From our perspective, with the appointment of White House Counsel Bob Bauer and Steven Croley to the Domestic Policy Counsel, we have just lost an important fight about how the Administration will handle the duties of ‘ethics czar’ post Norm Eisen’s tenure. It certainly looks like the White House's commitment to a more transparent government is teetering.

From an outsider’s perspective it’s clear. Instead of having single touch point within the Administration we will now be working with one person who already has more than a full-time job, and an academic with no government experience. Sorry, but this doesn’t add up to a strong continuing commitment by the Administration to these issues. This concern is magnified manifold when Eisen’s key successor – Bauer -- can hardly be described as having the DNA of a ‘reformer.’  This is the man who invented the rationale for the acceptance of “soft money’’ – unregulated (chiefly corporate) funds that flooded elections to the tune of $1.5 billion between 1992 and 2002, and the man who sided with arch conservatives in their defense of lack of transparency.

Even before this transition, we’ve been shaking our heads.  After making some dramatic statements and issuing important directives, and taking some very positive initial first steps, the White House has already fallen short on delivery of the things we have been promised. We’re now more than 18 months into this Administration, and particularly now, we are wondering what is going on.

We’ve noticed that the data isn’t piling up over at Data.gov. Still only 1 percent of the files are raw data, all the rest are good only if you want to build maps. We’ve noticed that the compromise the White House crafted (or agreed to) on the failed DISCLOSE Act did nothing to either improve it or pass it. We’ve noticed that the White House has done nothing to help move fundamental lobby reform in Congress, or even ask the Congress to make it a priority to pass earmark transparency laws, something the President even called for in his State of the Union Address. We’ve noticed that President’s campaign promise to establish an Ethics.gov appears to be dead. And more.

Sunlight is very concerned about this turn of events. We will be more than happy to be shown that we're wrong.

On June 15th, President Obama addressed the nation, referring to the oil spill and the failed Minerals Management Service, and said:

But it’s now clear that the problem there ran much deeper, and the pace of reform was just too slow.

Given that admission, we're surprised to learn that the White House is turning away from having a single dedicated staffer overseeing ethics and government reform, and shifting his portfolio to two others with other responsibilities.

If the administration's commitment to government reform was insufficiently focused in the face of the Interior Department's longstanding regulatory failures, how is it an appropriate response to divide responsibilities among multiple staffers?

Champagne corks are popping on K Street as the White House's ethics chief Norm Eisen is heading out with an appointment as ambassador to the Czech Republic. The New York Times reports that heavywieght Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta is calling Eisen's departure, "the biggest lobbying success [lobbyists] had all year."

Eisen spearheaded major White House efforts to increase transparency and slow the movement from government to the lobbying sector. These projects included the online publication of White House visitor logs, lobbyist contact disclosure for Recovery Act projects and TARP money, the Open Government Directive and imposing tight controls on the hiring of lobbyists and the contacting of former officials turned lobbyists.

The ethics portfolio is being handed over to White House Counsel Bob Bauer, a Democratic Party fixture and no innovator in the ethics and transparency arena. Little more need be said aside from the ringing endorsement given by Podesta to Eisen's departure and Bauer's assuming his duties.

Podesta's crowing is the only warning signal we need to know that the very important transparency policies pursued by this administration are in serious danger.

Photo: Waldo Jaquith

This Sunshine Week was a particularly successful (and busy!) time for Sunlight. We helped usher in new transparency legislation, launched a nation-wide grassroots campaign, launched a new design contest, joint led a crowdsourced search for government data, met with editorial boards and more. No wonder we’re all exhausted this Friday afternoon.

Here’s a more granular look at what we accomplished this week:

For Sunlight’s Communications team, Sunshine Week began early, with extensive outreach to editorial boards, reporters and columnists. This strategy paid off, as Sunday’s kick off of Sunshine Week by newspapers across the country included many mentions of Sunlight’s work. (You can read all of our mentions on our site -- and note we’re still updating the list.)

On Monday, John Wonderlich, Gabriela Schneider and I met with an editorial writer Washington Post to discuss initiatives we support that would further improve public access to government information including the Public Online Information Act.

That bill was introduced at a press conference on Tuesday (under a transparently clear sky) on Capitol Hill. I joined Rep. Steve Israel and the Personal Democracy Forum’s Andrew Rasiej (who is also an adviser to Sunlight) in announcing this landmark legislation. You can watch our press conference if you want to know more details about this groundbreaking legislation.

On Wednesday, Sunlight Labs launched our fourth official contest: Design for America. Part contest, part festival, the Design for America contest's intent is to inspire the design community to tell great stories about how our government works, what our government does, and what it could do. It's a contest as much about possibility as transparency, and with categories ranging from infographics to web design, there's plenty for all to compete.

Also on Wednesday, we joined the Center for Public Integrity in crowdsourcing our Data Mine project, a new online series identifying inaccessible or difficult to use information from the federal government. We need your tips on what federal government records, databases, and filings should be open to the public – join us to help so  you can continue to read about public government data that we still can’t access. Follow  Jim Morris’ posts on the Reporting Group site, like his most recent  report.

