Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:

Saturday evening, Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, appeared on CNN talking about Recovery.gov. She made the point that Recovery.gov needs to be updated in real time so people can keep government accountable as it happens, instead of after the fact. Below is the video of the segment:

The New York Times published an editorial calling for Congress to provide Congressional Research Service reports online for all Americans to access free. The Times ran the editorial a week after Ellen met with an editorial writer at the paper. Last week, The Times published an article about the campaign being waged by Open CRS, a project of the Center for Democracy and Technology, OpenTheGovernment.org and Sunlight to get Congress to agree to release all CRS reports to the public.

Cyrus Sanati wrote a post on The Time’s “DealBook” blog that highlighted and linked to SubsidyScope’s county-by-county analysis of how the government is distributing Troubled Asset Relief Program funds throughout the country. The Atlantic’s Chris Good, on their “Politics” blog, also wrote about and linked to SubsidyScope’s map. The San Francisco Bay Guardian’s “Politics” blog wrote about Sunlight grantee MAPLight.org launching their Los Angeles site,  where they reveal campaign contributions to Los Angeles City politicians. MAPLight.org’s new site shows how much interest groups like real estate developers, teachers unions and others contribute to city officials and to candidates running for city office. The site is the first of its kind for any U.S. city. As always, journalists used Center for Responsive Politics’ data to uncover how Washington works. The Wall Street Journal reports that Lockheed Martin, the country’s largest defense contractor, doubled the amount of money spent on lobbying in first quarter of 2009 as it did during the previous three months ($6.41 million during the first quarter, up 97% from the prior quarter's $3.26 million), all in an effort to prevent defense spending cuts. The “Environment Blog” at the U.K.’s guardian.co.uk highlight CRP in a post about how to follow the fossil fuel money on Capitol Hill. The New York Times editorialized that “It is time to follow the money — all of it,” in light of CRP’s report that U.S. Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania and two subcommittee colleagues, Peter Visclosky of Indiana and James Moran of Virginia, received more than $4 million in campaign contributions from PMA Group clients. In its June issue, Harper’s Magazine published an article by Nancy Watzman, director of Sunlight’s Party Time project. Nancy breaks down, bit-by-bit, a congressional lawmaker’s fundraising event invitation, revealing to those of us not accustom to writing politicians $2,500 checks what we’re missing. Speaking of Party Time, the Politico’s Chris Frates used data from the project to identify some of the bars and restaurants within easy walking distance of the U.S. Capitol where congressional lawmakers meet with lobbyists and other to raise campaign cash. Jose Vargas at The Washington Post compiled the second of his monthly report cards where he has a group of five online political observers grade WhiteHouse.gov. Last month’s report card produced an average grade of a C+. In this second round the group gave the administration an average of a solid B, with the individual graders giving a range from C to A-. Ellen and Andrew Rasiej, Sunlight’s senior technology advisor, participate as graders, and both gave WhiteHouse.gov a B-. If they were to grade the site on the basis of transparency alone, they would have given the site a C-, Vargas reported. Thanks! See you next Friday.

Today, May 8th, marks the 125th birthday of Harry S Truman, our 33rd president. He once said, "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." Amen, Mr. President.

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:

Monday morning, Tom Lee, a technology director at Sunlight, appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” taking questions about Recovery.gov, the Web site set up to track spending under the federal government’s economic stimulus program. Tom is working on SubsidyScope, a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts, that looks at the role of federal subsidies in the economy. Below is the video of the segment:

Speaking of Recovery.gov, Matt Kelley with USA Today reported that the Web site won't have details on contracts and grants until October and may not be complete until next spring — halfway through the program. Kelley quotes Greg Elin, Sunlight’s chief evangelist, saying people accustomed to getting easily searchable information quickly could be frustrated. "If we have to wait until October to get the information or to the end of the year to get a powerful recovery.gov site, the Obama administration will have missed an important opportunity."

Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, in an op-ed titled "Ways to Protect Our Democracy," highlights the work of Sunlight and Sunlight Labs, and mentions the Apps for America contest. Vanden Heuvel quotes Gabriela Schneider, "This is the next generation of civic engagement…We see it as a way to revitalize democracy. The transparency work is a catalyst for the greater democracy reform movement."

The U.S. Senate announced this week that it was going to start publishing roll call votes in XML, an online format that’s easily reusable by other programs. XML allows the data to be manipulated and organized in such a way that public interest groups can get a much more thorough picture of Senate voting patterns. In writing about the move, the Politico’s  Victoria McGrane quoted John Wonderlich, Sunlight's policy director, as saying the Senate’s decision was “spectacular.” The Examiner newspapers editorialized that the move signals the Senate had finally joined the 21st Century. As encouraging and important as this step by the Senate is, I’d hold off on that designation until senators start disclosing campaign finance data online and in a timely manner.

