Even though TransparencyCamp 2013 is roughly 12 months away, we’re already thinking ahead to how we can make next year’s event even better.

Our Labs team just published a round-up of “The Tech Behind TransparencyCamp”. Want to learn more about the TCamp web and mobile sites, the incredible level of detail that went into optimizing registration (not a joke), and our choice to use Etherpad over other wiki/note-taking options? Jeremy Carbaugh has your answers and more, and gives a sneak peek at what we’re thinking for next year.

We also want to hear from you. If you attended TCamp, please let us know what you think by taking a minute or two to complete this short survey: http://snlg.ht/TCamp12Survey. Last year’s survey results had a direct impact on this year’s Camp: So, for those of you who appreciated our abundance of maps and wayfinding materials, noticed an uptick in student participation, and enjoyed the lightning talks, you can thank your fellow TCampers for their input.

Some of our user-directed signage in the wild. We renamed all classrooms with new TCamp names based on which floor of the building they were located on to improve findability. Great success over last year! Original picture and more TCamp snaps on Flickr.

Sunlight closed its doors today to take a rest after last weekend, but still I find myself pouring over Twitter and through Flickr, soaking in TransparencyCamp. TCamp 2012 was by and far the best Camp we’ve ever held, if your tweets and notes and contributions and photos and energy and exclamation points and vowed next steps are to be believed -- and I think they are.

Consider: The earliest TCamps brought people together who defined the leading edge of “opengov” in the US at the time, drawing together about 100 to 150 Campers. In 2011, we leapfrogged, gathering 200+ Campers together and opening the door to more local and international conversation. But this year was something else: Over April 28th and 29th, we brought together over 400 people from 27 countries and over 26 states to discuss the present and future of government transparency in the US and all over the world. At this point, the numbers no longer just reflect TransparencyCamp: They show that the movement as a whole is growing. For a good snapshot, check out this most excellent TransparencyCamp 2012 recap video:

Unconferences really are fueled by the participants, and so I don’t say lightly that it is because of each and every person who attended that the TCamp experience was so positive and promising. In our staff debrief this week, Sunlighters were enthusiastic to point out that the level of dialogue and debate at this year’s Camp was like nothing before. Many people shared with me variations of a similar story, one that exemplifies one of my favorite rules of unconferencing: “Everyone who is in the room is supposed to be there.” The story usually goes that in some mindblowing session about legislative data or crazy opengov tactics or the future of journalism and government accountability, one attendee or another begins to tell a story about what they’ve heard about the opengov situation overseas, in a country like Malaysia, only to have someone tap them on the shoulder and say, “I’m from Malaysia.” After this weekend, I think it’s safe to say that’s an authentic TransparencyCamp experience.

This is the new wave of TransparencyCamp: leveraging the power of face-to-face interaction to bust borders between countries and fields of work, overcome technical and procedural hurdles, and get into the kind of creative problem-solving that actually solves problems. We took a lens to these and other themes in our concluding session where we asked those Campers brave and caffeinated enough to last to the very end shared what they planned to do in the next week, month, and year after TCamp. Here are some gems I picked up from this session and throughout the conference:

• Based on a conversation driven by a representative from Wikimedia, several Campers are going to look at how to create a global multilingual TransparencyCamp wiki to log resources, conversation, and best practices.
• Kevin Curry, creator of CityCamp and Program Director of Code for America’s Brigade team, said that he’ll be launching a FOIA Brigade to help cities open data related to their FOI laws.
• Jeanne Holm, the evangelist for Data.gov, launched a new website at TransparencyCamp: Developer.data.gov and discussed Data.gov’s investment in exploring open sourced technology.
• mySociety.org's Tom Steinberg announced his intention to develop an open source, collaboratively built platform between now and TransparencyCamp 2013, with the hope of showing it off at next year’s unconference.
• Matthew McNaughton, a TCamp11 veteran from Jamaica, shared that he's going to explore how to bring the Open311 system to his home country.
• An army of people -- women, men, old, young, US nationals, and others -- stood up and told the crowd “I’m going to start coding.” And the folks who were already coding, like one of our lightning talk speakers, Juan-Pablo Velez, said, “I’m going to try to build the civic hacking movement at home.”
• And to underscore a point I'll make below, many folks expressed their interest in bringing TCamp itself home. Here are the various dream Camps that we might see coming into the world in the next 12 months:

TransparencyCamp Malaysia
TransparencyCamp Latin America
TransparencyCamp Georgia
TransparencyCamp Europe
TransparencyCamp Hawaii

I shared a commitment of my own, too: After this Camp, I’m going to publish all the documentation we’ve created about how to run a transparency unconference online on the TransparencyCamp website. Inspired by the participants who, like Pedro Markun and Daniela Silva, were so excited to bring TransparencyCamp home, they made a session out of it, and by the participants in my “Meta-TransparencyCamp: Unconference Organizing” session, it seems like the logical next step.

