I met Sandra Moscoso at TransparencyCamp last year and was immediately impressed by her work opening up D.C. public school data to improve area schools. She is an obvious choice to be this month’s OpenGov Champion.

  During the daytime, Sandra manages an open data portal at the World Bank for the bank’s financial sector, so she is familiar with the usefulness of open data. But it is her work in her local D.C. community that sets her apart. As a mom of two public school students, she is a member of the Capitol Hill Public School Parent Organization (CHPSPO), which looks to improve the local school system by organizing rallies and bake sales, restoring school buildings and talking to city officials. Sandra is often very hands-on in these activities, but her biggest personal mission with CHPSPO has been introducing the use of open government data as a basis in all they do.

As you can see in the video, she and other CHPSPO members were able to collect data to show how the schools that had a full time librarian had better test score results than those who had lost theirs due to budget cuts. The group was able to use that figure as an effective basis for their request to the city to restore funding for librarians. She also recently sent an open letter to Mayor Vincent Gray, asking for public school data she wanted use in an Open Data Day Hackathon in D.C. The city released the data, and even sent a data analyst to the hackathon, too. Who knows if Mayor Gray's administration would release this data had Sandra not publicly asked for it? Going to Sandra’s home to film the interview felt more like visiting family friends for brunch. Which, in fact, they were preparing as we arrived. Sandra and her husband have a cozy Victorian townhouse in the Capitol Hill neighborhood. We saw some very nice Lego projects and other things created by her smart and sweet kids and heard about how much they love their school.

“I have the best community here in Capitol Hill” Sandra says. She knows most of her neighbors, many of which also actively participate in neighborhood projects and politics. “I want them to stay.” Many D.C. families end up moving to the suburbs in Virginia and Maryland when their kids hit middle school age, as public middle schools in the District have a bad reputation and it’s a vulnerable age for children. She hopes to improve the situation by advocating for better schools, armed with all the open data she can get her hands on and a lot of enthusiasm. Her home was not the only place where we filmed. When I first approached Sandra about filming her for the OpenGov Champion series, she sent me a flurry of links to tons of activities she was doing around town. If you follow her on Twitter, there's barely a day goes by without her tweeting to D.C. government officials, trying to make them see the usefulness of opening their data and that there are people out there like her who really want to put said data to use.

A case in point was when in 2010 she and a group of other engaged parents drafted a proposal using open DC Public School data as well as data they collected for a new middle schools plan that the then D.C. Public School Chancellor Michelle Rhee approved and implemented (although not perfectly.) Sandra thinks that the most effective change happens at the local level, by people who truly care about what is happening in their own community. That is why having access to local government data is so important, and the more detailed and specific the better: it enables OpenGov Champions like Sandra and many others to be better advocates for their communities.

Our OpenGov Champions are remarkable ordinary people who have done extraordinary things to open up our government. Get inspired by their stories and nominate someone in your community to become an OpenGov Champion.

As the director of our ongoing mini-documentary series OpenGov Champions I am pleased to see that Homicide Watch DC, one of our Champs, have met their Kickstarter fundraising goal to keep their project alive while founders Laura and Chris Amico are fulfilling academic interests in Boston. Laura has a Nieman-Berkman fellowship in journalism innovation at Harvard for the coming academic year. They reached their goal of $40,000 4 days before the deadline. As of writing this, they have exceeded it with donations from more than 1,000 individual backers.

It is such a great testimony to how much the different communities in Washington, D.C. value their efforts to open up court data on the city’s violent crime. For weeks, my Twitter feed has been filled with pleas from across town to contribute to their Kickstarter project so they can hire a reporter to keep Homicide Watch following the full cycle of every homicide in D.C. through the justice system. I saw Laura and Chris after they had just launched the Kickstarter bid, and Laura told me she felt torn about moving to Boston with the uncertain future of the project, while the community on the site was pleading her to keep going. There is a real need for the site that fills the information gap around homicide in D.C.

Sunlight supported Homicide Watch DC by donating footage I had shot for the OpenGov Champ video to be used in their Kickstarter video. We are very happy for Laura and Chris to have met their goal, and wish them much success in their future endeavors!

