Making government & politics more accountable & transparent
Spotlight
Cities need your help making better open data policy - Our What Works cities are asking the public to weigh in on draft open data policies. Help us make better policy with, not for, the public.
Latest from the blog
- On truth, justice and the American way Jun 3, 2017 09:58 AM
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- How an open license can encourage use of open data Jun 2, 2017 10:00 AM
What We Do
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 to use 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. And, our work focuses on the local, state, federal and international levels.
These efforts have produced real results. To date, we have served more than 4.2 billion API calls (and counting), indicating how much the data we liberate is needed. Our reporting is frequently cited by the world’s preeminent journalists. Our research has led to congressional hearings, and our tools have stripped problematic measures from bills. And we recently won a major victory when, at our urging, the federal government agreed to begin the process of releasing all data sets held by federal agencies.
As government grows ever-more complex, and as the flow of political money becomes more perverse, we will all need better and more creative tools to ensure that democracy thrives.
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