This guest blog comes from Sunlight's Organizing Fellow, Tamar Gurchiani, who is leaving us today after a wonderful three months to head back to her home country, Georgia. We'll let Tamar (a lawyer, long time freedom of information advocate, and former TransparencyCamp scholar) speak for herself in the entry below, but first we have to note that we didn't pay her (or even advise her!) to make the way-too-gracious statements below.

Now, enough about us. Keep reading to learn about the current state of transparency in post-Soviet Georgia...and what's around the corner.

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Can the classified information in one country be publicly available in another? Yes if the first country is post-soviet Georgia, where unlike the US, “in the face of doubt, still secrecy prevails.”

In March of 2010, the Georgian government refused to disclose the contracts between the Security Council of Georgia and several US lobbying firms (including Orion Strategies, Public Strategies, and the Podesta Group). The contracts were requested through the General Administrative Code (the Freedom of Information Law in Georgia) by the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, a non-profit I worked with before I came to the US to study law. During the litigation process, I was able to find the documents my country was hiding from us in the Sunlight’s foreign lobbying influence tracker.

At TransparencyCamp DC this spring, I finally met, in person, the Sunlighters who build those amazing tools for greater transparency. And, during the last three months, I had a wonderful opportunity to work with them -- the most creative, professional and inspirational people I’d ever met in my life. I had a wonderful chance to see myself how technology can be used for the public interest and how big its impact is on every citizen’s life in the US.

But who is responsible for digitizing the official data and then make it available via the Internet in countries like Georgia? The government does not necessarily regard the Internet as basic infrastructure like roads, waste and water. From 2000 to 2010 the Internet usage in Georgia increased from 0.5 % to 28.3 %. Georgian freedom of Information legislation was enacted in 2000 but no legal obligation exists yet for online transparency.

Transparency communities can grow if the basic infrastructure is in place and they don’t have a constant fear that the government will shut them down whenever it needs to. They also grow when government makes public information available to the public without lengthy and expensive litigation process.

A few days ago, the Associated Press published a new study on Right to Know Laws. The study found that the newer democracies were in general more responsive than some developed ones. Before that, Access Info Europe and Centre for Law and Democracy conducted the Ask Your Government! 6 Question Campaign where France, with a 32 year-old FOI law, was among the poorest performing countries and Georgia, with only 11 years of experience, ranked as number two among the best performing countries.

In 2008, Georgia was among the first 12 countries that ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents - the first legally binding international document recognizing access to information as a fundamental human right. Not to mention the other commitments my country has taken within the UN, OECD and GRECO frameworks.

Why are the countries like Georgia the first ratifiers of those conventions? Unfortunately the answer not always the healthy inclination to transparency, but a response to so-called collateral consequences (investments, international reputation etc.) Somebody might say that nothing is wrong if a country cares about its image. I would agree with that, but I’m sure for many of you the French example came as a surprise. If this is the “result” of good reputation, no, we cannot afford it.

But it’s up to us to make sure that these rankings translate into better practice.

With this goal, in May of 2012 more than 20 Georgian partners including Open Society - Georgia Foundation, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association, Transparency International - Georgia, Institute for Development of Freedom of Information and Open Maps Caucasus will make TransparencyCamp Georgia happen. Representatives of the Georgian government and international donors, journalists, developers and civic activists will gather to find out where we are now, what resources and potential we have. TransparencyCamp Georgia will be a great meeting place for both the people who already know what should be done and the people who know how to do it by using technology.

TransparencyCamp Georgia was inspired by TransparencyCamp DC, the most impressive part of which, to me, was its setting. Will an “unconference” - an event run with a certain level of self-organization, audience-driven agenda, and voting for the each presentation topic - work in Georgia where most of the (even transparency themed) conferences mean long monotone (read: boring) speeches?

I’d been asking these questions to myself before my first meeting after Camp with Sunlight’s Laurenellen McCann. At this meeting Laurenellen revealed Sunlight’s secret of success: experimenting and learning by mistakes. Few months later, Georgian Vice Prime Minister Giorgi Baramidze said at Johns Hopkins University that “with mistakes and failures we [Georgia] are moving forward.” TransparencyCamp Georgia will be the experiment and test for moving forward to transparency.

Sunlight's Organizing Team: Wishing Tamar (second from the right) well in continuing her work back home.

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.

It’s never too early to get nostalgic. Here at Sunlight HQ, we’re still buzzing about the incredible time we had with those of you who were able to join us for TransparencyCamp two weeks ago. We’ve been pumped to see your buzz, too (i.e. here and here) and plan to actively incorporating your feedback into our plans for our next Camp.

Of course, we need your feedback in order to use your feedback. So, if you got three minutes (or less) take our TCamp survey and share your thoughts on your experience with us! Just as we published the results of our last survey (which shaped TCamp ‘11), we’ll be open about the results with this one, too.

Whether or not you were able to join us for TCamp, you can still get a taste of the experience by checking out this quick recap video below. It’s a great window into the passion and energy we saw at the Camp and at the many diverse folks who are involved in our greater community (or, as Jesse Newburn says below, our “beautiful citizen uprising”):

But don’t think you have to travel all the way to DC to score the contagious collaboration of TCamp: Via our awesome new Organizing page (check it!), you can host your own open government Meetup event in the blink of an eye. Ever thought that open gov would be a great compliment to a happy hour, potluck, hackathon, BBQ or some other sort of gathering? (Flash mob, anyone?) Well, now’s your chance to make it happen.