The New York Times’ Stephanie Strom highlighted the campaign to get Congress to release to the public Congressional Research Service reports, highlighting the efforts of Open CRS, Center for Democracy and Technology, OpentheGovernment.org and Sunlight.

Jeanne Cummings at the Politico wrote about “lobbyist contact” disclosures posted on government department and agency Web sites. She made note of a review conducted by Paul Blumenthal, Sunlight’s senior writer, that found only 14 of a possible 29 departments and agencies have created Web pages to disclose lobbyist inquiries. On March 20, President Obama issued a memo to all agencies involved with the distribution of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requiring them to disclose all communications between lobbyists and agency officials. John Fritze with USA Today wrote that Obama’s effort to make lobbying more transparent has shed little light on the behind-the-scenes, special-interests lobbying thus far. He quotes Melanie Sloan, director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, "We're looking to have more disclosure, not less. If this was supposed to give us more disclosure, why is it that you're not seeing lobbyist communications?"

Mother Jones' Jonathan Stein profiled Lisa Rosenberg, Sunlight’s government affairs consultant, terming her "K Street's worst nightmare" and "the lobbyist lobbyists hate." He wrote that Lisa is "not your average influence peddler," but does the "unthinkable" by lobbying for more oversight and regulation of lobbying. Stein quotes Lisa, "I have no friends...My lobbyist colleagues are cringing at the things that I do."

Joshua Zumbrun at Forbes.com wrote about six ways Uncle Sam can help rescue newspapers. One of his proposals is for the government to help ease newspapers into nonprofit status, citing the Center for Responsive Politics and the Center for Public Integrity as examples of nonprofit organizations that are already making an impact.

Thanks, and see you next Friday!

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:

David Herbert with the National Journal (subscription required) wrote about the grades new media experts from across the political spectrum gave the Obama administration’s Web presence. The experts gave WhiteHouse.gov an average grade of C+. Although they mostly see it as an improvement from the previous administration's site, many noted that it remained a one-way forum and suggested it be opened to allow comments and other interactive features. Herbert quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, "This occasional use of interactive tools" is impressive, but "90 percent of the time the site is pretty straightforward, as it was under [George W.] Bush." Recovery.gov, the administration’s site where citizens can monitor the expenditure and use of recovery funds, fared even worse in the Journal's poll, averaging a C. The most common gripe about the site, Herbert writes, is that it's "the view from 30,000 feet," as Micah Sifry, senior technology advisor for Sunlight and Personal Democracy Forum (PDF) co-founder, told him. Without providing on-the-the ground details, Recovery.gov offers taxpayers few tools for staying on top of where their money is going, reviewers said. Recovery.gov has competition in the form of privately-operated Recovery.org, which has "more granular data and a real search tool, which one assumes we'll eventually see on Recovery.gov," Micah explains. "I don't think it's fair to compare this site to other Web sites yet, as it's just weeks old," Micah added. "Let's take another look in three to six months, OK?"

Chris Lefkow with Agence France-Presse gained a different take by interviewing academics, technology analysts and nonpartisan groups on the administration's technology efforts. Lefkow writes that they all said the first "tech president" is off to a good start. Lefkow quotes John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, "their first pronouncements are very encouraging,” and added that the challenge, however, is going to be the implementation. Andrew Resiej, Sunlight’s other senior technology advisor and PDF co-founder, said the administration been doing as much as it can to fulfill its promises in regards to transparency and technological innovation. “However they've been constrained by decades of industrial-age rules and regulations and procurement protocols that are handicapping the speed at which they can implement that vision," he said.

Declan McCullagh at CBS News' "Political Hotsheet" blog also wrote about how President Obama's follow through on his transparency vow is receiving mixed reviews. In the post McCullagh highlights how Sunlight's Our Open Government List is allowing users to vote on what's most important to see in the 120-day review. McCullagh reports that the winner so far is formal data standards, which would allow programmers to extract government databases to be incorporated in their own applications. McCullagh also mentions that Sunlight hosted TransparencyCamp.

Dan Eggen at The Washington Post wrote about how some of the nation's largest defense contractors, labor unions and trade groups are forging an alliance to try to stop the Obama administration from cutting certain weapons programs. They are arguing that the proposed cuts would threaten 100,000 or more jobs. Eggen cites Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) data to show the defense sector’s influence in Washington, where it gave nearly $26 million to congressional candidates last year and spending $150 million on lobbying.