We’re constantly searching for innovators who are using technology to create more government transparency. Check out our latest OpenGov Champions video about Liz Barry, who along with others from Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, is using DIY tools to map environmental catastrophes like the BP Oil Spill and other affected urban and rural areas.

If you get inspired by Homicide Watch and Public Lab, please nominate an OpenGov Champ from your community.

As a part of my job as Video Production Director here at Sunlight, I work on a short documentary video series called  OpenGov Champions. For July’s OpenGov Champion, we chose Waldo Jaquith, whom I’ve heard dubbed an “OpenGov superstar” by some in the field. We wanted to find out what he does to merit this unofficial title. A lot, we found out.

Driving down the country roads outside Charlottesville, VA where Waldo Jaquith lives, I could feel my blood pressure dropping the closer to his house we got. Virginia in May is green and beautiful: The scenery perfect with the white picket fences, red barns, horses (even mini-donkeys) and cattle grazing on the open fields. On the way to his house we saw roads with names like “Pinch ‘Em Slyly” and “Merrie Meadows.” Google Maps gave us no love and of course we took a few detours before finding our way there, which was fine as we got plenty of good footage cruising along the increasingly narrow roads, as you can see in the video. As we got out of the car by Waldo’s house at the end of a winding gravel road, I was stunned by the quietness and tranquility of the place. When some of my coworkers here at Sunlight saw the footage, they declared things like “Ooh, it’s a paradise!” and “I want to live there too.” I have to admit that finding Waldo in the midst of all these adorable farm animals in this idyllic place in the country, tending to his 5-month old baby son forced me to revisit some useless stereotypes I had about OpenGov Technologists. After spending the day in his house with his sweet and hospitable family, I could also completely understand why he had turned down an amazing post at the White House to be able to stay at this lovely place they have carved out for themselves, close to relatives and the beautiful city of Charlottesville.

Finding a good angle for the video was actually quite hard, as Waldo has done so many projects opening up local government data, most of which would deserve its own video. And so we ended up talking quite a while about different projects, and only in the editing phase, after much internal wrenching, I chose to focus on his most recent projects: developing Ethics.gov for the White House and the project he had just started with the help of a grant from the Knight Foundation, called The State Decoded. What I left out were numerous incredible projects, like when, at the age of 16, he decided to open up the city of Charlottesville’s code by manually scanning it and publishing it online, all because he was against a curfew the city had imposed on its young residents. He ultimately lost that battle, but that did not discourage him. He has been working on similar projects ever since. He was also one of the first bloggers in Virginia and continues to run several popular blogs to this day.

Even though he has recently been recognized for his work, (he was nominated “Champion of Change” by President Obama in 2011) Waldo has already been working on opening up his local governments in Virginia on his own initiative for years, working endless hours and often without pay. And now local and state governments have begun to take note. He has been invited to talk to state government officials across the country to help them open up their data. This is one of the things I would have loved to expand upon more in the video, but as any editors out there would know, you have to cut out a lot of things in the interests of time and story. After all, no one will watch a 15 minute video on YouTube. But I was very glad to hear him say that state governments are actually eager to open up their data to their citizens in a meaningful way. They often lack the expertise and capacity to do so rather than the willingness. That’s why they are seeking out people like Waldo to help them get started. And he is no longer the lone geek doing this work on his own. “It was pretty lonely doing open government work in Virginia in the nineties,” he laughs. But now, there is a whole global OpenGov community and he is able to collaborate with other developers across the country, and the world, many of whom he has connected with at TransparencyCamp and through Twitter.

To me, he is a shining example of what being an OpenGov Champion means. His only motives for doing this work have been his love of programming and his passion for transparency in government. He stands as proof that if you do what you love most, the rest follows.

Our OpenGov Champions are remarkable ordinary people who have done extraordinary things to open up our government. Get inspired by their stories and nominate someone in your community to become an OpenGov Champion.

