All is not well in the Aloha state. “Sunshine” advocates including Rep. Barbara Marumoto are rising up to oppose a recent attack on Hawaii’s open government. A new bill that was introduced earlier this year is set to intentionally delay responses to public records requests. SB2858 “Creates a process for an agency to obtain judicial review of a decision made by the Office of Information Practices relating to the Sunshine Law or the Uniform Information Practices Act, and clarifies standard of review.” In other words the bill ironically referred to as “relating to open government” instead takes a jab at everything open and has been likened to a closed government bill.

In summary, SB2858 will make it more difficult for the public and media to find out what is going on in state government by:

• Delaying the release of information under the Uniform Information Practices Act.
• Forcing the public to spend money on legal fees in order to access data which should be made available in the first place.
• Giving agencies the freedom to challenge an Office of Information Practices (OIP) ruling in court.
• Setting state agencies in opposition against each other in a bid to comply with practices within the Uniform Information Practices Act.

It goes without say that if this bill is approved, Hawaii’s history of maintaining a decent record in keeping an open government will be tainted. Worse, we will have no idea what the government is doing and when it is doing what it’s doing -- unless of course if we are willing to go to court to find out. Effective July 1, 2030, the anti transparency bill sadly has the support of Gov. Neil Ambercrombie who is already said to be a secretive governor.

Allowing government agencies such as Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (a supporter of the bill) to appeal unfavorable Office of Information Practices rulings -- as this bill proposes to do -- shows that government is clearly putting their own first and the public second. Hawaii’s legislature has a Submit Online Testimony where the public can send in their testimonies and hopefully convince everyone involved that this bill is bad for transparency -- just as Common Cause Hawaii did.

 

Common Cause Hawaii Testimony on SB2858

Today the Sunlight Foundation launches our Open States iPhone and iPad app that puts the inner-workings of state legislatures in the palm of your hand. The free mobile app provides up to the minute information on your state representative's profile, legislation being considered, voting records, campaign finance totals and much more. The app launches with legislative data from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

In the past, this public information was often hard to find thanks to antiquated state websites, but with a community of volunteers, the Open States Project has built the only completely free and open resource for accessing legislative information in a uniform format across all states.

Whether your Capitol is just across town, over the river or 500 miles down the highway, the Open States app allows you to:

• Identify your state representatives, find their contact information and explore district geography with Google Maps.
• See voting records, bill sponsorships, committee assignments and campaign finance information for all elected representatives.
• Follow any state bill on its way to becoming a law, from introduction through committee hearings, floor votes, passage and signing by the governor.
• Read the latest policy news affecting your state from Stateline.org, an online publication of the Pew Center on the States.
• Schedules and maps of the state house, in the few states that publicize this information

Sunlight Labs developed the app with support from the Minnesota Historical Society, and it runs on Sunlight Labs’ Open States API. Supported in part by the work of volunteers, the Open States Project collects and scrapes legislative data from state legislatures across the country and makes it available online in a unified, reliable, developer-friendly format. Learn more online at the Sunlight Labs blog, start contributing to the project here or follow @openstates on twitter for the latest news. Next steps include working on an Android version, building out bill text search, creating a public website for the data and continuing to adapt to changes in each legislature.

Like the app, the Open States API is open source. NPR’s StateImpact project is already using the API to add legislative information to their online reporting, including in Ohio  and Idaho. Recently, The Chicago Tribune used it to analyze the Illinois Pension Code as part of an in-depth investigation. Sunlight previously developed other mobile apps for monitoring lawmakers: Congress for Android and Windows phones and Real Time Congress for iPhone, as well as Sunlight Health which helps people make more informed decisions about medical care.

In continuing with our series on OpenGovernment.org, this time we take a look at how you can learn more about your state representative. What is your district for example? If you are among the six states already highlighted in the OpenGovernment.org state profiles, you can search for your district using either your address or zip code. You will then be provided with information on your state legislature including Senate and Assembly. In case you are not sure who your House of Representative or Senator (in Congress) is, the search also gives you specific results right up to the national level.

