searching by facility, nor do the online disciplinary case history documents usually name the facility involved. Reporters and bloggers can get the latter with a call, but both types of information belong online to start with.

In contrast, the Washington state insurance commissioner's office disciplinary actions database reveals company histories and highlights all recent actions by listing them in reverse date order.

Sometimes in the quest for transparency and accountability, the two Washingtons meet, via reports from the Inspector General of a federal agency. The Washington Department of Social and Health Services was cited in  a recent investigation by the Inspector General's Office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for over-billing Medicaid $8.4 million in reimbursements, by using incorrect treatment category classifications. It is refunding the money, and has upgraded its information systems to avoid a repeat. A General Services Administration IG report found the agency paid tens of millions more for a major U.S.-Canada border crossing station upgrade in Blaine, Wash. than it would have if proper contract price cap procedures had been followed. GSA's Public Building Service, similarly cited in a series of similar reports involving projects in other locales, says it has developed new procedures to ensure the problem does not re-occur. A U.S. Postal Service IG report recently documented current excess USPS office space in the Seattle region with a market value over 10 years of $26 million, and recommended it be sold or leased, part of a series of findings documenting the same problem across several other of the enterprise's regions.

We know that promises of reform, glimpsed in agency responses to IG audits among other places, don't always materialize, or unfold very slowly. But when the information source is the government itself, the results are harder for officeholders and agencies to ignore - if what's discovered truly sees the light of day. And although the work of the erstwhile U.S. Government Accountability, or in Washington state, the office of our stellar State Auditor Brian Sonntag, are periodically covered in the media, much else that warrants equal attention languishes in the dark corners of the "deep web."

While improving the rules of engagement and technical platforms and tools around government transparency are crucial, so is distilling and distributing high-value public information and data which is already freely valuable. It so happens there's a lot of it. Transparency is only as good as what we - who hire and fire the elected officials who are supposed to represent our interests - manage to do with it. To build the case for more and better government transparency, we should remember the importance of regularly demonstrating the concept across all jurisdictions, and in ways that energize and engage diverse publics.

Senator John Tester announced on Facebook and Twitter that he has joined a very small handful of Senators who electronically file their campaign finance disclosure reports online with the FEC. (Update: Other sitting senators who file electronically include: Boxer, Cochran, Cornyn, Leahy, Lugar, Feinstein and Sanders.) By doing so, Tester sends an important message to all of his Senate colleagues. Even though they are not legally required to, Senators and Senate candidates can and should file their reports of campaign contributions and expenditures electronically.

Disclosure of important information about who supports which Senate candidates is delayed because the Senate decided years ago that it should not have to abide by mandatory electronic filing requirements all other political committees follow. Recognizing the absurdity of this antiquated system, in January Senator Tester introduced S. 219, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act. Sunlight has long supported previous incarnations of this legislation, first introduced in 2003 (!) and we will continue to advocate its passage. Unfortunately, Senator Mitch McConnell is likely to put up the same obstacles blocking this simple bill that he has used in the past. That’s why voluntary electronic filing is important. It is the only way the public can have real time access to Senate campaign finance information. Voluntary filing will never obviate the need for a change in the law because there will always be outliers who think they can game the system by delaying disclosure. But it is an easy way for Senators to demonstrate their support for transparency. We hope more Senators will Tester’s lead.

The ancient conundrum of whether it was the chicken  that came first or the egg, may always  be a mystery. But when it comes to technology and innovation, it seems like the two drive each other. Echoing President Obama's call for innovation in his State of the Union address, creative thinkers have developed new and engaging ways to not only inform the public on how the government operates, but also take the lead on making sure that their innovations are in user friendly formats.  One such example is the Transparencity project...

• The William Penn Foundation, together with Technically Philly are partnering on a project that will use technology and journalism to increase the availability and use of “actionable government data”. Codenamed Transparencity,  the project will provide extensive coverage of issues on city technology policy, the Division of Technology and government data sets. Take a look at how Christopher Wink and partners strive to increase Philadelphia’s use of data to inform on policy at Technically Philly.

• Social media enthusiasts Gangplank and PhxData are organizing a CityCamp to open government using the internet. The CityCampAZ will bring together programmers, developers and government officials to discuss ways in which they can enhance their digital presence on the web. Steve Jansen shares details about registering for the unconference and more on the Jackalope Ranch.

• Massachusetts has a new transparency website, but Laura Crimaldi, a board member of New England First Amendment Coalition, is not convinced that it will improve openness in government. Created in part to track state funding and local aid to cities, Massachusetts Transparency still has a long way to go in increasing citizens’ trust in government. Notably, Crimaldi sites that  Massachusetts’ judiciary and Legislature branches are still exempted from the state’s public records law. She explains this and more obstacles on The New England First Amendment Center.

• Residents of Seattle Washington now have a new personalized way of accessing government information. The city has launched My.Seattle.gov which will let users customize their Seattle.gov homepage using widgets that give them relevant information. In a press release posted on the West Seattle blog, the city’s mayor Mike McGinn, hoped that the new website will make government more accessible through technology. Read more on the West Seattle Blog.

