Happy Friday, here is this week's review of the notable deleted tweets from politicians captured and archived by Politwoops.
Continue readingAbortion rights prompts liberal groups to spend big, and early
WIth more than a year to go before the next congressional race, Democratic groups have begun to outspend Republican groups two to one. Much of that money is coming from groups focused on abortion rights.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: PDF Liberation Hackathon – At Sunlight in DC, SF and Around the World – January 17-19, 2014
Disclaimer: 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.
Marc Joffe is the founder of Public Sector Credit Solutions (PSCS), which applies open data and analytics to rating government bonds. Before starting PSCS, Marc was a Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics. You can contact him at marc@publicsectorcredit.org. Marc is also one of the winners of Sunlight Foundation’s OpenGov Grants.
Extracting useful information from PDFs is a problem as old as … PDFs. Too often, we focus on extracting information from a specific set of documents instead of looking at the bigger picture. If you’ve ever struggled with this problem, join us for Sunlight’s PDF Liberation Hackathon, dedicated to improving open source tools for PDF extraction.
Instead of focusing on one set of documents, coders will come together to add features, extensions and plugins to existing PDF extraction frameworks, making them more flexible, useful and sustainable. Sunlight’s PDF Liberation Hackathon will tackle real-world PDF data extraction problems. In doing so, we will build upon existing open-source PDF extraction solutions such as Tabula and Ashima’s PDF Table Extractor. ( A full list of PDF extraction technologies relevant to the hackathon can be found on our resource page here.) In addition, hackers will have the option of using licensed PDF software libraries as long as the implementation cost of these libraries is less than $1,000. If you have an idea for a library you want to use, please mention it in your signup form and we will try to work out the licensing ahead of time so that things run smoothly.
Register now to attend the PDF Liberation Hackathon!
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 11/15/2013
National News
- A group of major tech companies have been asking the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for the right to release more specific details on government data requests. The companies want to have public oral arguments in front of the court, a request that the government isn't so happy about. Government representatives have asked that only they be allowed to argue in front of a judge, and to do it in secret to boot. (ars technica)
- Penny Pritzker, the new Secretary of Commerce, counts data among her top priorities. The successful business woman understands how open government data can help entrepreneurs and plans to put her energy behind ensuring that the Commerce department continues to open up. (fedscoop)
- The infamous Koch brothers spent a whopping $122 million on the 2012 election through their "nonprofit", Americans for Prosperity. That's more than the group had spent between 2004 and 2011 combined. (Public Integrity)
- Australia is making some changes to its open data portal, most notably switching to an open source platform in July. Since the change more than half of the portals data sets have disappeared, but there doesn't appear to be anything nefarious at play. Site administrators are simply cleaning up dead links and removing junk datasets. (Tech President)
- A data set full of voting records from the UN General Assembly since 1946 is being used to show off some beautiful visualizations that can help show off parliamentary data. (Opening Parliament)
- The Russian Minister of Communications and Mass Communications indicated that his country would be making more data related to government contracting available to the public. (E Pluribus Unum)
- The Michigan Secretary of State has proposed a rule that would broaden disclosure requirements for political ads. The rule would require ad sponsors to file formal reports and meet all other disclosure rules. (Roll Call)
Tea Party Leadership Fund shooting BBs at money-clad RINOs?
In its recent ad, The Tea Party Leadership Fund, asks all “true conservatives” to help TPLF successfully defeat the 87 Republican “traitors” who capitulated in the shutdown standoff. A Sunlight analysis of the targeted House members’ campaign funds shows that – unless present trends shift completely – the Tea Party Leadership Fund PAC would be vastly outgunned in a spending battle with the “RINOs” in question.
Continue readingSmall farmers lodge complaints about food safety law
With the November 15 deadline looming for comments on two key food safety regulations, organizations representing organic and small farmers are urging members to write in and criticize them. Some interests didn't wait until the last minute: the proposed rules have already received a slew of comments, according to analysis of proposed rules using Sunlight's Docket Wrench tool.
At issue for the sustainable agriculture crowd is how and whether the new rules apply to small farming and processing operations. The Food Safety Modernization Act, which authorized the regulations, included an exemption for the small operators thanks to an ...
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 11/14/2013
National News
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are turning to data to root out fraud and abuse in their programs. They are also working to make more data about financial relationships between teaching hospitals and the medical industry open. (Fed Scoop)
- The White House is fighting against proposals circulating in the Senate that would bring some needed transparency to various intelligence programs. National Security staffers are arguing that shedding light on some of our nation's spying activities will harm national security. (POLITICO)
- Vice President Biden is losing one chief of staff, but has another waiting in the wings after coming in through the revolving door. Steve Ricchetti, who will take over the post in mid-December, is a former lobbyist and Clinton administration official who has been working as a counselor to Biden since 2012. (New York Times)
- Bahrain is looking to boost transparency through a national strategy to promote electronic participation in government. The strategy, which official's hope to launch soon, would be the first of its kind in the region. (Future Gov)
- Ireland is looking to raise some of the fees it ties to Freedom of Information requests, which might be in conflict with European and international regulations. (Access Info)
Recent Developments Show Desire For Trade Talk Transparency
Last week we wrote about the recent trend towards secrecy in international trade negotiations, including a discussion of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a major agreement currently being hammered out. This week two developments have highlighted the broad desire, as well as the need, for more transparency in these talks.
Yesterday Wikileaks released a draft chapter from the TPP dedicated to intellectual property. The leaked document represents the state of negotiation following a round of talks that took place on August 26-30th in Brunei. It includes notations detailing how each negotiating country feels about the various points still under contention.
Unions, Obama dark money group press GOP on immigration
A new fight over immigration appears to be brewing, but it likely has more to do with the 2014 elections than with any real chance legislation will be passed.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, appeared to close that door on Wednesday, when he ruled out any negotiations over the sweeping immigration law the Senate passed in June. On the same day, Organizing for Action, the dark money committee that grew out of President Barack Obama's campaign, sent an email to supporters calling on them to pressure Republican lawmakers to take up the immigration bill. The committee suggested targeting Rep ...
Continue readingLearn to Use Sunlight APIs with Codecademy
Good news, everyone! We’ve expanded our Codecademy curriculum to include Javascript and Ruby! Some of you might remember that we... View Article
Continue reading
59063
