Sunlight Foundation

Before we dive into today's top open government news, we would like to share a great opportunity to engage. Our friends at MuckRock are looking for feedback as they think about the future. We urge you to consider taking their survey, which should take 15 minutes and include questions applicable to readers of the MuckRock blog, regular users of their FOI services, or anyone who supports their work in other ways.  Once you've done that, read on for today's look at open government news. 

In today's edition, we round up a raft of recent stories on the intersection of money and politics, share updates on some news from the Trump administration, highlight a bombshell report on domestic spying conducted by the Treasury department, and more. 

In today's edition, we lament that $90,000 in a freezer might not be enough for a corruption conviction any more, the Secret Service isn't tracking presidential visitors to Mar-a-Lago, local investigative reporting is getting a boost, Brazil takes a questionable step towards public financing of elections, and more. 

In today's edition, the POLITICO reporters who uncovered Tom Price's pricey travel explain how they did it, we share a new way to classify web content alterations, San Francisco balances open data with privacy, Ryan Zinke faces scrutiny for mixing politics with official business, and more. 

Do you like our coverage of open data at the city level? Well, Sunlight's Open Cities team is launching a brand new newsletter that might be right up your alley. Dedicated to understanding how to use open data to solve community problems, the newsletter will explore everything from the nuts and bolts of publishing data online to how to formalize open data procedures and how to put it all into use. The open cities team will be sharing the ideas and resources designed for small- and mid-sized cities interested in making open data a bigger part of their toolkit. Sound good? You can learn more and sign up for the newsletter, which we'll be sending out about twice a month, right here. Once you've done that, you can read on for your daily dose of open government news from Washington, DC, around the United States, and across the globe. 

In today's edition, federal Inspectors General team up to boost access to information, the fate of a strong campaign finance law rests on the pen of California's governor, President Trump's cabinet might not be over its charter plane controversy, and more.

In today's edition, we welcome five new cities to the What Works Cities initiative, keep our eye on the potential tax reform-related lobbying boon, highlight open data boosting efforts in Singapore, wave goodbye to Tom Price, and much more. 

Today, we're wrapping up a busy week with opportunities for civic engagement, the latest on Trump Cabinet officials and their love of charter flights, Facebook's 2011 fight against ad disclosure, campaign finance news out of Brazil and Mexico, and quick hits from across the open government world.