2000+ SIGN LETTER TO CONGRESS: SAVE THE DATA

—Sunlight: “This morning Sunlight sent an open letter to Congress on behalf of 13 organizations and more than 2,000 signatories that calls on legislators to save online transparency programs from budget cuts. With thousands of tweets and phone calls, we’re keeping up the pressure, but more is needed if we are to prevent these programs from going dark. If you haven’t already, follow the link to sign our open letter or be put in contact with your representative. … The cost of defunding USASpending.gov, Data.gov, the IT Dashboard, and other programs is high. These e-government initiatives help the government operate more effectively and efficiently, saving taxpayer money and helping public oversight. They increase economic opportunities for small business. They also increase citizen knowledge of and involvement in the democratic process. An open and accountable government is a prerequisite for democracy.”

PUBLIC ONLINE INFORMATION ACT

—Sunlight: “Today Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) and Representative Steve Israel (D-NY) reintroduced the landmark Public Online Information Act. If enacted, POIA would bring the government into the 21st century by requiring the government to embrace the presumption that government-held information, already required to be public, must be available online. Data should be free from the shadows of obscurity and brought into the sunlight of the Internet. … The current way information is often made accessible in Washington is that you often must show up in person at a musty repository and photocopy information page by page — or try your luck at freeing information through a FOIA request and endure countless (and possibly politicized) bureaucratic business days. The public demands better; it looks online for information.”

WASHINGTON TO WALL ST.

—Politico: “Banking behemoth Citigroup announced Monday that former senior Bush administration official Candi Wolff will head the company’s global government affairs shop, a move that comes as regulators in Washington and across the world are implementing new rules on the financial service industry. … Wolff, a partner at Hogan Lovells, starts her new job as Citi’s executive vice president of global government affairs on May 2.”

JON STEWART ON OBAMA TRANSPARENCY

—Watch the clip over at Gawker.