What will you do after TransparencyCamp? Let us know. From planning to implementation, we’re interested in following these projects and others. Whether or not you joined us in DC for Camp, be sure to share what you're up to by joining and posting to the TransparencyCamp Google Group.

Being exposed to all the great minds at TCamp -- representing local, state, national, international, journalistic, academic, technical, and political interests -- was an incredibly humbling and inspiring experience. Thanks for reminding me why I do the work I do. Hope to see you in 2013.

This post was written by Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey. A version was cross-posted on Greater Greater Washington where Matt is a contributor. 

Washington, DC has a unique form of hyper local government.  Advisory Neighborhood Commissions  are psuedo-legislative bodies that represent neighborhood clusters and weigh in on a variety of local issues and provide constituent services. ANCs are made up of single member districts with each commissioner representing around 2,000 residents. There are currently 37 Commissions spread across the city.

The chairman of one of these commissions stole about $30,000 from his ANC last year. DC agencies struggle to provide enough oversight of dysfunctional ANCs. The District can start to increase accountability and transparency by making ANC financial reports available online.

ANCs must provide the DC Auditor with quarterly financial reports. The DC Auditor is responsible for auditing the financial information, maintaining a database of the information, and ensuring that the reports are in compliance.

It would be a small step to also make this information readily available to the public. The press and interested members of the public could then monitor the ANC financial reports and identify mistakes, omissions, and inconsistencies that may have been missed.

Under the current system, the DC government is not providing the resources required for adequate oversight. The size and scope of the ANC system outweighs the resources dedicated to overseeing it. The DC Auditor has many other responsibilities and the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, charged with administrating ANCs, only has two full-time staff members.

With financial information effectively hidden from the public, it takes extremely diligent individuals significant effort and time to uncover improper or missing information. In September 2011, the Washington Times discovered that the DC auditor approved ANC financial reports that were missing basic information, proper signatures, or evidence of tax deductions. The Times also reported that the Office of Advisory Neighborhood Commissions doesn't maintain records from the ANCs.

In the ANC 5B scandal, the DC Auditor initiated an audit after failing to receive financial reports for 3 consecutive quarters. The DC auditor currently posts a list detailing if and when ANCs submitted their financial reports.

If the database were available online, the public could have more easily and quickly found out about the DC Auditor's and the ANCs' failings, without having to rely on intrepid reporters sifting through hidden data.

Making this database available online should not place an undue burden on individual ANCs or the DC Auditor. But it will allow the press and public to better scrutinize these elected officials. Knowing that their records are easily available to the public may also encourage ANCs to follow proper financial procedure.

The ANC system is due for change. Putting these documents online would be a small step in the right direction.

Last week, I blogged about a somewhat unusual event going down this Wednesday: DC Arts Advocacy Day. It’s an event close to home for Sunlight, but our participation is far from sentimental. The DC Advocates for the Arts, who put on Arts Advocacy each year, have a clear stance that increasing government transparency is part of their vision for long-standing changes to the the government works with and supports artists. Here’s an excerpt from their Advocacy primer from last year:

We ask that the District make public the programming and granting program budgets for Arts and Humanities support in the District, and encourage public input in any revisions of those programs.

Sunlight is one of 15 other local groups partnering with the DC Advocates for the Arts for this event because we support their call for budgetary transparency. If you’re a local and you’re interested in showing your support for open government in the District, please join us at the event tomorrow. At noon, we’ll be gathering in front of the John A. Wilson Building to hear from arts and transparency advocates -- and might event get to take in some surprise entertainment. I’ve posted a recap of the details below.

Hope to see you there!

