Making government & politics more accountable & transparent
Spotlight
Office of Refugee Resettlement quietly removes entire staff directory webpage - A page listing email addresses and phone numbers for 22 members of ORR's leadership was taken down without notice
Our latest blog posts
- Today in OpenGov: Tear down this (pay)wall Sep 18, 2018 06:42 AM
- How to Stop ‘Smart Cities’ From Becoming ‘Surveillance Cities’ Sep 17, 2018 10:12 AM
- Today in OpenGov: Kept in the dark Sep 17, 2018 07:43 AM
- This Week in Conflicts: President Trump Throws a $100K Campaign Event, More Hatch Act Complaints and a Challenge to Trump’s D.C. Hotel’s Liquor License Sep 16, 2018 05:04 PM
- Today in OpenGov: Can this blind trust really see? Sep 14, 2018 07:31 AM
Open government in real-time
Our Projects
What Works Cities
Through the generous support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Sunlight’s Open Cities team provides direct technical assistance to dozens of mid-sized American cities participating in the What Works Cities Initiative, helping improve public information disclosure and reuse.
Tracking Trump’s Conflicts of Interest
On November 28, 2017, Sunlight began maintaining an ongoing list of confirmed reports of conflicts of interest, where Trump business has clearly mixed with public business. [Read more]
Web Integrity Project
The Web Integrity Project’s mission is to monitor changes to government websites, holding our government accountable by revealing shifts in public information and access to Web resources, as well as changes in stated policies and priorities. [Read more]
Tracking the Trump Administration’s Record on Transparency
Sunlight joined C-SPAN to make sense of the Trump administration’s record on open government during Sunshine Week. We continue to add to a long list of examples that offer insight. [Read more]
Our MissionThe Sunlight Foundation is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that uses the tools of civic tech, open data, policy analysis and journalism to make our government and politics more accountable and transparent to all. Our vision is for modern technology to enable more complete, equitable and effective democratic participation. Our overarching goal is to achieve changes in the law to require real-time, online transparency for government information.
Sunlight’s efforts have produced real results. Over the past decade, we served more than 4.2 billion API calls, indicating how much the data we liberated has been needed. Our reporting and analysis is frequently cited by the world’s preeminent journalists. Our research has led to congressional hearings and legislative action. Our tools were used to strip problematic measures from bills. Our advocacy has led to legislative and agency reforms, from a major victory when, at our urging, the federal government agreed to begin the process of releasing all data sets held by federal agencies, to the enactment and implementation of the DATA Act, the most significant open data law in United States history. Today, we are pushing for more reforms, defending transparency and ethics in government, helping open up cities with their communities, and holding government accountable.
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