National News
- The famously dysfunctional 113th Congress has been a boon to offices on K street looking to scoop up top level Republican talent growing frustrated with life on Capitol Hill. GOP leadership offices in the House and Senate have lost numerous aides to top level lobbying jobs since the 112th Congress. (POLITICO)
- Despite the Obama White House's often contentious relationship with the press more than 20 prominent journalists have taken jobs with the administration since 2009. There is a long history of journalists revolving into politics and vice versa, but conservatives complain that the practice is more prevalent on the left. (POLITICO)
- Central Intelligence Agency contractors do their fair share of lobbying, but the giant intelligence agency doesn't have any plans to make their disclosures public. The CIA denied a FOIA request by POLITICO, claiming that it could not "confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence or records," relating to the lobbying efforts of contractors. Federal contractors are supposed to file public OMB form LLLs, but there is sketchy compliance and no system to track them. (POLITICO)
- More than 200 individuals and groups from all sectors are teaming up to promote transparency in Taiwan. The new alliance will promote open data, and has already received a positive reaction from some in government who have agreed to open more data this year. (Tech President)
- Historically in China, officials that take bribes are looked on with more scrutiny than those that offer the bribes in the first place. However, several recent cases indicate that this might be changing as high profile industry officials have been convicted on bribery charges. (The FCPA Blog)
- Following some big procurement scandals in Singapore, the nation's developer of industrial infrastructure Jurong Town Corporation is turning to data analytics in an attempt to screen for irregularities and avoid procurement fraud. (Future Gov)
- A Wisconsin State Senator is mounting a fight against an open records claim that could have a serious impact on the state's open records law. State Sen. Leah Vukmir is countersuing the Center for Media and Democracy, claiming that she can't be sued under the open records law while in office. If successful, Vukmir's suit will allow all state legislators to withhold information from public request. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
Will NFL lobby team sack proposal to tax the league?
Fiscally-minded senators and the K Street reps of some of the country's most popular professional sporting leagues may be lacing up the cleats for a battle over the tax-exempt status of these groups.
Bloomberg News is reporting that budget hawk Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., is leading a push to challenge the 501(c)6 status of groups like the National Football League, the National Hockey League and the Professional Golfers Association -- citing the need to close loopholes in the tax code and the $109 million that taxing these groups would add to the federal budget over ten years. However ...
Continue readingYour Guidelines to Open Data Guidelines Pt. 2: Stages of Development
In revisiting Sunlight’s Open Data Policy Guidelines for our Version 2.0 release, we took a closer look at other sources for open data guidance that have been released over the years. To see a comprehensive round up of open data guidance (complete with a timeline!) see Part 1 of Your Guideline to Open Data Guidelines: The History.
Although it’s only been eight years since the first resource of this kind was created with the Open Knowledge Foundation's Open Knowledge Definition, exploring open data guidance in its totality not only shows how much these recommendations build on each other, but how the movement has matured. Moreover, many of these resources occupy separate-–but overlapping-–arenas of expertise, though an outside perspective may not immediately catch their nuances. Below, we’ll explore in more detail the three major themes of open data guidance: How to Define Open Data, How to Implement Open Data, and How to Open an Open Data Discussion.
The sequence, prevalence, and layering of these themes showcase the developmental stages of the open data movement thus far. Over the years we have seen open data advocacy emerge from its nascent expert-driven defining period to becoming (quite self-referentially) a public discussion. We’ve seen different missions of the major players in the open data movement inform nuanced definitions and implementation recommendations, and we have seen an increase in best practice assessments, academic critique, and diverging schools of thought.
To understand this larger story, let us look at each piece.
Continue readingPartying for dollars: Mapping five years of political fundraisers
When it comes to political fundraising, Congress doesn’t travel very far; 76 percent of all political fundraisers in D.C. take place within three city blocks of the U.S. Capitol, a new study by the Sunlight Foundation shows. Additionally, these fundraisers are concentrated in and around congressional working hours and on days when the House and Senate are in session (more to come on this trend tomorrow). What this map illustrates, in interactive color, is how deeply ingrained fundraising has become in the day-to-day life of Washington and in the routines of the people who work here.