DC Arts Advocacy Day

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Public Gathering & Statements: 12PM - 1PM

John A. Wilson Building (the District’s city hall)

Full disclosure: I've received funding from the DC Commission for the Arts & Humanities and sit on the board of the DC Advocates.

Although we preach the importance of public meetings, we recognize that there are some legitimate frustrations to be had with their openness. For instance, a lot of public meetings are boring. And long. And, critics are right: public meetings aren’t necessarily the best format for every single deliberation made by a governing body.

But most of these “issues” are besides the point. As our Policy guy, John, noted, the need for public meetings doesn’t mean that every conversation needs to happen in public, but that all the official meetings should. That’s the basis behind our push to open up the meetings of the “Super Committee” -- the body created by Congress to deal with our national debt -- and an important factor to consider in the arrests made at a DC local gov meeting in June.

I wrote about the event shortly after it happened, but the quick version goes like this: Two reporters were arrested by Park Police at a Taxicab Commission public meeting at the request of members of the commission: the first for taking photographs of the meeting. The second, for filming the arrest of the first. The charge? Disorderly conduct and unlawful entry...which, at a public meeting (and with video evidence of how they actually acted), is absurd. Thankfully, the charges have since been dropped and there’s been a lot of conversation about the future of the Taxicab Commission (Council Member Tommy Wells wants to scrap it, local blogger David Alpert wants to reform it), but there's been little conversation about the impact of this event on DC’s public meetings law.

The gray zone in this issue is that DC’s Open Meetings Act doesn’t actually specify whether or not meetings can be photographed or recorded. But, as the DC Open Government Coalition pointed out, “The absence of an explicit statutory mandate to allow recordings of open meetings does not translate into a prohibition [of recordings].”

Following pressure from the media and advocacy groups like the DC Open Government Coalition and the National Press Photographers Association, on August 1st the Taxicab Commission issued a revised policy on public attendance, behavior, and recording during meetings:

Pursuant to section 742 (the “Open Meetings Act”) of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act ... all meetings and hearings of the Commission are open to the public. Also, a recording (or transcript) of the proceedings will be made available to the public free of charge.

A member of the public, including any representative of the media, may record or photograph the proceedings of the Commission at an open meeting by means of a tape recorder or any other recording device so long as the person does not impede the orderly conduct of the meeting, by, for instance, creating excessive noise that impairs the ability of others to hear the proceeding or using excessively bright artificial light.

The policy goes on to review all the ways the commission does not have to support public recordings, but open government activists in America’s littlest state should still take heart. Perhaps this renewed policy will set a precedent for the broader Open Meetings Act, or will at least inspire District residents and activists to advocate for one. In their statement about the Taxicab Commission debacle, the DC Open Government Coalition highlighted the fact that the role of director for DC’s Open Government Office has been vacant for almost 4 months. The office, they note, was established as the public’s primary means of enforcing the Open Meetings Act and funding for the Office has already been provided.

Filling this office is a step DC can take to show their commitment to open government and to reduce the “burden” of meeting citizens’ requirements for greater transparency. DC is by no means the only governing body wrestling to adjust to the increased demands on and attention paid to its public meeting and public records laws: this sort of news is making headlines all across the country. The important thing is that, going forward, DC and other governments do find ways to adapt to the Age of the Interwebs and the increasing expectations constituents have for public access -- and that they take advantage of the free tools (YouTube...) and advocacy groups out there offering help.

*Photo credit: matthewgriff, via Flickr.

Whether it is a top-down issue or the other way round, we can not help but notice a disconnect between what Florida's Governor -- Rick Scott preaches and what he practices. Earlier this year, one of his top aides avoided using emails, because they create a paper trail. And the mixed messages ranging from designing Florida Has a Right to Know , to imposing fees on public records that were previously free, are not helping.

• A private company that provided e-mail services for Governor Rick Scott’s transitional administration “accidentally” deleted all emails from the Florida governor-elect's office soon after he took office. Peter Schorsch is wondering whether this was a genuine accident considering the governor’s disregard for open government laws. See how he equates it to the ‘dog ate my homework’ situation on SaintPetersblog.

• The city of Laurel in Maryland has amended their background check law on all candidates vying for city council office. After consulting with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the city’s mayor Craig Moe, said the original law was meant to increase transparency to the election process but now feels that conducting a background check could be considered discriminatory. Gordon Basichis notes one plausible aspect of the amendment law; which is the immediate removal from office, of anyone convicted of a crime while in office. Read on at Corra Daily Planet.

