Sunlight couldn't be in better company in the following video shot by the Omidyar Network, a significant funder of our work. The interviews done at a recent event in Menlo Park, California includes leaders from the Wikimedia Foundation, BRAC, the African Leadership Academy, Ushahidi, DonorsChoose.org, Landesa and IGNIA. What truly amazing partners they are.
We could elaborate, I suppose, but this quick video really says it all:
In case you missed it, I wanted to share this message that Ellen Miller, our Executive Director, sent out this morning:
I wanted to take the time to thank you for your support of our work this year. This has been a big year for Sunlight, but an even bigger year for transparency. This year, Americans awakened to the realities of money, power and politics, and we’re proud of the work we’ve done to promote transparency as a fundamental value of the movement to restore democracy.
Rather than rattling off all the projects we’ve worked on this year, I’d like to share a video with you that highlights some of the amazing work being done by Sunlighters -- not just our staff, but also the amazing transparency activists we work with throughout the country and the world.
We’ve only come this far because of your support -- and I hope you’ll contribute today to help us continue shining sunlight to new horizons: sunlightfoundation.com/donate/2011
Thanks for all of your support, and from all of the Sunlight team, happy holidays!
Ellen S. Miller Executive Director Sunlight Foundation
P.S. -- In the spirit of some holiday fun, Sunlight Labs has created an interactive holiday game that I'd like to share with you. Play it here: http://sunlightfoundation.com/happyholidays/
From the stream of news coming from Congress about the budget, one might think that committee meetings and legislation on federal spending would be easily accessible online. That's often not true.
For example, the legislative text for four major appropriations bills are not yet online despite their apparent approval by both the full Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday and the relevant subcommittees prior to that. The four missing Senate bills are: Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2012; Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2012; Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act, 2012; and Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2012. The public's only chance to see the legislation is after all the important decisions have been made. By comparison, the House generally makes legislation considered by committees available to the public prior to votes.
None of the Senate committee reports for these bills are available online, either, except for the Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, which is on THOMAS. The reports explain the decisions by appropriators and often provide significant guidance on how money will be spent.
Senate Appropriators do release streaming audio of subcommittee markups, although the audio feed isn't always reliable. The House, by contrast, will live stream video of its markups, but only when the committee finds it convenient; it often does not broadcast meetings at all. This goes against the spirit -- and likely the letter -- of the new House Rules passed by the 112th Congress.
Unfortunately, the best way to look at the legislation and reports in a timely way is often by using expensive private news services. Congress owes the public a better explanation of what it's doing.
by Jacob Hutt, Policy Intern
Twenty years after its first video pilot study, the federal court system has launched a digital video pilot study in fourteen federal trial courts. What changed? This study seeks to enhance “public access” to courtroom footage, whereas the first study was geared towards providing “media access” to courtroom footage, said Judge Julie A. Robinson, Chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management.
Judge Robinson cited a decline in the “cost and obtrusiveness of video equipment” in explaining why the second study has come about. But this pilot program has serious limitations. Video will not be permitted in criminal proceedings; both parties must consent; and appellate courts are not included. While cameras in the court are not the be-all and end-all of judicial transparency, as we've written elsewhere, these baby steps come long after the Internet has grown up (and TV has entered senescence).
A number of state courts already make available video feeds. The federal courts should run to catch up.
Will the American people be able to watch online as members of Congress discuss how much money to spend on the House of Representatives next year? Probably not, as this Thursday's hearing will take place in a room without cameras, even through the main committee room is wired to the internet and apparently available.*
The in-person-only nature of the hearing conflicts with the newly adopted House Rules, which require “to the maximum extent practicable, each committee shall --”
provide audio and video coverage of each hearing or meeting for the transaction of business in a manner that allows the public to easily listen to and view the proceedings.Last year, Speaker Boehner moved to ensure that the House Rules Committee could broadcasting video of its proceedings in its main hearing room. At the time, he said, “given the important business conducted there, we feel strongly that the American people should have the ability to watch the Committee in action.” The same argument can be made here.
In light of the serious and important efforts being undertaken by the House leadership to move Congress into the electronic age, the Appropriations Committee should hold its hearings as possible in the main room whenever possible, starting with this one, until cameras are installed in its subcommittee rooms.
~ Phone calls requesting comment were not immediately returned, but I do hope to have an update when we hear back.
Every February 2nd, optimists around the country turn to a furry little rodent in Western Pennyslvania, hoping that this year Punxsutawney Phil’s shadow won’t appear -- spring could be just around the corner!