Using our earlier example of SB 22 as a bill that is still being deliberated on, we are going to do a walk through on how you can engage your legislature regarding this bill (or any other). A click through the ‘recent actions’ shows the bills that had the most recent action taken on them. We can see that SB 22 was sponsored by Joan Ballweg (R-41) , Garey Bies (R-1) and Alberta Darling (R-8). What is cool about OpenGovernment.org is that is shows the key sponsors of a bill and includes their profiles to illustrate what they are interested in and the issues that are important to them. At the same time, if you are curious about the status of the bill, you can tell that it was last voted on on September 12 and was referred to a joint committee on Finance by committee on Senate Organization, with 5 Ayes and 0 Noes.

OpenGovernment.org summarizes the issues within a bill, providing you with a better understanding of what the bill is all about. So for SB 22, the main issues are Labor and Employment, Senior issues, state agencies, education, business and Consumers and insurance. Say you are passionate about labor and employment issues, you can contact Rep. Joan Ballweg (R-41), one of the co-sponsors of the bill, either through her District or Capitol address letting her know how you feel regarding your particular issue. The background information on a specific legislator provided by the site enables citizens to make informed outreach to their leaders. And for bloggers or political writers, it is a resourceful way of staying on top of time sensitive bills while following the influence behind the legislators. Also, constituencies governed by Rep. Ballweg can track her legislative profile, and see that she is a member of the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Rules, the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, and, of course, the Wisconsin Joint Legislative Council. With this kind of information, you now know that she is one of the Representatives with major influence, whose vote you may want to influence -- depending on what you are advocating for.

To top it all up, a history of all the bills that have been sponsored by a specific legislator, is displayed under ‘bills sponsored’. A quick look at the most recent bills sponsored by Rep. Joan Ballweg (R-41) all reveal that they all relate to education or insurance. The dynamics between legislators and their constituents does not always have to be complex. You can start by learning more about the people who draft the rules that govern you and Opengovernment.org helps you do just that!

In the next segment will talk about the most prevalent issues in states and how you can track the bills around them.

A new initiative to track, learn and share state legislative information was hatched last year when Open Government.org launched its website. Created by the Participatory Politics Foundation in partnership with Sunlight Foundation, OpenGovernment.org is a free and open-source public resource website for government transparency and civic engagement at the state and local levels. So far, portals for legislative data have been created for six states including California , Louisiana , Maryland , Minnesota , Texas and Wisconsin with plans to expand to all 50 states.

One of the most viewed bills on OpenGovernment.org so far has been SB 11 - the controversial bill about Wisconsin’s state finances and collective bargaining for public employees. The fact that it has been viewed 2,184 times is indicative of the public’s interest in learning more about the specifics of legislation that will affect them. Using state legislative data from Sunlight’s Open States Project, the site lets state-focused activists track updates to the bill, read aggregated news and blogger updates, and contact their state representatives.

To illustrate how OpenGovernment.org provides an interactive bill tracking experience, let’s take a look at an on-going bill. SB 22 , another Wisconsin bill proposes the creation of a Charter School Authorizing Board that provides additional charter school authorizers while eliminating the limit on the number of pupils who may attend virtual charter schools. Education bloggers interested in seeing any actions taken on the bill, can view the number of votes on it since it was introduced in February this year to its current status. You can also check out their free and open-source Miro Community for videos on various branches of state legislature to embed in your blog post.

For political bloggers and issue-based organizations, OpenGovernment.org offers a great way to stay current and updated on a given piece of legislation. If you’re a developer and interested in adding data to the site for the benefit of the public, check out OpenStates.org to learn more about what’s underneath the hood of OpenGovernment.org.

Perks, anyone?

And if you are still wondering why or how you should get involved, why not take a look at the perks of joining the OpenGovernment.org platform:

Badges: Still looking for cooler ways to be involved? How about you check out OpenGovernment.org’s state badges  promoting your use of open data with easy-to-embed code that you can use on either your news site or blog.