• Campaign finance laws in Fulton County, Georgia could soon see some change. A resolution created to stop any corporation, officer, agent or individual making campaign contributions or gifts from seeking county contracts, is under consideration by the county’s Board of Commissioners. Already proposed in Indiana, and found problematic in Colorado, the new resolution seeks to regulate conduct of campaign financing and contributions. Stefan Passantio is screaming “fire” about this “pay-to-play” ordinance so head on over to the Pay to Play Law blog to see why.

• Citizens in New Mexico will now be able to access complaints against police officers under a new ruling by the state’s Supreme Court. Alicia Feichtmeir, an attorney in litigation and dispute resolution shares that information contained in the citizens’ complaints belong to the citizen in question regardless of whether or not the allegations made a true or false. See how she compares this ruling to the Washington’s Public Record’s Act on Local Open Government Blog.

• John Knutsen a Puyallup, Washington Councilmember was awarded a key award by the Washington Coalition for Open Government for opting out of informal discussions that happen outside of the scheduled council meetings. The informal meetings, also known as rolling meetings are used by some councilmembers in groups of two to three to discuss official issues, without the burden of notifying the public. For more on how open government supporters are praising the Councilmember’s action as a transparency effort, see Puyallup NOW.

 

We’ve spent a lot of time making general reflections about the experience we shared with some of you at TransparencyCamp, but haven’t really covered the specifics -- the sessions, people, and takeaways -- that made our great Camp just so darn great.

This post won’t cover all of the above, but it will highlight some pretty special folks who added volumes to the conversations and energy of the weekend: our travel scholars!

With your help, Sunlight was able to take the edge off of travel expenses for 11 people journeying from across the country (and then some) to Camp. We promoted the scholarship program publicly on the TransparencyCamp website and received some fabulous applications from activists, academics, developers, leaders, n00bs (er, newbies), students, lawyers, and so on. For those of you who want to see where your donations went and for the rest of you curious folk (who might want to see this program expanded in the future), here’s a snapshot of our scholars:

Mike Sherry

Hails from: Prairie Village, Kansas
How he works for #opengov: Mike has been a journalist for nearly 25 years. He currently serves as the Executive Director (and Founder) of the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit dedicated to watchdog reporting in Kansas and Missouri, though he's also known as a founding member of the Missouri Sunshine Coalition and for his byline in several midwestern and DC-based publications. (Perhaps you've heard of CQ?) Mike came to TCamp to connect with others passionate about open public records and data.

Stephen Jackson

Hails from: Chelsea, Alabama
How he works for #opengov: Stephen’s been an IT developer and consultant for over 10 years. He founded OpenBama.org -- an independent, volunteer initiative to make Alabaman legislation more accessible to the public -- after he found that the state’s legislative system made it nearly impossibly to track legislation. When he started, Stephen had never heard of the open government and open data movements, let along groups like Sunlight and govtrack.us. Now Stephen's trailblazing for Alabama in the greater #opengov community.

Tamar Gurchiani

Hails from: Georgia (the country), by way of Williamsburg, VA (W&M Law School grad)
How she works for #opengov: Tamar is an expert in Georgian Freedom of Information law, working for 6 years with the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association on FOI projects. This spring, she completed her LLM at William and Mary, started at the National Security Archive as a visiting fellow, and is scoping out how to take TransparencyCamp back to Georgia with her.

Ramphis Castro

Hails from: San Juan, Puerto Rico
How he works for #opengov: Ramphis is a software engineer and the president of the Institute of Computer Engineers, spearheading efforts with technologists and others to get more public policy focused on transparency in Puerto Rico. Outside of his advocacy for local open government, Ramphis is the principal tech advisor for Relisc Coporation, a group that provides outsourced-CIO services for clients, and the curator/founder of TEDxSanJuan (stay tuned for their first event November 2011).

Stefan Urbanek

Hails from: Bratislava, Slovakia
How he works for #opengov: Stefan is a senior business consultant (and owner) of Knowerce, a knowledge management company, with a strong background in open data work (evidenced by his latest project, Data Brewery). Stefan’s work spans Slovakia and the US, though among his top credentials are a Slovakian open public procurements portal and Datacamp, a data sharing application.