A core mission of the Sunlight Foundation is to enable citizen participation through technology and lower the bar to access government. Through our free tools we're constantly looking for ways to produce a more transparent and accountable government. Today, we're proud to introduce Scout, a tool that allows you to create customized keyword alerts to notify you whenever issues you care about are included in legislative or regulatory actions. This project embodies our goals as an organization: anyone can now freely get the immediate access to information that previously required significant organizational capacity in your state capital or Washington, D.C.

Start by entering a keyword or phrase you would like to get updates about. Scout then saves your subscriptions and sends notifications via email or text message whenever the subscribed issue or bill is talked about in Congress, mentioned in the Federal Register or comes up in state legislation. Through your profile you can create as many alerts as you'd like and group them by tags with the additional option to make them public for others to follow your issues. Users can also complement a Scout subscription by adding optional external RSS feeds, such as press releases from a member of Congress or an issue-based blog.

One of our inspirations to create Scout was to help track when new exemptions were proposed to the Freedom of Information Act. We created a collection of alerts on the topic and anyone interested in the issue can get alerts along with our staff.

Not only has Scout proved useful in tracking issues in Sunlight's policy advocacy, but we've already used it to help change proposed laws. We used our alert for the phrase "552 of title 5," created to track newly proposed exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act, to alert expert allies on Freedom of Information about an overly broad exemption. Very quick work among a variety of staff, especially OpentheGovernment.org, led to a sign-on letter, thoughtful feedback to Congressional staff, and eventually, a much better bill. We conceived of Scout with just this kind of work in mind. Our assumption is that timely, focused updates on specific issues can help public scrutiny lead to better policy. With the recent FDA bill's FOIA exemption, this was certainly the case.

Our rapid alert system is built on a foundation of strong data including our Capitol Words site that indexes the Congressional Record, legislative text and summary information from GPO and GovTrack, full text search of bills in all 50 states (a first) from our Open States project, notices on upcoming floor debates and regulatory filings included in the Federal Register. It's an ambitious undertaking, but we're excited to bring together all these important sources to provide you the most comprehensive alert system yet.

Visit Scout to watch a video about how the tool can work for you and please join us on Tuesday, June 26 for a webinar about Scout from 1 to 2 pm ET. The session will cover basic skills such as search terms and bill queries as well as advance functions such as tagging subscriptions, merging outside RSS feeds and curating search collections.

Our in-house developers at Sunlight Labs built Scout with generous support from the Stanton Foundation. Its code is open source and reusable and also provides a developer mode for advanced users. The site utilizes a number of Sunlight APIs including: Capitol Words, Real Time Congress and Open States. Read more about the data behind Scout here.

Scout isn’t even out of beta, but it’s already having a positive impact on lawmaking. You can see how in this email that Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org sent to the FOI-L listserv yesterday:

This morning, the Senate approved an amendment from Senator Leahy that preserves FOIA in the FDA Safety and Innovation Act. The original language in the S.3187, Section 708 would have allowed the FDA to deny the public access to information relating to drugs obtained from a federal, state, local, or foreign government agency, if the agency has requested that the information be kept confidential. Senator Leahy’s amendment allows the FDA to obtain and protect drug inspection and investigation information from foreign governments under clear guidelines and with delimited protection time.

The original language was opposed in a letter by the openness and accountability community. Thanks to the hard work of Senator Leahy and his staff, and the collaboration of the HELP Committee leadership, the request from FDA for a carte blanche to withhold information from the public and Congress was denied. At the same time, the legitimate concerns regarding foreign governments were appropriately addressed.

Thanks to our colleagues in the openness and accountability community for your hard work on this.

Patrice’s colleague Amy Bennett sent a follow-up email that explained exactly how Scout was a part of this:

[W]e’d be remiss if we didn’t give credit to the Sunlight Foundation’s latest legislative language tool, Scout (http://scout.sunlightfoundation.com/), for alerting us to the existence of the original provision. You can use the tool to set up email alerts for key phrases or follow a particular bill. It covers Congress, regulations across the whole executive branch, and legislation in all 50 states.

We use Scout to get updates anytime Congress is considering expanding what can be withheld under the federal FOIA by setting up an alert that searches bills in Congress for the term “552 (b)” (thanks to a reform written into law last year, all new b3 statutes must cite FOIA – USC 552).

