The Sunlight Foundation is looking for intrepid volunteers willing to wade, ever so meticulously, through records on foreign influence in... View Article
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 10/11/2013
National News
- A phenomenon called link rot is gaining public attention recently following a report that many links contained in Supreme Court decisions are dead. Now, it turns out that the Federal government may have one of the worst cases of link rot. (FedScoop)
- Senator and former comedian Al Franken (D-MN) might not be laughing after his Republican challenger announced a big fundraising quarter. Mike McFadden, one of several potential challengers, raised $700,000 and has nearly $1.2 million on hand, which is impressive but doesn't match Franken's war chest. (Roll Call)
- President Obama talked about the McCutcheon v FEC decision during a press conference earlier this week, throwing a bone to his liberal base, but leaving much unsaid. (Public Integrity)
- Kenya launched an open data portal in the summer of 2011 and after a great deal of initial fanfare has settled into stagnancy. Update's have slowed to a trickle, traffic is stagnant, and it is losing clout. But all is not lost. (Opening Parliament)
- Every year New York's community boards put together wish lists of capital projects in specific neighborhoods, but they don't necessarily consult the community. A new mapping tool aims to give more people a bigger voice in these conversations. (Open Plans)
- The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission continued a program launched last year to detail and release data on energy usage in close to 450 municipal buildings, including over 130 controlled by the school district. (eWallstreeter)
- Ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison for a variety of corrupt activities that took place during his tenure. One of the toughest public corruption sentences handed down in recent years comes for charges that Kilpatrick rigged contracts, accepted bribes, and more. (Yahoo/AP)
OGP: Opportunities and Limitations
It’s been two years since the Open Government Partnership (OGP) was first announced. As Sunlight shares recommendations for the US’s OGP National Action Plan, we’re looking forward to attending and participating in the upcoming summit in London.
OGP has demonstrated explosive growth, with the initial 8 founding countries expanding to 60 in a very short time, and more likely to be announced soon. This rapid expansion is an affirmation of government officials’ desire to grapple with transparency issues, and demonstrates an appetite -- particularly from the public -- for “open government” and making it more accessible to the people it serves. OGP has been important in helping governments move in that direction, particularly Brazil’s passing a new FOI law and the US committing to implement the EITI.
OGP itself has been quite open in discussing its limitations, and no doubt there will be more of that at the next meeting. But it’s important, in advance of the upcoming summit, to offer a few observations about OGP’s structural limitations to provide context for the new national action plans.
Suggestions for the OGP National Action Plan
The Obama Administration is expected to release the second version of its Open Government Partnership National Action Plan this fall. The Open Government Partnership (OGP) is the primary multi-national initiative for open government, founded in 2011. The original US plan, released on September 20, 2011, covered a lot of ground, but also suffered a lack of detail and ignored several of the most pressing transparency issues. (Both money in politics and national security went uncovered.)
Given the US’s leadership role in the world (and in OGP), and the variety of issues the country faces, we hope the US National Action Plan will demonstrate how an administration can use transparency reform to help address some of the most fundamental challenges it faces.
The following are four Sunlight priorities for the upcoming US National Action Plan, and are priorities that we’ve often repeated to White House officials in our work.
Continue readingQuestions surface over Stockman campaign contributions
On Feb. 21, of this year, campaign finance records show, a parent of a congressional staffer contributed $7,500 in $2,500 increments to the cash-strapped campaign the staffer's boss, Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas. At least, that's what is disclosed in filings from the Stockman campaign. Contacted about her large contribution to Stockman, Jane Dodd of Dover, Del. told Sunlight, "That wasn't me."
Continue readingReasons to Not Release Data, Part 8: Privacy
Earlier this month, we shared a crowdsourced collection of the top concerns data advocates have heard when they’ve raised an open data project with government officials at the federal, state, and local level, and we asked for you to share how you’ve responded. Dozens of you contributed to the project, sharing your thoughts on social media, our public Google doc, and even on the Open Data Stack Exchange, where 8 threads were opened to dive deeper into specific subjects.
Drawing from your input, our own experience, and existing materials from our peers at the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership and some data warriors from the UK, we’ve compiled a number of answers -- discussion points, if you will -- to help unpack and respond to some of the most commonly cited open data concerns. This mash-up of expertise is a work in progress, but we bet you’ll find it a useful conversation starter (or continuer) for your own data advocacy efforts.
Click here to see other posts in this series.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing challenges and responses from our #WhyOpenData list that correspond to different themes. Today’s theme is Privacy.
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 10/10/2013
National News
- A Louisiana state Public Service Commissioner, and former member of the House, is tapping the utility industry that he regulates as he attempts to return to Washington. Former Rep. Clyde Holloway (R) counts a large number of utility related donors among his bankroll. (Roll Call)
- The Democratic and Republican National Committees are probably concentrating pretty hard to avoid drooling over news reports coming out of the Supreme Court as it hears arguments in McCutcheon v FEC. If the court strikes down aggregate limits on political giving to federal candidates and committees, which many expect it will, the DNC and RNC could stand to gain back some of the fundraising clout that they lost after the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates of dark money. (POLITICO)
- Democratic systems thrive when voters can see what their elected representatives are doing. This statement suggests that parliamentary broadcasting should be a priority, which in many countries may be true. (UN University)
- Singapore's National Environment Agency has an electrifying new app. Lightning@SG aims to provide users with a real time look at lightning strikes on the island nation. The data is pulled from the NEA's four lightning detection sensors.(Future Gov)
- Vermont is the latest state to test the open data slopes. After a recent Open Data Summit, the state is launching a pilot project aimed at compiling and opening data from its local governments. (CivSource)
- It is taking states and local governments almost a year to release audited financial statements. Regulators are looking to them to speed up the process as they try to help municipal bond investors get timely information. (Reuters)
- A group of campaign and government ethics regulators from across the country are coming together to launch a new website that provides information about campaign disclosure. The States Unified Network (SUN) Center will display legislation, news, enforcement cases, and more from states aas diverse as New York, California, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. (Lobby Comply)
Good enough for government work? The contractors building Obamacare
The Obama administration dreamed that its health insurance exchanges--the websites that were supposed to make it easy to buy health insurance--would function as smoothly as online consumer sites like Expedia or Amazon.com. But as head-scratching continues about how a famously web-savvy administration could have flubbed its Internet homework so badly, an examination by the Sunlight Foundation shows the administration turned the task of building its futuristic new health care technology planning and programming over to legacy contractors with deep political pockets.
One result: Problem-plagued online exchanges that make it all but impossible for consumers to buy insurance and ...
Continue readingReasons to Not Release Data, Part 7: Accuracy
Earlier this month, we shared a crowdsourced collection of the top concerns data advocates have heard when they’ve raised an open data project with government officials at the federal, state, and local level, and we asked for you to share how you’ve responded. Dozens of you contributed to the project, sharing your thoughts on social media, our public Google doc, and even on the Open Data Stack Exchange, where 8 threads were opened to dive deeper into specific subjects.
Drawing from your input, our own experience, and existing materials from our peers at the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership and some data warriors from the UK, we’ve compiled a number of answers -- discussion points, if you will -- to help unpack and respond to some of the most commonly cited open data concerns. This mash-up of expertise is a work in progress, but we bet you’ll find it a useful conversation starter (or continuer) for your own data advocacy efforts.
Click here to see other posts in this series.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing challenges and responses from our #WhyOpenData list that correspond to different themes. Today’s theme is Accuracy.
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 10/9/2013
National News The government shutdown has stymied researchers looking for information held in the Library of Congres, Smithsonian, National Archives,... View Article
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