Email list: You can also sign up to keep up-to-date with developments this resource as they roll out to all 50 U.S. state legislatures and more than a dozen major cities.

Open Government Google group: If you prefer keeping the conversation going in the developers forum, you can join the Open Government Google group

This is the first of a weekly series on OpenGovernment.org and how you can use it to make state legislatures more interactive. Next week, we will take a look at members of state legislatures and how you can contact them.

Residents of Minnesota now have a new way to keep track of what’s happening in their state with the launch of OpenGovernment Minnesota. The “land of 10,000 lakes” is the latest state added to OpenGovernment, a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation, along with support from the Minnesota Historical Society.*

Visit MN.opengovernment.org to get the real story behind what's happening in government across the state via official government information, local news coverage, blog posts and social media alerts.

Writes David Moore on the OpenGovernment blog:

Now folks in Minnesota can track with ease everything their state legislature does — all the bills that are proposed, votes that are taken, money that was raised, and more. We’ve timed the launch of this, the sixth U.S. state on OpenGovernment, to coincide with the Netroots Nation conference ongoing this weekend in Minneapolis / St. Paul. We’re pleased to share this new public resource for accountability in government and citizen watchdogging with all the political bloggers & issue-based activists there.

The Sunlight Labs Open States project developed the legislative backend for OpenGovernment. Supported in part by the work of volunteers, the Open States project’s goal is to collect and scrape legislative data from all 50 state legislatures and make it available online in a unified, developer-friendly format.

* Update: Additional support from the Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program.

 

This year brings a landmark for the Sunlight Foundation. We've been hinting for some time that we're going to make a serious play in state government, and New Mexico is one of the first where we'll focus those efforts. As my colleague Noah wrote earlier this month, the state's House of Representatives has voted to expand the presence of webcams in its proceedings. It was an early sign during the 2010 legislative session that New Mexico's lawmakers are beginning to take open government seriously. It was a also welcome sign, but when the session ended last week it was clear that open-government advocates will remain busy in the 2011 session.

The state has been plagued by corruption and ethics investigations in recent years, and while the Sunlight Foundation doesn't have a dog in that particular fight we do recognize (and support) the role transparency can play in helping citizens hold their elected officials accountable. From Sunlight's perspective, there are a number of interesting questions raised by New Mexico's legislature and the "state of transparency" there, some unique to the Land of Enchantment and some that will be applicable in other locales as well. For starters, the state legislature is part time—they just completed a 30-day session (every other year it's 60 days). That's true for many states, but in New Mexico legislators aren't paid for their work in Santa Fe. It also means lawmakers have precious little time to consider legislation. As you're aware, the Sunlight Foundation has long called on Congress to post legislation online for 72 hours prior to a vote. How would such a rule be feasible in a short legislative session like the one underway in New Mexico? On a more granular level, the state has a foundation of legislative transparency. Legislation has been posted online in the state for years, and that service includes versioning (a reader can see what language was struck and what language was added) as a bill progresses. The Legislative Council Service (similar to the Congressional Research Service) supports legislators, and the Legislative Finance Committee reports on bills in much the same way as the Congressional Budget Office. Documents from the LCS and the LFC are published online as well (and on the same page as legislation for related bills). However, none of this information is available in XML—plain text and PDF are the only options.

Again, as Noah noted, the New Mexico House will start to publish roll call votes online, but the Senate has yet to approve a similar measure. House Resolution 3, however, is vague in its wording, and there's no legislative mandate that requires the vote data be released in a format that complies with the Principles of Open Government Data. Will developers, like my colleagues in Sunlight Labs or at OpenCongress, be able to build projects around that information?

