Those of you who were computer science majors in college may have belonged to your school’s student chapter of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). If you were a dues paying member, you likely received their quarterly magazine XRDS (called Crossroads when I was a student).
The latest issue of XRDS is themed around “CS in Service of Democracy”, and I’ve contributed an article about Sunlight Labs to the issue. If you’re able to get a copy, you’ll also find articles by friends of Sunlight like Josh Tauberer of GovTrack and POPVOX, and Harlan Yu and Stephen Schultze, who built RECAP.
My article is reprinted after the jump.
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 12/14/2011
Here is Wednesday's look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Government
- A new bill, the Whistleblower Improvement Act of 2011, will actually gut protections for whistleblowers included in the Dodd-Frank Act. (POGO)
- The Ohio House of Representatives approved a bill that would set criminal penalties for those misusing taxpayer money for political purposes. (Lobby Comply)
- Congress has blocked an Obama administration proposal that would have required companies to disclose people and organizations that they support politically when bidding for contracts. (Federal Computer Week)
- A Wisconsin campaign finance law that caps donations to state PACs at $10,000 has been ruled illegal by a circuit court. (Courthouse News)
- California is the first state in the nation to allow campaign contributions via text message. (Courthouse News)
- Newt Gingrich is getting some Super PAC support from a new group, Winning Our Future. The PAC is being formed by a longtime fundraiser for Gingrich's American Solutions for Winning the Future organization. (Politico)
- The New Democrat Coalition is losing their press secretary to K Street. Natalie Thorpe Munoz is joining SKDKnickerbocker as a senior associate. (National Journal)
SOPA revolvers: Sixteen former Judiciary staffers lobby on online copyright issues
As the House Judiciary Committee readies to consider a controversial bill that supporters say will crack down on websites pirating content, some interest groups may have a leg up on influencing the legislators.
That’s because 16 lobbyists, representing various companies and organizations favoring, opposing or watching the bill, used to work on the House panel. The committee plans to markup the measure tomorrow.
The bill, called the Stop Online Piracy Act, is hotly contested, dividing Hollywood, which wants tougher laws to protect copyrighted material, and Silicon Valley, which contends that SOPA would introduce new, uncertain liabilities for web companies ...
Continue readingFederalRegister.gov Wins Innovation Award
Remember the inspiring story of FederalRegister.gov 2.0, and its humble beginnings as Apps For America finalist GovPulse.us? Well, the team behind the site has won another commendation, this time from ACUS:
According to its website, the Administrative Conference of the United States is an independent federal agency dedicated to improving the administrative process through consensus-driven applied research, providing nonpartisan expert advice and recommendations for improvement of federal agency procedures. In a writeup about FederalRegister.gov, ACUS describes some lessons learned that other agencies should take to heart:
- Make your data available in bulk so others can use it.
- Work with volunteers in the community and encourage them to develop new applications with your data.
- If the volunteers come up with something great, work with them and use those components on the government web site.
- Make the source code for the government web site open source so other agencies and other non-governmental organizations can make customized versions.
We at Sunlight Labs could not agree more. Congratulations to the team at FederalRegister.gov!
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 12/13/2011
Here is the Tuesday's take on transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Access to Information
- The US recently released a new data management tool as part of their efforts to take data.gov global. The tool allows governments to upload, fact check, and manage their data. The next step is to build a visual component for the tool. (Executive Gov)
- A hackathon held last weekend in San Francisco aimed to promote open data and transparency in government. One notable tool that emerged would send out legislative alerts via text message. (Government Technology)
- The Cook County, Illinois deputy director of new media goes into detail about the launch of the county's open data portal, data.cookcountyil.gov, on Gov 2.0 Radio. (GovFresh)
- Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced resolutions that would blunt the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and exclude corporations from "the rights given to natural persons." (Lobby Comply)
- A new PAC has emerged with a decidedly non partisan goal. The WUFPAC aims to elect women under the age of 40 to office, regardless of their party affiliation. (Roll Call $)
- Democrats and Republicans have accepted large contributions from MF Global, the bankrupt brokerage firm formerly headed by Ex-New Jersey Governor John Corzine (D). (Roll Call $)
- The European Commission announced the creation of an Open Data Strategy. The move comes after the UK and France have embraced open data initiatives. (techPresident)
The Political One Percent of the One Percent
This piece was prepared in collaboration with Ethan Phelps-Goodman. If you think wealth is concentrated in the United States, just wait till you look at the data on campaign spending. In the 2010 election cycle, 26,783 individuals each contributed more than $10,000 to federal political campaigns. Combined, these donors spent $774 million. That's 24.3% of the total from individuals to politicians, parties, PACs, and independent expenditure groups. Together, they would fill only two-thirds of the 41,222 seats at Nationals Park the baseball field two miles from the U.S. Capitol. When it comes to politics, they are The One Percent of the One Percent. A Sunlight Foundation examination of data from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics reveals a growing dependence of candidates and political parties on the One Percent of the One Percent, resulting in a political system that could be disproportionately influenced by donors in a handful of wealthy enclaves. Our examination also shows that some of the heaviest hitters in the 2010 cycle were ideological givers, suggesting that the influence of the One Percent of the One Percent on federal elections may be one of the obstacles to compromise in Washington.