Obviously, an email alert can only go so far. It took the work of Patrice and Amy, like-minded organizations like Public Citizen, and members of Sen. Leahy’s staff to catch this problematic provision and correct it.

But that good work was made possible by the tip-off that Scout provided. It’s a great example of technology lowering barriers to participation in the democratic process, which ultimately results in better governance — and that idea is exactly why Sunlight exists.

The Office of Government Ethics took an important step towards greater transparency yesterday when they launched an improved system for online access to public financial disclosure reports.

The Sunlight Foundation has advocated for online access to personal financial disclosure reports for years. The House of Representatives started putting their reports online in 2008. The Senate and Judiciary do not provide online access to their reports.

The new system puts executive branch financial disclosure documents (SF 278 and OGE Form 278) in one place and simplifies the request and retrieval process. Requests for copies of certified public financial disclosure reports and Certificates of Divestiture for people nominated by the President to Senate confirmable executive branch positions can be submitted online, with access to results available in seconds. Ethics agreements and waivers are available on-demand and interested parties will not have to submit a formal request to view them.

In 2009 the White House began providing online access to SF 278 Request Forms. The move was an improvement over the old paper system, but the process was still time consuming and complicated. There was no central hub of documents. Instead, after a formal request was made the reports were located and sent via email. The new system represents a significant upgrade.

The information now available online covers individuals appointed after January 20, 2009. If you are looking for information prior to that date you will still need to submit a paper form, available on the OGE website.

We are happy that the executive branch is joining the House in making their reports readily available to the public. The Senate and Judiciary should join the Executive and House of Representatives and put their information online to ensure that the sun shines on financial disclosure reports across the government.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post. 

In case you missed it, I wanted to share this message that Ellen Miller, our Executive Director, sent out this morning:

I wanted to take the time to thank you for your support of our work this year. This has been a big year for Sunlight, but an even bigger year for transparency. This year, Americans awakened to the realities of money, power and politics, and we’re proud of the work we’ve done to promote transparency as a fundamental value of the movement to restore democracy.

Rather than rattling off all the projects we’ve worked on this year, I’d like to share a video with you that highlights some of the amazing work being done by Sunlighters -- not just our staff, but also the amazing transparency activists we work with throughout the country and the world.

We’ve only come this far because of your support -- and I hope you’ll contribute today to help us continue shining sunlight to new horizons: sunlightfoundation.com/donate/2011

Thanks for all of your support, and from all of the Sunlight team, happy holidays!

Ellen S. Miller Executive Director Sunlight Foundation

P.S. -- In the spirit of some holiday fun, Sunlight Labs has created an interactive holiday game that I'd like to share with you. Play it here: http://sunlightfoundation.com/happyholidays/

Earlier today, protestors from OccupyDC headed over to the offices of the Podesta Group, a high profile lobbying firm, before joining hundreds (possibly thousands) of other Occupy protesters from across the U.S. in shutting down K Street. There's another #occupy protest planned at the Supreme Court, highlighting the January 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision.

As we’ve written before, we’re excited to see a grassroots movement forming that addresses such wonky issues as campaign finance and lobbying reform. We hope that the Occupy protesters’ concerns on those issues don’t get lost in the coverage of the more colorful aspects of today’s actions. While the Occupy movement has become famous in part for its alleged lack of clear demands, we hope that the media coverage of the protests today highlights the need for real reform to bring transparency to lobbying and campaign finance.

K Street is (in)famous for being the epicenter of lobbying in Washington. In fact, the #OccupyDC group in McPherson Square also calls themselves @OccupyKSt, because ‘the money from Wall Street flows to K Street,’ disproportionately influencing the government. It’s no secret that there’s quite a bit of money around K Street -- we actually mapped the top lobbying firms when we did a teach-in at OccupyDC a while back.