As worried as we might be about access to information and data formats, the Sunlight Foundation's mission is also to increase citizen participation in government. New Mexico's geography and the part-time legislature make citizen participation difficult. Lawmakers make an effort to hold "interim" committee meetings in communities across the state while not in session, and it's not uncommon for Senators and Representatives to host town hall meetings as well. But the sheer distances between Santa Fe and communities in the state preclude most ordinary citizens from engaging in the legislative process. The same effect was true for Congress before C-SPAN came along. In an attempt to remedy this situation, open government advocates have asked state legislators to stream committee meetings and floor sessions online. While the House has approved a resolution requiring streaming of some committee meetings, the Senate has not (both chambers stream audio and video from the floor).

There were some interesting developments during the session, and the Legislature sent several related pieces of legislation to Gov. Bill Richardson's desk for signature. The first, HB 165, would establish whistle-blower protection for state employees who report or refuse to participate in an "unlawful or improper act." The second, SB 44/211, sets standards of conduct for government and elected officials (for example, requiring disclosure of conflicts of interest). The third would create a "sunshine portal" where financial information for state agencies is posted online. In addition, the sunshine portal would feature information on lobbyists and open meetings. If Gov. Richardson signs SB 195, the portal would open by July 2011.

Two other pieces of legislation failed this session: one that would ban campaign contributions from lobbyists and state contractors, and another that would create an independent ethics commission.

In addition, a piece out yesterday argues that a new law requiring open conference committees is at the heart of the Legislature's budget impasse during the 30-day session.Walt Rubel, a veteran reporter, writes on the budget process:

This year the House came up with a third choice - do nothing. The Senate sent its revised bill over, and the House sat on it until the session ended. No conference committee was called. Forced to conduct the public's business in public, lawmakers decided not to conduct it at all. And when the closed-door sessions failed to produce a compromise, the 30-day budget session ended without a budget.

Regardless, I feel like the session was an incredible win for open-government advocates, in part due to the work of the American Independent News Network and the New Mexico Independent. They asked us to sit in on several liveblogging sessions, where we experienced first-hand the concerns of New Mexican bloggers and citizens. They helped pioneer this type of coverage in the Roundhouse, and it will serve as a model for successfully interacting with readers. During the final hours of the legislative session, several lawmakers participated in the liveblog as well. That's another welcome sign, and the sort of engagement the Sunlight Foundation likes to see.

Tired of waiting for your city to become more transparent? Tony Webster, John Schrom and Ryan Johnson decided to take responsibility for their city of Minneapolis and create a software platform in order to "open municipal government, encourage clean and information-based elections, track issues and inspire community engagement and public participation." Their new project is called Open Minneapolis.

Webster, having formerly interned for a city council member in college, had seen first hand how much information never made it to the public or was difficult to access.

Talking with Webster on the phone he explained the rationale behind the project. "There is so much that happens behind the scenes that we don't know about. There has been a lot of great projects at the federal level, and in some cases state level, but not usually in Minnesota. I really wanted that transparency to come to Minneapolis."

The project has been active since July 2009 and this week they launched a site listing their goals and showing some fantastic preview images. As a journalist, having worked with numerous city and state websites across the country, I would eat my hat in exchange for this type of data accessibility and clear user interface.

While all the goals of Open Minneapolis are important to me as a journalist and a citizen one is particularly catching my eye: the implementation of a standardized XML format for public meetings.

Municipal meetings are difficult enough to sit through in person. Waiting to mine a PDF release for the data you need is even worse. With the implementation of an XML format for public meetings analysis of this data will become a breeze.

Imagine visualizations of city council actions going back years or interactive flow charts showing how a particular proposal was fought over. Ideas that are possible now but only with a disproportionate amount of work - an XML standard would make it straightforward and quick.

The team behind Open Minneapolis has formed a charitable non-profit, CivicEquity, that would oversee such a standard as it expanded beyond Minneapolis. CivicEquity would also distribute the software Open Minneapolis is based on: the team will release it as open-source for any non-commercial use!

As the Sunlight Foundation expands its activities into states and cities it is projects like these that will truly make our mission successful.

If you're interested in policy work, web development, have legal expertise or data acquisition experience head on over to their site and get involved today. The team has a grant application to the 2010 Knight News Challenge - their grant proposal is here - please rate it!