On Thursday, Sunlight’s Engagement team kicked off our new Public=Online campaign . Jake Brewer led a roundtable discussion at Google’s D.C. headquarters, with Jose Antonio Vargas from Huffington Post; Jim Harper from Cato Institute and WashingtonWatch.com; Ginny Hunt from Google’s Public Sector Lab and Ryan Hopkins of Public Square Project in Pittsburgh. Public=Online is a completely non-partisan campaign with the first goal of making government transparency a major issue in the upcoming mid-term elections. We hope you’ll sign the pledge and join us.

I traveled to Boston that day to meet with the Boston Globe editorial board, speak with fellows at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, and at an MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media Forum.

Our Engagement team also organized a Sunshine Week Blogswarm, in which about 50 bloggers across the country pledged they would blog about the importance of transparency to them. Look for a "Local Sunlight" blog post early next week by Nisha Thompson with a roundup.

Today, John Wonderlich joined White House Special Counsel to the President for Ethics and Government Reform, Norm Eisen, and Jim Harper from Cato and WashingtonWatch.com (which I should note is a Sunlight grantee) at the OpenTheGovernment.org “Building Transparency” panel at the Center for American Progress.

Whew! What a week.

Early this morning, the White House took a huge step toward a more transparent government by announcing a historic new policy to voluntarily disclose White House visitor access records.  Each month, records of visitors from the previous 90-120 days will be made available online.

From the President's statement:

For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis.  We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside it.  Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process.

Aside from a small group of appointments that cannot be disclosed because of national security imperatives or their necessarily confidential nature (such as a visit by a possible Supreme Court nominee), the record of every visitor who comes to the White House for an appointment, a tour, or to conduct business will be released.  Read the full policy here.

The Administration has also agreed with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) to settle four pending cases requesting specific White House visitor access records, including those dating from the Bush administration (read the transmittal letter here). We have provided CREW with the records relating to their requests....

There are a couple of important things to note. First, I understand that the president was personally involved in pushing this new policy forward and that generally around the White House there was not a lot of sympathy for this dramatic change.  This is very significant and illustrates a fundamental commitment by this president to the campaign pledges he made toward openness of government.

Second, the White House has given itself wiggle room in that they will exercise discretion in deleting the names of certain visitors -- personal friends, national security related meetings, and for some other reasons. We are going to trust them to make the right decisions.  (We don't need to know, don't want to know the name of Sascha and Malia's friends as one example.) One misstep and the good will we are offering them right now goes out the window.

Third, there is a substantial delay in making this information available to the public, 90-120 days. This latter point does give me some considerable pause. I understand that it will take at least 60 days for the Secret Service records to make their way to the White House and then some time to clean the data of personal information like social security numbers and phone numbers, but I would also bet it would be pretty darn easy to design a system that could provide that information on a daily basis. (Why shouldn't the White House have access to the back end database that the Secret Service uses on a daily basis?) Hopefully, the White House will look into technological fixes for what they now assume will be a manual review and cleansing of the records. Real time, online is the standard to which we should hold all government information. That's what "public" information means in the 21st century.

That critique aside, this is indeed a historic step. This kind of disclosure pioneered by the White House can keep government strong, keep citizens informed,  provide an opportunity for all of us to monitor at close hand the work of the White House, providing an insurance policy for our citizens against those who want to keep them in the dark.

By now, you may have seen that the White House has updated the stimulus lobbying rules to expand the communications ban to all parties, not just registered lobbyists, and has instituted a more focused approach to the ban on communications. You can read about it at the White House's blog or in John Wonderlich's post from Friday.

Michael Stern wrote about whether the stimulus lobbying rules will now apply to lawmakers as well as lobbyists and others attempting to influence to stimulus spending and grant awarding process.

The Washington Examiner denounced the new rules as an attack on political speech in an Editorial.

The American League of Lobbyists praised the updates to the rules in a statement from President David Wenhold.

The Open House Project Google Group hosts an interesting conversation between Michael Stern, Gary Bass, and Mark Tapscott about the new rules.

Recently, the White House and a trio of groups -- American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Citizens for Responsibility in Washington (CREW), and the American League of Lobbyists (ALL) -- have been in conflict over new rules on lobbying the administration in relation to the stimulus bill. On Friday, Norm Eisen, special counsel to the president for ethics and government reform, hosted a meeting with representatives from these three dissenting organizations. While the meeting may not have resolved the policy differences between the two sides, it did provide a moment for White House to live up to the standards that they are trying to set.

The White House blog carries an update on the meeting from Eisen, in which he notes the topic of discussion, the places of agreement and disagreement, and the people attending the meeting. This is very good example of how meetings with government officials should occur -- with full transparency of who is taking part and what is being discussed. Great to see that a meeting to discuss the necessity of lobbying rules can be a shining example for lobbying contact disclosure.

Eisen also noted that the administration is looking "to hear from everyone affected during the 60-day initial evaluation period for the stimulus lobbying restrictions."