The reality, though, is that we don’t even know where all the money is. For example, loopholes in lobbying registration rules mean that unless you spend 20% or more of your time lobbying, you don’t have to register. So powerful figures, including former congressmen -- like former Senator Dodd who now heads the movie industry’s lobby, or "historians" like former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich -- do not have to register as lobbyists. Which means we can't track their activity. It also means that, in effect, we rely on lobbyists to uphold an honor code of registering when appropriate. That's not a good recipe for public oversight. Sunlight’s been advocating for serious lobbying reform for years -- you can learn more (and join us!) here: http://sunlightfoundation.com/policy/lobbying/

Lobbying disclosure, of course, has been a problem since long before Occupy. The public has a right to know how special interests and lobbying help shape public policy—for better or worse. But it’s getting harder for us to get that information.

Last January, the Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission drastically changed the landscape of our election system by allowing corporations to make unlimited campaign ads—often without disclosing the donors who funded the ads. In the wake of that decision, the FEC has done next to nothing to create transparency, and the DISCLOSE Act, a piece of legislation intended to create disclosure in the wake of Citizens United, failed in the last Congress.

If Congress, the Supreme Court and the FEC are going to make it difficult to follow the money, then it’s imperative for watchdogs and journalists to follow the action. When it comes to knowing who's wielding influence in Washington, that action is lobbying. After last year’s Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission ruling, campaign finance and lobbying disclosure became even more closely linked. How? Lobbyists can—without ever saying a word—threaten that their clients will spend millions on ads if senators or representatives do not do what the lobbyist wants.

Imagine you’re a member of Congress. A lobbyist comes to you representing a powerful corporation and asks for your help on a bill provision. You’re not sure that bill provision best represents the interests of the people in your district, but the lobbyist points out that their client has a Super PAC that is willing to spend millions of dollars running ads in your district -- money that you can’t match. What’s more, because of how weak campaign finance disclosure laws are, that lobbyist might have an army of other corporations or wealthy individuals who also support the bill who could secretly funnel unlimited amounts of money to that Super PAC. What would you do?

Occupy Wall Street got the country talking about economic disparities and corporate accountability. We hope that today’s actions -- the Occupation of K Street -- fuels the conversation about money in politics and the need for reform.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

The Congressional Management Foundation announced its Golden Mouse Awards for the 112th Congress on October 23. The CMF began grading congressional websites in 2001 and announces the Golden Mouse Awards biannually to honor the best. Earlier this year, we conducted an investigation evaluating congressional committee websites.

Congressional websites have improved significantly since 2009, according to the  report. The most common grade jumped from an F up to a B between the 111th and 112th congresses. However, there is still room to grow in some significant areas. According to the report, many member websites "lack basic educational and transparency features." Alternatively, while members have been quick to utilize social media tools, committees have been slower to follow suit.

The CMF found that, when searching for information on their policy positions or votes, constituents look first at their member's websites. Despite this fact, many members have websites that do not provide useful information in a transparent way. For example, more than 40% of members do not post information about their votes, sponsored, or cosponsored bills. Additionally, 67% of member websites do not provide clear information directing constituents how to contact their member with casework requests.

In contrast,  most committees provide information expected by interested users in clear and readable formats. For instance, 90% of committees provide an archive of information on their hearings, and 78% have a video webcast feature. Committee websites lacked transparency in one major area- only 16% post information on individual legislators committee votes.

When it comes to social media adoption rates, the tables are somewhat turned. Individual members have taken to social media with gusto over the past two years, while committees are trailing behind. In 2009 only 21% of member websites linked to Facebook; that number is now 81%. Meanwhile, 71% of members link to a Twitter page and CMF found that 65% actively used the platform. Committees have been slower to adopt social media, with only 40% linking to Facebook and just 31% actively using Twitter.

During our own investigation, we found that, although there is wide variation in the quality of committee sites, there are some identifiable trends.

On the whole, House committee websites were superior to Senate sites. However, there was parity in certain areas. Both chambers lagged in making legislation, amendments, and markups available on their sites. Additionally, only four committees provided forms for whistleblowers to report issues. Like CMF, we found that committee sites had been slow to adopt social media, with the House being more advanced than the Senate. On the positive side,  every committee made it possible to view hearings online, although not all provided live webcasts.

The raw data from the investigation can be accessed here.