We are very pleased to annouce today our third round of grants for 2007 for projects that use the Internet to connect the public to information about the workings of Congress. The groups we are funding are leading the way in making Congress more transparent, and therefore, more accountable to the public. Each in their own way are innovative in their use of ‘Web 2.0' technology to equip citizens with the tools and knowledge necessary to effectively participate in democracy.
The grants, totaling $350,000, are being awarded to MAPLight.org, the Center for Independent Media and The Focus Project's OMB Watch.
Continue readingWhat’s With These Guys?
Every single time we look around one Senator or another (in our experience usually a Republican) is blocking a piece of legislation that would require greater transparency for the work of Congress. First, it was Sen. Ted Stevens who had a secret hold on the Coburn-Obama bill that ultimately passed after pressure from the blogosphere, then there is Sen. Mitch McConnell who is effectively is hiding the Senator who is blocking a bill that would create electronic filing for Senators' campaign finance reports, and now there's Sen. Stevens (seems to be a pattern here)... who blocked the markup of legislation that would provide transparency for presidential library donations, which currently have no official disclosure requirements.
Continue readingDemocracy Connect, Indian Style
Nearly every day someone emails me an idea or website that is doing some exciting work but I was particularly taken by a site called DemocracyConnect which is working in India in our sweet spot -- the intersection of politics, technology and civic engagement.
Writes one of the movers behind the site -- Anshuman Bapna:
An average member of the Indian Parliament has 2M people in their constituency and the legislative infrastructure to create large-scale social impact during their elected term of office. However, they are hampered by a lack of relevant information, management expertise and apathy from both development organizations and the larger population.
Our approach is to think of these elected representatives as social entrepreneurs. We make them successful by providing information support to them on legislations, providing oversight for development projects in their constituencies and by connecting them to a global talent pool of professionals with specific areas of expertise. Technology plays an important role in making this possible....
Over the past 2 years, Democracy Connect has reached out to over 50 Members of Parliament in India through mini-workshops and policy briefings.
Here's just one cool element of their site - a wiki to provide policy advice on request to members of Parliament. The idea behind the Virtual Policy Cell is that a volunteer team of experts and individuals across the world will work collaboratively to come up with a fact-based response to specific questions of interest.
Very impressive group of folks behind this effort.
Send any ideas their way. I'm sure they'd appreciate it.
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Mapping Campaign Contributions
One of the leading state based organizations that analyzes campaign contributions hails from Virginia. On Friday of last week The Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP.org) announced some fascinating new on-line mapping applications as its latest innovation to enhance the public's understanding of the role of money in Virginia politics.
This new mapping initiative provides the public with a visual representation of where Virginia candidates get their campaign contributions. Users can start with a statewide view and zoom to the ZIP Code level.
Democrats Living Up to Their Pledge
The Politico reports that even when it appears to be against their fundraising interests, the Democrats felt pressured last week to live up to their anti-corruption pledge that swept them into the office in the last election.
"The most important thing for our new members is to be able to go back to their constituents and say they were part of changing the direction in Washington, and that includes holding Congress accountable and holding members accountable," Rep. Van Hollen, DCCC chairman said.
Jeanne Cummings concludes her column by saying:
Continue readingSunlight Partners Win!
I've been out here in California this week attending the second annual NetSquared Conference, a very stimulating presentation of 21 different projects that were selected by the community out of a 120 or so to be presented in front of an assembled group of 350. The end goal? Not only to win a share of a $100,000, but also exposure to a wealth of technical and business expertise that was assembled to help nurture and develop these web entrepreneurs.
Continue readingMAPLight.org and OpenSecrets.org in the News
We were very pleased by David Pogue's column yesterday in the New York Times drawing attention to MAPLight.org and OpenSecrets.org, two of our largest grantees. And Pogue's take on what he found at MAPLight.org:"The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that you have one..." is just what we hope users of MAPLight.org would feel.
So don't go curl up and pull a blanket over your head. Check out MAPLight.org and begin to ask your legislators some questions.
Continue readingMAPLight.org’s New Money and Politics Search Engine
One of Sunlight's signature grantees, MAPLight.org, just launched a revolutionary new revolutionary search engine that reveals the connections between money and politics within Congress by effectively and elegantly presenting data from official voting records archived by Library of Congress with campaign contributions tracked and compiled by Sunlight grantee, the Center for Responsive Politics.
MAPLight.org's work truly embodies how to use Web 2.0 technology to shed light on the power campaign contributions have on federal legislation.
The Open House Project at Heritage
This morning the Heritage Foundation hosted a terrific panel of the primary conveners of the Sunlight sponsored Open House Project - John Wonderlich, Rob Bluey, Matt Stoller and David All. And while the conversation touched on some of the specific recommendations of the work, it was mostly a very articulate and thoughtful musing by the four 20-something leaders of the effort about how they marshaled the online collaborative effort across a sharp political divide on bringing the House into the 21st century. The genuine bipartisanship was hated by one right-wing blogger, but was defended by two of the conveners -- Rob Bluey and David All. Can't wait to hear what Stoller has to say.
Continue readingWe are opening the House
We just returned from a terrific press conference on the Hill where we released the results of the Open House Project. Rep. John Boehner (R. OH) and Rep. Brad Miller (D. NC) joined some of the collaborators of this project as we talked about our recommendations for bringing the House into this century and the collaborative, online way the project was conducted. We very much appreciated Boehner's and Miller's support as we did that of House Speaker Pelosi who sent a letter welcoming the report. C-SPAN covered the press conference and as soon as we know when it will be aired, we'll update this post.
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