The New York Times republished Robin Bravender’s piece from Greenwire exploring President Obama’s regulatory actions taken during his first 100 days in office. Bravender quotes Gary Bass, OMB Watch’s executive director, "In most instances, the administration has moved away from a presumption of government secrecy to one of government openness, and Obama has scrapped some of the most damaging revisions of the regulatory process that Bush and his team imposed on the nation." The article highlighted OMB Watch’s “Advancing the Public Interest through Regulatory Reform” report (pdf), which is one of two reports, both released on Tuesday, assessing the Obama administration’s work on government transparency and regulatory reform at the 100-day mark. The second report, titled “21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda” (pdf) looked at the administration’s follow through on transparency and openness. Overall, the reports state that the president and his team have made significant progress in both the right-to-know and regulatory areas, but much more work needs to be done.

Carol D. Leonnig with The Washington Post reported that U.S. Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), chair of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, got the Pentagon to spend about $30 million on “the little-used airport named for him so it can handle behemoth military aircraft and store combat equipment for rapid deployment to foreign battlefields.” Most of the improvement, Leonnig writes, were funded through appropriations approved by Murtha's subcommittee, and have not been used for their intended purpose. The article includes comments by Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.  "Nobody wants to say no to Congressman Murtha or make him mad because he controls defense appropriations," she said. "Murtha wanted an airport, and he knew he could get one. It's like he's a billionaire, except it's not his money."

Robert O'Harrow Jr., writing at The Washington Post's "Government Inc." blog, writes about a new report from the Inspector General for TARP, which says the bailout is growing more complex and costly, and is operating with no clear leadership. O'Harrow highlights and extensively quotes from Anu Narayanswamy’s Real Time Investigations report that found the program is shrouded in secrecy, making it difficult to determine who is managing it.

USA Today published an editorial about how the federal government, when faced with the option of making information public or hiding it, is predisposed toward concealment. Federal Web sites are usually full of data, the editorial says, but are also notoriously hard to navigate. It mentions Google's new tool, Google Public Data, it launched this week to make it easier to search federal sites. Congressional sites can be even more inscrutable, they write, and mentions and links to Sunlight’s Senior Fellow Bill Allison's Real Time Investigations report regarding U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers disclosing their earmark requests, and how many responded by burying the links or posting unreadable pdf files. Kim Hart with The Washington Post also wrote about Google’s new tool, and quotes Clay Johnson, Sunlight Labs director, saying he’s encouraged by it.

Joab Jackson with Government Computer News wrote about how through mashups and Web apps, third parties are remixing and making innovative use of government agencies' information. Jackson quotes Clay as saying there are a lot of developers who are eager to get access to government data. "The nongovernmental sector will likely always have more talent and artistic capability than inside the government," Clay said. The article discusses Sunlight Labs' Apps for America contest, as well as Sunlight’s role in developing OpenCongress.org, OMB Watch’s FedSpending.org, CRP’s OpenSecrets.org and EarmarkWatch.org. Jackson also highlights Josh Tauberer's work at GovTrack.

Federal News Radio interviewed Clay about Data.gov, new federal CIO Vivek Kundra's soon to launch central repository for government data and research, and links to Sunlight Labs' mock up of the site.

Thanks, and see you next Friday!

Here are a few of the more interesting media mentions of Sunlight and our friends and grantees from this week:

Sunday evening, BlogTalkRadio posted an episode of “Talking Gov2.0,” where Clay Johnson, Sunlight Lab’s director, discussed Sunlight, Sunlight Labs and the Apps for America contest. Speaking of Apps for America, Clay announced the winners on Monday. And Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb wrote about the contest, and included a screencast of the winners.

Victoria McGrane with the Politico wrote about the lack of online disclosure of campaign finance data by candidates for the U.S. Senate, and the efforts to rectify this through S. 482, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act. She mention’s Sunlight’s Pass S. 482, and extensively quotes Lisa Ronsenberg, Sunlight’s government affairs consultant, about the need for the Senate to join the 21st Century.

The National Journal reported on data from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) that shows last year’s top 20 Political Action Committee contributors to federal candidates poured a combined $22 million into lobbying efforts from January through March -- an increase of nearly 20 percent over the same period in 2008.

Anne C. Mulkern with Greenwire (subscription required) used Capitol Words to look at the use of energy- and environment-related words by congressional lawmakers. The New York Times re-posted Mulkern's piece.

CongressDaily’s Carrie Dann reported (subscription required) on a new study conducted by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) that shows short-term lenders have dramatically increased their spending on lobbying and campaign contributions since 2004. The industry is trying to defeat a bill that would cap annual interest rates on consumer loans at 36 percent. The Los Angeles Times used CRP data in reporting that Sen. Christopher Dodd (Conn.), the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, has received over $44,000 from the industry in the first quarter of this year. The Times quoted Sheila Krumholz, CRP’s director, saying that it’s hardly surprising that payday lenders would be contributing heavy to Dodd now.

The Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported on a recently-updated Federal Contractor Misconduct Database by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) that shows Lockheed Martin Corp., the nation’s largest defense contractor, is the number one offender. The group found Lockheed linked to 50 cases of civil, criminal or administrative misconduct since 1995.