The rest of us? We just expect more of the same: more winter, more shadows and more news about “shadowy” special interests clouding our government. Lobbying disclosure -- clearing away the shadows around the special interests in Washington -- is stuck in a “Groundhog Day” time loop.
We’re in a day and age where services like Twitter, Foursquare, and Gowalla let millions overshare publicly (online and in real time!) about each and every trip to their favorite burger joint or doctor’s visit. It’s absurd that the information that affects us all remains in the shadows -- like when and how lobbyists for wealthy special interests are meeting with lawmakers and influencing policy.
The new Congress means we have the chance to improve the Lobbying Disclosure Act, to bring the aging legislation up to the speed and fix the current loopholes.
Through PublicMarkup.org, Sunlight is openly drafting the Real Time Online Lobbying Transparency Act, which would amend the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 to foster a new system of real-time online disclosure of lobbying activities. We want to improve the democratic process by deterring and rooting out corruption, showcasing what issues are being discussed in Washington and improving the public access to government activity. We welcome and encourage your review and comments on the proposed legislation and hope to incorporate improvements from collaborators in the final draft.
This Groundhog Day, don’t accept the "politics as usual" rhetoric. With your support, we can break the cycle and institute meaningful lobbying reform that will bring the people influencing our government out of the shadows and into the Sunlight.
To get regular updates or to join the campaign for lobbying disclosure reform, sign up on our Lobbying Reform site.
In a letter released today, the Sunlight Foundation and Main Street Insider called upon the House of Representatives to improve how it makes floor and committee videos available online. We also requested that the House to provide a centrally located and frequently updated website with aggregated listings of all committee events and floor schedules.
Although the House has made great strides in opening up its proceedings to the public, much more should be done. Making available high quality video with minimal restrictions and maximum capability for reuse would go a long way towards allowing citizens to engage in the discussions of national importance that take place in the people’s house.
As we wind down the year, I want to take this moment to thank all of you wholeheartedly for your interest and support of Sunlight’s work in 2010. This has been a tremendous year for Sunlight and for government transparency. We’ve witnessed progress in Washington to create online disclosure for the work of government, but we’ve also seen very unfortunate set-backs that have curtailed decades worth of campaign finance restrictions and disclosure requirements. Our own work has developed in new directions, from mobile to real-time investigative reporting to increasingly collaborative with grassroots allies across the country. We fostered a new ‘data commons’ and a series of sites that make campaign finance, lobbying, earmark and government contract data more accessible, and we started making great strides in assessing how to help open up state legislatures.
During 2010, Sunlight also had some fun, broke some news and our Reporting Group made it easier for you to see who was spending $455 million during the election.
But better than listing every activity from 2010, I’d like to share the embedded video below, which highlights some of the achievements from this remarkable year of discovery, innovation and progress – made possible through the generosity of many of you.
The coming year will see an expansion of Sunlight’s efforts as we build new tools and websites to enable easy access to critical government data, advocate for new laws to require that such data is available 24/7 online, train hundreds of journalists and citizens in how to use those tools, create the narrative that shows how powerful lobbyists hold sway over Washington, and communicate to the broader public the power of openness and transparency to restore faith and participation in our democratic process.
I look forward to sharing that with all of you next year.
From all of us at the Sunlight Foundation, warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season!
As I noted in my speech yesterday at the Gov2.0 Summit, Gov2.0 has become a popular catchphrase in Washington today and no organization has been more excited about its potential when it comes to data transparency than the Sunlight Foundation. But now, some 20 months since President Obama made his initial commitment to technology and transparency, we have numerous concerns. One of the core examples that I used was USASpending.gov, which President Obama championed into law when he was in the Senate, along with Sen. Tom Coburn, in 2007.
USASpending was created to provide the public with information about how the federal government spends our tax dollars. It was launched nearly three years ago and has already gone through three redesigns, each one flashier than the next. The site is pretty impressive graphics-wise, but unfortunately the data provided is full of inaccuracies, according to Clearspending, a new Sunlight site that tracks and illustrates just how broken the data is. We were deliberate in our approach when conducting this analysis, and we hope that by giving these problems the light of day, it might actually help get them fixed.
Think of Clearspending.com as a kind of scorecard that analyzes how well U.S. government agencies are reporting their spending data on USASpending.gov.
What Sunlight has found, and Clearspending shows in great detail, is that just under* $1.3 trillion in federal reporting data from 2009 is unreliable. The data inaccuracies we uncovered account for 70 percent of the total $1.9 trillion in government spending data reported in that year. Some of the numbers are too big, some are too small and some are missing completely, while other spending data entries don’t have the detail that’s required or were reported months later than the law demands.