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 9/16/2013
National News
- The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, set up to monitor funds distributed as part of the stimulus program launched in 2009, has received accolades for the level of transparency it broad to the massive program. The recovery program was subject to relatively minimal corruption thanks to the board's oversight and the open process. (Federal Computer Week)
- The Koch brothers are taking a new avenue to spend their fortune on political campaigns. Freedom Partners, registered as a 501(c)(6), a designation usually reserved for trade groups like the Chamber of Commerce or American Bar Association, doled out roughly $250 million to conservative groups during 2012. (National Journal)
- A conservative congressman, known for his fiery floor speeches, suggested that House Republicans could defund parts of the executive branch, particularly the Department of Justice, if the Obama administration doesn't become more forthcoming about the various scandals that the GOP is currently investigating. (Government Executive)
- The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has decided to release some previously private court opinion's that justify the government's bulk data collection efforts. The release, more specific details of which have not yet been made available, comes as a result of an ACLU lawsuit. (ars technica)
- The President of Venezuela is asking for special powers to vaccinate Venezuela’s democracy and public sector” against corruption, but real change is unlikely to happen via an executive power grad. Instead, TI suggests that changes need to be made to make all levels of government, especially the executive branch, more open and accountable. (Transparency International)
- (POLITICO)
- San Francisco elected leaders want to bring online, participatory budgeting to their citizens. Right now there's only one problem, figuring out how to actually implement an effective system. (The Verge)
- According to two investigative journalists, the NYPD is more likely to fight a FOI request than any federal agency that secrecy is expected from, including the FBI and NSA. Apparently, the NYPD has a long history of battling the scourge of Freedom of Information laws. (Tech Dirt)
- Opinion: A look back at the past four, open government fueled years, of the Bloomberg administration in New York City and wondered what the next four might look like if New Yorkers elect a mayor who isn't as interested in innovative government and technology. (Tech President)
OpenGov Voices: 3 simple ways cities can improve access to online information
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.
Matt MacDonald is the co-founder and president at NearbyFYI. NearbyFYI collects city government data and documents, helping make local government information accessible and understood. He can be reached at matt@nearbyfyi.com. Matt is also one of the winners of Sunlight Foundation’s OpenGov Grants.
At NearbyFYI we review online information and documents from hundreds of city and town websites. Our CityCrawler service has found and extracted text from over 100,000 documents for the more than 170 Vermont cities and towns that we track. We're adding new documents and municipal websites all the time, and we wanted to share a few tips that make it easier for citizens to find meeting minutes, permit forms and documents online. The information below is written for a non-technical audience but some of the changes might require assistance from your webmaster, IT department or website vendor.
Create a unique web page for each document or formEach city or town meeting that occurs should have its own unique web page for agenda items, meeting minutes and other documents. We often see cities and towns creating a single, very large web page that contains an entire year of meeting minutes. This may be convenient for the person posting the meeting minutes online but presents a number of challenges for the citizen who is trying to find a specific meeting agenda or the minutes from that meeting.
Here is an example of meeting minutes that are in a single page that requires the citizen to scroll and scroll to find what they are looking for. This long archived page structure also presents challenges to web crawlers and tools that look to create structured information from the text. Proctor, VT provides a good example for what we look for in a unique meeting minutes document. We like that this document can answer the following questions:
-
Which town created the document? (Proctor)
-
What type of document is this? (Meeting Minutes)
-
Which legislative body is responsible for the document (Selectboard)
-
When was the meeting? (November 27, 2012 - it's better to use a full date format like this)
-
Which board members attended the meeting? (Eric, Lloyd, Vincent, Bruce, William)
The only thing that could improve the access to this document is if it was saved as a plain text file rather than a PDF file. Creating a single web page or document for each meeting means that citizens don't have to scan very large documents to find what they are looking for.
Continue readingStealthy Wealthy: A Texas donor plays state PACs
W.E. "Ed" Bosarge Jr. isn't a household name, but the $2 million he gave in federal contributions and the $1.2 million more he chipped in to state level political action committees--much of it in his home state of Texas--in the 2011-2012 election cycle have made him well known to politicians. So well known, in fact, that a pair of bills pending in the Texas House or Representatives would commend him and his wife Marie Taylor Bosarge on their accomplishments.
A financial wizard who got his start working flight control systems for Saturn rockets, Bosarge has interests beyond ...
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 9/13/2013
National News When House members want to travel the world on “fact finding” missions they can seek funding from outside... View Article
Continue readingFEC deadlocks on and delays key decisions
In a session marked more by delay than by decision, the Federal Election Commission did not approve a request by the Democratic Governors Association to use soft money to fund a new group that would participate in federal get-out-the-vote efforts, a matter it put off voting on at its last meeting in August.
By forming a separate organization, the group of state governors was seeking to get around a legal ban on groups of state lawmakers from playing in federal elections with unlimited funds.
The two Democrat-appointed commissioners voted against approval, disappointing the three GOP commissioners who believed the DGA ...
Continue readingThe Impact of Opening Up Crime Data
Many cities in the U.S. release crime data, but how much information is available and how it's released varies greatly. Although there are more static tables with crime stats posted on websites than we’d like to count, there are also plenty of examples of decently structured data releases that form the foundation for informative and creative uses of crime data -- raising the bar for what is possible. All around the country, journalists, developers, and many other groups are transforming public crime data into meaningful stories, apps, data visualizations, and more, responding to the high demand for access to and better understanding of this information. Below, we’ve rounded up a few of the strongest examples of the different ways crime data can be used.
Continue reading
59063
