Disclaimer: This guest post was written by the Open Knowledge Foundation. The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Spending Stories is a new way to put spending figures in their proper perspective. Developed by the Open Knowledge Foundation and Journalism++ with funding from the Knight Foundation, Spending Stories is an app that helps citizens and journalists understand and compare amounts in stories from the news.
When we hear that the UK’s school meals programme costs £6 million, what does that really mean? It means, for one thing, that it costs about a fifth of the annual spending on the monarchy.
A FOIA Victory for Sunlight and Spending Transparency
Just two days after the filing of Sunlight’s first lawsuit, and after more than five months of agency recalcitrance, we received the documents we sued for under the Freedom of Information Act.
Continue readingCivil Society Groups Urge Trade Transparency
Today, the Sunlight Foundation joined with more than 30 Civil Society organizations from around the world and urged leaders to conduct the Trans-Pacific Partnership and any future trade negotiations in "a manner consistent with the democratic principles and openness and accountability."
Today in #OpenGov 11/21/2013
National News
- The House quietly passed a campaign finance bill earlier this week. The bill extends the FEC's authority to hand out administrative penalties to campaign committees when they are late filing, or simply fail to file, their campaign reports.(Roll Call)
- After 8 years as chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke argued that he has made significant progress towards opening up the traditionally closed institution during his tenure. Making the Fed more transparent was one of Bernanke's original goals. (National Journal)
- Marc Smith put together a massive map of open government communities on Twitter. He analyzed tweets mentioning opengov and broke them down based on location, communities, and more. (E Pluribus Unum)
- A Brazilian state, Minas Gerais, decided to help out their entire country with a new tool, DataViva, that should help government employees, citizens, and the private sector make more sense of big government data. (Tech President)
- Want to learn about open budgets around the world? Check out the International Budget Partnership's new OBS Data Explorer! The explorer lets users explore results to the IBP's Open Budget Survey. (International Budget Partnership)
- Honolulu Hawaii is moving to expand state open data rules to their city. The Honolulu City Council unanimously passed an open data bill and sent it on to the Mayor. (CivSource)
Stockman campaign goes for campaign finance hat trick
The embattled Stockman campaign has struggled to point to a permissible source for the $15,000 it received from two of the congressman's staffers. Though half of the money was reattributed again in the committee's recent slew of amendments, one of the contribution's most recent changes would also seem to have rendered it impermissible.
Continue readingThe Global Open Data Initiative Needs Your Input
Open Data has enormous unfulfilled promise to change how governments work and to empower citizenship. As more governments and issue... View Article
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 11/20/2013
National News
- The deputy CIO at the CFPB sat down with FedScoop to talk about how the innovative agency has leveraged open source technologies to get their job done. (FedScoop)
- President Obama has had a tough time of it lately. But, his struggles governing haven't hindered what sometimes seems to be his favorite job, raising huge amounts of money for the Democratic party. (NPR)
- The Australian State of New South Wales released its first open data policy, embracing the philosophy of "open by default" in the process. (Future Gov)
- Several U.S. groups are celebrating 30 years of working to strengthen democracy and democratic institutions around the world. The National Democratic Institute, National Endowment for Democracy, and International Republican Institute have been at it for three decades. (NDI)
- Ever wonder if your city is "smart?" Like ranked lists and pretty pictures? This article, which ranks the 10 "smartest cities" in North America may be for you! (Fast Co.Exist)
- New York City's department of education announced several applications built on open data that hope to help parents and students navigate the high-school selection process. (Education Week)
OpenGov Conversations: Tiago Peixoto on Open Data and Citizen Engagement – Disentangling the Relationship
This post is part of our series, OpenGov Conversations, an ongoing discourse featuring contributions from transparency and accountability researchers and practitioners around the world.
This post responds to the following question: What is the role of citizen engagement in the ability of transparency policies and initiatives to hold governments accountable?
As asserted by Jeremy Bentham nearly two centuries ago, “[I]n the same proportion as it is desirable for the governed to know the conduct of their governors, is it also important for the governors to know the real wishes of the governed.” Although Bentham’s historical call may come across as obvious to some, it highlights one of the major shortcomings of the current open government movement: while a strong focus is given to mechanisms to let the governed know the conduct of their governors (i.e. transparency), less attention is given to the means by which the governed can express their wishes (i.e. citizen engagement).
Continue readingOpenGov Conversations: Aaron Azelton on Citizen Engagement
This post is part of our series, OpenGov Conversations, an ongoing discourse featuring contributions from transparency and accountability researchers and practitioners around the world.
This post responds to the following question: What is the role of citizen engagement in the ability of transparency policies and initiatives to hold governments accountable?
As much as I would like to offer a simple definitive answer to the question, I have to say instead that it depends; particularly when democratic institutions and processes are being established and corresponding norms, values and practices are evolving. This view is based on 20 years working at the National Democratic Institute (NDI) to increase organized citizen engagement, as a means of deepening democracy so that governments deliver a better quality of life for citizens. This work has provided a number of lessons regarding the relationship between citizen engagement, transparency and government accountability.
Continue readingOpenGov Conversations: Lee Drutman on Three Types of Accountability
This post is part of our series, OpenGov Conversations, an ongoing discourse featuring contributions from transparency and accountability researchers and practitioners around the world.
This post responds to the following question: What is the role of citizen engagement in the ability of transparency policies and initiatives to hold governments accountable?
Unlike the others in this series who have been working on the ground to implement transparency policies and initiatives, I have not. My background is in political science, so I’m going to do something that political scientists often do. I’m going to theorize and I’m going to offer a typology.
Though we tend to talk about accountability as if it is one thing, I think there are actually three types of government accountability that we care about: preference accountability, character accountability, and performance accountability. And each of these has its own relationship to citizen engagement. By better understanding this, we can better understand the citizen engagement – transparency – accountability nexus.
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