When it comes to making data available, it has to be accurate. Federal agencies need to focus first on the quality of data they collect. If the data is unreliable, then the quality of websites they release — or the tools built upon it — is irrelevant.
The government has known about the problems we’ve illustrated on Clearspending, and they say they’re working to fix it. But instead we have only gotten a series of redesigned websites, each one with data just as unreliable as the one before it.
There’s a tremendous amount of work left to do before Gov2.0 becomes a reality. These are not easy tasks, and certainly not glamorous ones. But these are the types of challenges that we must undertake if the promise of Gov2.0 is going to be realized.
*We updated this number - at launch it was just north of $1.3 trillion. You can see why here.
Whether you're a gun owner, a home builder, an environmentalist or all of the above, you probably have no idea who is the lobbying federal government on your behalf, when they’re doing it or how it’s being done.
We got a very brief and narrow glance into that work today.
The key aspect in making a live event useful to citizens is to have an engaged community audience.
Our interactive real-time reporting platform, Sunlight Live, covered a meeting between high powered business association lobbyists and Republican leadership of the House of Representatives.
The event was originally scheduled as a closed-door conversation between lobbyists and Republicans on job creation. After outside groups highlighted the hypocrisy of Republican criticism of Democrats’ closed door meetings, Republican leadership decided that the forum would be openly streamed online as part of America Speaking Out: an initiative by Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-OH) to crowd-source policy ideas.
During the event, only a hour long, Sunlight Live performed a full court press to help the public understand the relationship between these huge organizations and Republican leadership. When any lobbyist was on camera we displayed:
Along with our usual influence data on members of Congress, our crack team of investigative journalists (joined by Bara Vaida of the National Journal) blogged their research and reaction in real-time. At any moment Sunlight Live viewers accounted for 70-75% of the total audience for the event.
Here's an extremely succint summary of what the lobbyists pushed for from Paul Blumenthal on our Reporting Team:
1) Stop and roll back everything that the Democrats have done. (Chamber of Commerce, Wholesaler-Distributors and others.) 2) Spend more on infrastructure. This would be stimulus spending. (Builders) 3) No VAT or consumption taxes. (Retail)Of course, you can play back both the video and our live blog here.
Mark Tapscott of the Washingtion Examiner read my mind and has already posted a constructive critique of the event:
* Whenever lobbyists are involved, campaign contributions ought to be simultaneously detailed, as the Sunlight Foundation did today with the GOP event. The more one party displays, the more the other has to do the same or better.
Make it as inter-active as possible. Give the audience a chance to submit questions in real-time.
Provide contact info for all speakers on the screen as they speak.
Publicize the cybercast in advance as widely as possible and as far in advance as possible.
Avoid the temptation to turn a civics demonstration into show business or message management.
The key aspect in making a live event like this useful to citizens is to have a community audience engaged in a discourse on the material at hand. We had some great comments in the live blog and on social networks but not nearly enough. Advance notice would have greatly helped build this conversation ahead of time. We also need better uptake from a more diverse set of media partners.
My final feedback is on the lack of critical integration with the America Speaking Out website itself. The groups these lobbyists represent have massive membership lists. It would have better served the audience (and the Republican leadership) had the lobbyists posted the ideas they were bringing to the forum on the web so their membership base and the public at large could respond to them in advance. The meeting could then be a discussion of that reaction instead of spending time reciting bullet points.
With each new event we build out the data behind Sunlight Live. What's next after lobbyist data? We have some amazing ideas and hope to share them with you soon. Get an update on when our next episode will be by following us on Twitter!
Still here? Looking for who showed up to the meeting?
Look no further:
| Marlene | Colucci | American Hotel & Lodging Association |
| John | McClelland | American Rental Association |
| Geoff | Burr | Associated Builders & Contractors |
| Steve | Sandherr | Associated General Contractors |
| Brian | Worth | Independent Electrical Contractors |
| Jon | Eisen | Int'l Foodservice Distributors Association |
| David | French | Int'l Franchise Association |
| Joe | Stanton | National Association of Home Builders |
| Jay | Timmons | Nat'l Association of Manufacturers |
| Dirk | Van Dongen | Nat'l Association of Wholesaler-Distributors |
| Jade | West | Nat'l Association of Wholesaler-Distributors |
| Dan | Danner | Nat'l Federation of Independent Business |
| Matt | Shay | Nat'l Retail Federation |
| Lisbeth | Lyons | Printing Industries of America |
| John | Emling | RILA |
| Bruce | Josten | US Chamber of Commerce |
| Mike | Aitken* | Society for Human Resource Management |
*Mike Aitken is not listed as a lobbyist - he is a Director of Government Affairs.