Continue readingThe who’s who of top political donors
There are almost 27,000 people—or 1/100th of one percent of the United States population—who spent more than $10,000 to influence... View Article
Continue readingLabs Update: December 2011
It’s the most wonderful time of year… Montgomery County property tax payment time! It’s also the holidays, which are quite nice as well. Things are wrapping up here in the Labs before we head off for winter break. We have a lot going on right now and even more big plans for next year.
In tangentially related news, Scott Weiland released a holiday album. I can sense your blank stare from here… please don’t let it distract you from reading the rest of this post.
Influence Explorer
The Data Commons team has launched a redesign of Influence Explorer that greatly improves navigation on long, complex profile pages. As you scroll, the navigation bars stay with you so that you know which data set you are currently viewing and can jump between them quickly. The year selector also follows you so that you can easily switch to different year views.
Ryan and Lee have been working closely with Ethan to dig through the data stored in Influence Explorer. Interested in reading up on lobbyist bundling for the Super Committee? How about the political ties behind Zuccotti Park? Want to find out how lobbying can reduce your tax rate?
In addition to all this lovely work, the team has been acquiring more timely campaign contribution data from the FEC, exploring the federal regulatory process and upgrading the server infrastructure.
Open States Project
James and contributors have been knocking out the states, bringing us ever closer to 50 + DC. Kentucky, Oregon, Idaho, Arkansas and Nevada have all graduated from experimental status based on several months of stability. North Dakota and South Carolina were also recently added to the API.
James has been prepping the Boston Sunlight office, new home of the Open States Project. He just hired a new developer and has secured office space. I patiently await an invitation to the opening party.
Congress for Android
Eric released a major update to the Congress App for Android that includes a visual redesign and information on what’s coming up in the next couple of days on the floor of Congress. This is a really great release and Eric did a lot of great work on the new redesign. He’s got many plans for new features that will be included over the next year, so stayed tuned!
The section in which I post Chris' update verbatim
Chris wishes that there was a more eloquent and loquacious manner in which she could describe her continued work in the mobile game app and the 180 Project. Alas, these projects defy description as the day-to-day minutia of design eventually amounts to: move this there, rinse repeat. However, Chris is pleased to report that the completion of the 180 Project is in her sights, barring any timeline disrupting events. She is coding, thus all is well.
Team Sysadmin
Tim has been involved in the long and arduous process of upgrading our office network. As it currently stands, the new fiber connection is a frustrating 15 feet from the office. Tim can see it from the ceiling tiles above our server room, but it is caught up in insurance, contractor and building management turmoil. To ease his mind, he’s been configuring our new Juniper Junos EX-series switches. It’ll be like a cute little ISP here in Sunlight’s office!
Team C-Level Executive
Tom is freshly back from the TAI Bridging Session and News Foo. Aside from that he’s been working on filling our open positions and some end-of-year planning stuff.
Tidbits
- Expanding on the Sunlight Labs Olympics, we’ll be participating in the Sunlight Foundation Olympics early next week. Results will be posted shortly thereafter!
- We now have 40 instances running on Amazon EC2. I’m sure we know what’s on each of those boxes, right?
- Drew has been lending a hand to reporting to keep their projects running while we search for someone to fill the open position.
- Dan and Capitol Words. Soon. Promise.
- Eric and Andrew begun a project on gathering the data to connect bills and laws to the regulatory process. This effort should yield lots of bulk data over the next month or two for the legal and legislative communities to use.
- Kaitlin has updated the video endpoint in the Real Time Congress API to support some upcoming changes to our Roku apps.
- Upwardly Mobile is coming together nicely. There will be lots of great things to show early in January.
- Renaissance man Luigi Montanez authored How can software engineers help make government better? in the latest issue of the ACM’s XRDS (Crossroads) magazine.
- The hottest Labs holiday gift this season is Well Dressed’s El Gordo burrito.
When working with raw meat for your holiday meals, remember: though Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants, bleach is better.
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 12/12/2011
Here is the week's first look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Lobbying
- Last year, the Obama administration pledged to strengthen regulations on for-profit colleges. The industry responded by spending $16 million to lobby their case. The result: the Department of Education produced a weak plan that is likely to have much less impact that the administration initially planned. (New York Times)
- Former Representative and ambassador to India Tim Roemer (D-Ind.) joined public affairs firm APCO Worldwide as a senior vice president. (Roll Call $)
- The controversial Keystone XL pipeline has seen its fair share of lobbying, according to Senate records. 42 lobbying firms, associations, and companies have registered to lobby on the issue since 2009. (The Hill)
- Crossroads GPS, the outside group formed by Karl Rove, is preparing a $500,000 ad assault against Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE), who is still deciding if he will run for a third term. (National Journal)
- Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) released a report detailing earmarks included in this year's defense authorization bill. According to the report, the bill included 115 earmarks worth $834 million. (Washington Post)
- A new poll shows that the majority of average Americans think members of Congress have low honesty and ethical standards. The poll ranks members of Congress below telemarketers and lobbyists. (Politico)
Announcing the Return of “Capitol Words”
More than three years ago, we launched a website called Capitol Words that gave an at-a-glance view of what word was most popular in Congress. Today, the Sunlight Foundation is unveiling the completely revamped and rewritten Capitol Words.
Continue reading
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