If you decide to play host, let us know. We’re happy to help answer questions and support your awesome event-planning. Or, not the hosting type? Join our Meetup community and you’ll be notified when an event (or flash mob) pops up near you.

It's almost been a week since the first day of TransparencyCamp and I want to take a look at some of the online tools that made it a success. These services made our lives a lot easier when planning TransparencyCamp, and thankfully, most of them are free and simple to navigate.

 

• Eventbrite, which I've written about in the past was quite handy for selling tickets and keeping tabs on the number of attendees.

• Twitter continues to be a great tool for note taking, posting questions, alerting attendees to event updates, contacting staff to notify them to problems and so on. You can still see TransparencyCamp related tweets if you search for the #tcamp11 hashtag.

• We created our own TransparencyCamp mobile app that was accessible through smart phones.  Don't have the resources to create your own? Check out services like Lanyrd.

• Sunlight streamed opening and closing remarks and one session per time slot on the Livestream service, giving people at home a chance to follow sessions throughout the weekend.

• Prior to TCamp11, attendees submitted and voted on session ideas using Google Moderator, which helped us figure out which sort of topics attendees would be interested in ahead of time.  It also gave possible presenters time to prepare and offered TCampers a more enriching experience.

• There are a number of different Google Groups we used to communicate with attendees. We encourage you to join and continue the conversation.

• We're pooling photos from TransparencyCamp on Flickr. If you haven't added your photo, please do!  Many services that work on your smart phone, like Instagram, picplz and PixelPipe integrate with Flickr.

• If you hadn't noticed during TCamp11, we used QR codes on both name badges and on the monitors to quickly connect attendees to important TransparencyCamp information.  Unfamiliar with QR codes? Read more here.

• We used the TransparencyCamp.org wiki to document general TCamp and session info. Have notes? We've opened it back up (only for another week, due to security issues) so if you've got notes, links, or info to add, please have at it.

• Want to test some of these out, build the open gov movement offline and have some fun while you're at it? Host your own Sunlight Meetup.

What tools are we missing that we could have used? Do you have any thoughts?

 

We're still recovering from all the excitement and lessons of the weekend's successful TransparencyCamp and would love to share some favorites photos we found on the event's flickr pool - please add yours if you attended! As Sunlight says bittersweet goodbyes to our international guests and starts the unpacking process, we'd like to thank everyone who joined us and especially to our sponsors.

Video and more updates are coming soon, so stay tuned.

Photos by flickr users PoliticalActivityLaw.com, noneck, broke_kid, Tiina Knuutila and Nicko Margolies

TransparencyCamp ‘11 will be held on April 30 - May 1 at Microsoft’s offices in Friendship Heights. (The location is on the DC / Maryland border and is Metro-accessible.)

We’re really excited to meet many of you at this year’s camp, and we’re particularly excited about making this a bigger and more inclusive camp than ever before. When we sent out a survey about what you wanted to get out of this year’s conference, we heard from a lot of passionate and committed activists who want to attend but don’t have the resources to make it all the way to Washington. In fact, cost of travel was the number one reason people listed as their biggest barrier to attending TransparencyCamp ‘11.

These are folks from communities across the country who volunteer their time and energy because they are passionate about open government -- not because it’s particularly lucrative.

We think we have a lot to learn from these local organizers, and we think they’d get a lot out of TransparencyCamp. So this year, we’ve decided to offer some travel scholarships to help defray the cost for emerging leaders in the transparency movement.

We’ll need some help -- and we’re really thrilled that people are stepping up already to support this program (after all, we just launched it this morning!). The first so far: Josh Tauberer of GovTrack.us and CTO of POPVOX.com.

I hope you’ll join us at TransparencyCamp ‘11. And if, like Josh, you’re interested in helping to bring an activist to Washington who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend, I hope you’ll consider making a contribution. All contributions made through transparencycamp.org/donate will go exclusively to this program. Want to apply for a travel scholarship? Check back soon for updates.

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!

This weekend, Sunlight and iStrategyLabs are holding TransparencyCamp, an un-conference dedicated to sharing knowledge on how to use new technologies to open up our government and catalyze greater transparency to create more accountability. We're convening a trans-partisan tribe of open government advocates from all walks --government representatives, technologists, developers, NGOs, wonks and activists.

With the new administration pledging to uphold standards to improve government transparency, we thought the timing was perfect to build the community, and bring technologists and advocates together to build the transparency movement.

TransparencyCamp follows the BarCamp model, which uses a decentralized approach that emphasizes open, participatory workshop-events. Attendees will create the agenda each day of the event. (You can see where they've been sharing ideas in advance of this weekend on the event's wiki.)

We expect about 300 people, including: Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, open source maven Brian Behlendorf, Commissioner Walther of the Federal Election Commission, Sheila Campbell who leads the USA.gov team, citizen journalist guru Dan Gillmor, John Udell and several congressional staff members, and more.

We wish we could squeeze in everyone interested in attending, but the event sold out before we even had a chance to blog about it. However, if you can't make it, do check out the TransparencyCamp Web site where we will aggregate user-generated content about the event. We'll also post there a video about the event in the coming weeks. We're also encouraging everyone tweeting, posting, flickring about the event to tag their content #tcamp09 -- so use that tag to follow along.

Thanks to Julie Germany and her team at IPDI, who are generously hosting the event at George Washington University, and thanks to all of our wonderful sponsors, without whom TransparencyCamp could not happen.