Steve Coll at The New Yorker wrote about following the stimulus funding. “Like ornithology, it turns out that stimulus watching involves a larger, more passionate subculture than might initially be expected,” Coll wrote. He highlighted OMB Watch’s budget-and-tax-policy section that “often produces wonky stimulus-related tracking.”

The May edition of the Washingtonian magazine will include a feature on the Washington, D.C., region’s technology leaders, dubbing them “Tech Titans.” The feature will include Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, as one of the region’s tech leaders. The magazine’s Web site includes a video with several short statements by the tech leaders featured, including Ellen discussing her favorite gadgets and using technology to bring government transparency.

Bara Vaida at National Journal's "Under the Influence" highlighted a blog post by Nancy Watzman, Sunlight's Denver-based consultant, about the 170 fundraising invitations for 2009 events the Party Time campaign has collected so far.

National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" aired the first of a two-part story by Andrea Seabrook on the federal government's data being opened up via technology. The first part aired Thursday, and it centered on Recovery.gov, the Obama administration's site that's tracking spending by the economic stimulus plan. For the piece, Seabrook interviewed Ellen, Clay, Greg Elan, Sunlight evangelist, and Andrew Rasiej, Sunlight technology advisor. Seabrook has lead us to believe the second installment, which is scheduled to air during this afternoon’s edition of “All Things Considered,” will center more on the work of Sunlight. The program begins at 4:00 pm (Eastern Time).

Update: Seabrook's second installment can be seen and listened to here.

Thanks, and see you next week!

Each weekday, Sunlight's communications team collects all the press mentions of Sunlight and of our grantees.  Instead of just keeping that to ourselves, we thought we'd try something new by highlighting some of the more interesting mentions  and sharing that with you each week. (You can also check out our Delicious page and our Press Center to see who's writing about us.)

Elizabeth Brotherton at Roll Call (subscription required), Associated Press Managing Editors, Paul Krawzak with CQ Politics and Deb Price with The Detroit News wrote stories about about U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers posting their earmark requests for the 2010 budget on their Web sites as new transparency guidelines required. Bill Allison, Sunlight’s senior fellow, researched the disclosures. Journalists used Bill's research as the base for their articles, including many regional papers reporting on earmarks requested by their respective congressional delegations.

National Journal’s "Tech Daily Dose" blog reported that the Center for Responsive Politics’ site OpenSecrets.org is going "open data" this week. For the first time in their 26-year history, CRP "is making its most popular data archives fully available to the public for download for free,” The Journal writes.  Sunlight helped fund CRP's OpenData initiative to make millions of records available under a Creative Commons license, The Journal adds.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg with The New York Times wrote about President Obama's promise to bring transparency to the federal government. She notes the administration is finding that fulfilling the pledge is easier said than done. Technological hurdles, privacy concerns and the Washington's entrenched culture of secrecy have so far proven hard to overcome. Stolberg lists several steps the Obama team have successfully taken, the streamlining of a health care summit over the White House Web site and the setting up of Recovery.gov to help track the stimulus package. She quotes Ellen Miller, Sunlight’s executive director, as saying the site is “an amazing potential model of how information is made available to the public."

The Huffington Post published an op-ed by Mike Klein, Sunlight’s co-founder and chair, where he commends President Obama for establishing a transparency policy applicable to lobbying and the stimulus program. Mike encouraged the administration to not limit transparency just to lobbying the stimulus program. "The president should now mandate real time online transparency of lobbying throughout the executive branch." He also called on Congress to amend the Lobbying Disclosure Act so that lobbyists would be required to disclose all lobbying, whether of the Congress, the executive branch or the independent agencies, and in real time and online. Ryan Singel at Wired's "Epicenter" blog profiles Sunlight Labs’ contest Apps for America, and asked his readers to vote for their favorites.  Mark Tapscott, editorial page editor of the Washington Examiner, also wrote about Apps for America. Winter Casey and Bara Vaida at National Journal's "Under the Influence" blog and Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones wrote about mockups of Web-based lobbying disclosure forms John Wonderlich, Sunlight’s policy director, and Ali Felski, Sunlight Lab’s senior designer, created.

Our now London-residing designer, Kerry Mitchell, was playing around in the wee hours last night and came up with this terrific visualization that shows the mentions of the word "transparency" in The New York Times from 1990 until 2009.

Think of it as a clock. 1 o'clock would be the early '90s and 11 o'clock being 2008/2009. As you go around the clock the instances of the word increase.  Each line is a month of time.

Kerry didn't write the code that generates the image. The visualization was created with Processing, and makes use of The New York Times Article API. The Processing code comes from a tutorial available from blprnt.com.