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 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

Andrew Noyes writing in Congress Daily notes that the e-government reauthorization (referring to the original e-gov act of 2002) is in doubt:

OMB officials and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman and ranking member Susan Collins have battled behind the scenes in recent months to reauthorize the E-Government Act of 2002 before President Bush leaves office, but a standoff in the Judiciary Committee has probably killed the bill, sources said Wednesday.

It seems that the issue in question is a somewhat relevant provision governing privacy impact assessments, proposed by Senator Leahy:

The staffer argued the amendment is unrelated to the e-government reauthorization itself, which has no Republican detractors. Leahy seems willing to sink the reauthorization if his amendment is not added, the aide said, noting that "he has taken a hostage, and has expressed a willingness to shoot it."

It's too bad the e-gov reauthorization looks at least temporarily sunk, it's the vehicle for all sorts of things we'd like to see, with improved language and guidance on sitemap protocols among them, which guides agencies to expose their data to search engines, the primary finding tool of today's online citizen.