• Phil West from North Carolina is making the case for why open government needs “data psychologists.” In his opinion, psychologists help determine the usefulness of data and how interesting it will be to the possible recipients before it is released to the public. He uses the example of Data.gov to show how it has evolved from just posting datasets with unfamiliar terms to ordinary citizens such as CSV files, to using methods that are more familiar to users including cataloging. Check out as he explains how data psychologists curate data usefulness on Sector Public.

Senators Tester and Cochran introduced the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act today, a bill that would speed disclosure of public campaign finance information, ensure the accuracy of that information, improve efficiency and save taxpayers money. Sunlight has been supporting a version of this bill for the past three congresses—pretty much since we first opened our doors. Maybe this no-brainer bill will finally become law during the 112th Congress.

Senators’ counterparts in the House, presidential candidates and PACs all electronically file their campaign finance reports. Senators, on the other hand, remain mired in an archaic system in which they file their quarterly reports with the Secretary of the Senate, who then prints them out and delivers them to the Federal Election Commission. That agency then inputs the information into its computer databases so it can be publicly viewed online, all at annual cost of about a quarter-million dollars of taxpayer money. Eliminating this duplicative exercise balance the budget, but the outmoded process is worse than simply wasteful. Re-entering the data delays public access to crucial information about who is funding Senate campaigns, sometimes until after the election takes place.

The previous versions of this bill all have had significant bipartisan support and no Senator that we know of has ever publicly opposed the bill. So why are we still waiting for it to pass?

The culprit is Senator Mitch McConnell and his minions, who have demanded that in order for Senators to be able to vote on the bill, there must also be a vote on an unrelated controversial amendment. The amendment would force nonprofit and religious organizations to disclose the names of anyone who gives $5000 or more to the organization any time the group exercises its right to file a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee. Look closely. The self-serving amendment has nothing to do with the disclosure law. But more importantly, if the amendment became law, the result would be fewer legitimate inquiries into Senators’ ethical conduct.

The reason the Republicans have been able to make unwarranted demands for a vote on this “poison pill” amendment is because they have objected to Majority Leader Reid’s attempts to bring the bill up by "unanimous consent," a procedure the Senate uses to move non-controversial bills quickly, so as to preserve limited floor time for contentious issues. In an ideal world, unanimous consent would be the best to get this straightforward bill enacted. But it hasn’t worked so far. If the Republicans continue to insist on the amendment, perhaps it is time to let the bill come to the floor for a vote. If any Senator is willing to go on record as being against transparency, efficiency and saving taxpayers’ dollars, let him. In the end, we think enough Senators will oppose the amendment and vote to enact a clean electronic filing bill once and for all.

The term Gov 2.0 may throw some technologically challenged people such as myself, off . But Gov 2.0 guru Tim O'Reilly encourages us to look at it as “government as a platform”. In fact,  in his "What does Government 2.0 mean to you?" he gives citizens the opportunity to literally define it in their terms and be comfortable with how they see it working for them. This is why the latest blogosphere excitement about upcoming Gov 2.0 activities in various states make me want to share it with you. If the enthusiasm with which this year's conferences have been organized is anything to go by, then we can conclude by saying that the concept has succeeded in grabbing the attention it deserves, reaffirming O'Reilly's words that government can become a platform of, for and by the people.

• Gov 2.0 advocates have come up with yet another exciting program to open their government. The Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and EFF-Austin will be organizing a Texas Government 2.0 Camp on January 28. The “Making Transparency Work” conference will also bring together professionals from different fields to discuss ways of making government more open. See how Jon Lebkowsky is offering opportunities for anyone interested in leading a session on topics ranging from open Internet to government use of technology on the EFF-Austin blog.

• In a Q&A Yoli Martinez presents to us the future of government workings as California Gov2.0 supporter Alan Silberberg sees it. Silberberg’s idea of fighting obscurity in the operations of government is by giving citizens political power through the use of social media and mobile technology. Outlining the Los Angeles Fire Department and Orange County Transportation Agency as the leading Gov2.0 practices in Southern California, Silberberg hopes that this year’s Gov.2.0 LA unconference will bring on more citizen participation and government support for digital governance. More on the Socal Focus.

• Several counties in New Mexico are struggling to make their governments more open. But Jesus Lopez blogs that at most, San Miguel is only scoring a “D” in transparency. Drawing on the Sunshine Review’s findings , Lopez praises the state’s open government ranking but urges residents to make more use of public records laws provided by FOI. Read more on the San Miguel Reeper

• Rhode Island govenor Lincoln Chafee will soon issue a ban that will prohibit state officials from appearing on talk radio.  Though criticized by Buddy Cianci, a former mayor of Providence turned radio talk show host, Governor Chafee believes that talk radio is a “ratings-driven, for-profit programming” and does not think it is an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money. Hart Kirch shares how this is a slight on transparency and open government on the Hart Kirch Talk News blog.