This year has seen more attention than ever given to transparency - most focused on the White House and federal government.  That's no surprise given the years of "rain-checked" reforms.  Change is needed at a fast pace and in more areas.  But the pressure to deliver extends beyond Washington DC.  State legislatures across the country are starting to reexamine their own data, transparency rules and regulations. Earlier this month, Minnesota legislative staff met with department heads, IT experts and non-profit leaders to discuss possible changes.

The state legislature in Minnesota finds itself in a challenging situation. Engaged citizenry who are clamoring for more access, more data and a better user interface for the legislature’s web site versus a state budget that has been cut down to the bone by massive state deficits as far as the eye can see.

Legislative staff see the need for additional transparency and real time data but are challenged to deliver with scarce financial resources on one hand and a deeply federated departmental system on the other.  Politicians are loathe to legislate unfunded mandates (or a funded one for that matter).

Let’s be clear though: if introducing data standards and increasing transparency costs government more in the long run - they’re doing it wrong.

Dan McCreary, Semantic Solutions Architect at Syntactica in Minneapolis, attended the meeting with legislative staff.  McCreary estimates that “$100 million per year in Minnesota alone” could be saved if the legislature adopted “National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) standards for all statewide data exchanges."  NIEM standards are developed jointly by the US Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security.

Donna Roy, Chair of the NIEM National Priority Exchange Panel says the "[Minnesota] Department of Public Safety anticipates saving over $10 million over a three-year period by using the XML Data Model rather than developing its own statewide standard for information systems."  That's just one change in one department!  If state legislatures can save money by sharing information between departments they can definitely find the money to share that information with the public.

State legislators need to start seeing transparency as improving service while cutting costs. Without the grassroots backing strong legislation, change will be slow or non-existent in Minnesota.

I'll be diving deeper into the transparency movement in Minnesota in future posts.  Tell me about your challenges or success stories in getting data out of the legislature.  Comment below or reach me on Twitter @noahkunin.

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!

Texas' Comptroller Susan Combs has started a new initiative to bring the state's budget out in the open by launching Open Book Texas.  Combs has been dedicated to more transparency in the budget process, earlier this year she launched a searchable database of state spending called Where the Money Goes.  The creation of this site taught the agency a lot about making government more efficient.

"Where the Money Goes provides transparency to taxpayers, and we discovered that our emphasis on transparency made our own operations more transparent to us," Combs said. "We were able to better analyze where and how we were spending money within our agency and where and how we could save."

Combs' agency says it has saved $4.8 million and identified an additional $3.8 million in expected cost savings. Some examples of the cost savings at the Comptroller's office include saving $73,000 by consolidating multiple contracts for toner cartridges and establishing separate post office boxes to receive different types of tax payments, thereby avoiding having to spend $328,000 to buy and maintain a new mail sorter. These savings allow the agency to strengthen core functions without requesting additional funding from the Legislature.

"Now we are moving forward to apply some of those same transparency and ‘buying smart' strategies that have been successful at our office to take an unprecedented look at Texas government spending," Combs said. "Our Smart Buy initiative has already begun digging through what state agencies spend annually for goods and services."

Another part of the site, Texas Transparency Check-up, is dedicated to making local governments more transparent.  With this site you can see which local governments have their budgets online, get a step by step guide to make your city more transparent, and share your story on advocating for more information.

The final part of the new site, Single Set of Books, is a planning site for state agencies to standardize the way they report financial information.  The goal is to make all the state's financial books uniform so it will be easier to see what Texas' financial situation really looks like.

Everything about this project is fantastic.  Of course, the next step is to make these sites more interactive and more supportive of citizen input.  Financial transparency is one of the easiest and more popular steps that can be made to make citizens feel their money is valued.  Budgetary processes should be transparent, everybody pays taxes and that means they are invested in what the state does.  So good job Texas for not only making their process more transparent but advocating for more transparency across the state.