Jason Williams

Hails from: Hyrum, Utah
How he works for #opengov: Jason is an activist, talk show host, and blogger, sharing news and opinion on national and local issues since 2005. Following the Utah state legislature’s attempt to dissolve it’s Freedom of Information law (aka GRAMA), Jason became involved in the citizen efforts that were organized in response, including the collection of some 65,00 signatures required to petition the government to keep open records...open. Jason now serves on the working group - composed of lawmakers, citizens, and lawyers, among others - that's examining alternatives to the passage of unpopular legislation.

Suzanne McBride

Hails from: Oak Park, Illinois
How she works for #opengov: Suzanne is the co-founder and co-editor of Chicago Talks, a 4-year-old website covering local issues, events and politics. She has a history of working for on open government issues as an investigative journalist (leading, for example, a statewide audit of public records for the Indianapolis Star in 2004). When she’s not working with ChicagoTalks, she’s supervising a group of undergrads and grad students on award-winning investigations as a professor at Columbia College Chicago.

Friedrich Lindenberg

Hails from: Berlin, Germany
How he works from #opengov: Friedrich defines himself as “a media scientist turned coder.” His open data cred spans the creation of data portals for a number of European administrations and authoring Adhocracy, a collaborative drafting software. Currently, Friedrich works the Open Knowledge Foundation where he focuses on different initiatives to make financial and budget data accessible.

Michael Clarjen-Arconada

Hails from: Sag Harbor, New York
How he works for #opengov: Michael stood out as a local leader when he organized a community showing of the Casino Jack and the United States of Money -- a 2010 documentary on the Jack Abramoff scandal. His Long Island event drew around 300 viewers.

Tracy Dingmann

Hails from: Albuquerque, New Mexico
How she works for #opengov: Tracy is an investigative reporter and proud IRE member who’s been around the block with open records requests. Currently working as an independent and correspondent on the KNME program, In Focus, Tracy’s been reporting for over 20 years and just wrapped up a stint as the New Media Director at the Center for Civic Policy.

Michael Maranda

Hails from: Chicago, IL
How he works for #opengov: Michael is a software developer and movement strategist, working on the bridge between open data and open government efforts. His interest in increasing digital literacy has led him to leadership roles in several community networking groups, including the Chicago Digital Access Alliance and the Illinois Community Technology Coalition.

Last week the U.S. Public Interest Research Group published a transparency scorecard for every state in the country that assessed their ability to publish their spending online. The scorecard map operates on the belief that there is a new standard for accountability and accessibility, one where spending records are searchable and detailed online.

The 'Following the Money 2011' study [pdf link] classified nine states as "leading states" that published detailed information on grants and economic activities of the government online, even publicizing tax expenditures. Most fell into the "emerging states" category where basic steps were taken to supply residents with less granular information or did not make the data searchable. Finally, the "lagging states" section highlighted the ten least transparent states who did not populate their websites with relevant spending information and Maine doesn't even allow public access to their data. The study notes that there is no partisan leaning between states that excel or fail to provide citizens with this data.

As the press clamors to champion or chide their governments, we hope the states continue to study up on this subject and improve their standings next year. It also couldn't hurt to move the goals posts a little farther too - putting your checkbooks online is a pretty obvious homework assignment for this year kids.

Be sure to look up how your state ranks on the Following the Money map and encourage them to continue the work.

The open government movement (like most of the online world) is obsessed with “unconferences” -- meet-ups, of sorts, where the participants determine the content of and lead sessions around a pre-determined theme. When done right, it can be a powerful tool for building community.

Sunlight held its first unconference, TransparencyCamp, three years ago in an effort to get the diverse groups of people thinking about and working for government transparency together. From the conversations and problem-solving that took place there, we’ve seen the emergence of some incredible initiatives - take, for example, CityCamp.

This year, we want to go further. We want to focus on government transparency not just on Capitol Hill, but where you live. So, we need your help.

Please take a minute to fill out this survey and let us know what you want to get out of TransparencyCamp.

Never been to a TransparencyCamp or even an unconference before? Not a problem. We’re still interested in knowing what open government issues interest you, what you would want to get out of this sort of experience and how we can improve on the experiences you’ve had at similar events in the past.

TransparencyCamp 2011 will be open to people from across the country. We’re relying on your input to make it the best it can be.

http://transparencycamp.org/survey

Thanks for your help.