Koch Industries, the closely held firm led by conservative and libertarian political donors Charles and David Koch, has a long... View Article
Continue readingLabs Update: October 2011
We've had the first hint of fall here in DC with Metro switching from AC to heat. Grab some apple cider and a baked good while you read this brisk update from Sunlight Labs.
Eric Mill, International Man of Transparency
For the last two weeks, Eric has been in Santiago, Chile, working in the offices of the Fundacion Ciudadano Inteligente. There, he's been chipping in on an API over Chilean parliamentary data, imparting what knowledge of JavaScript and Android he can and learning about the open government scene in Chile.
Influence Explorer
Yet again, new data sets have been added to Influence Explorer and Transparency Data. This past week was the official launch of EPA violations, public comments on federal regulations and corporate employees that sit on federal advisory committees. The BP profile page is a great example of each of these new data sets. Andrew has also spent some time working on infrastructure improvements to allow us to keep our copy of the Regulations.gov data up to date.
Real Time Congress
Before his international travel, Eric worked on adding Senate Floor information to both the Real Time Congress API and to the Congress app for Android and continued development on an upcoming website around alerts of government data. Being the spontaneous person that he is, he made a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Senate Office of Public Records to fetch documents relating to Senate Political Fund Designees, which he'll digitize and release as a CSV after returning from Chile.
The Open States Project
The Open States team has continued to expand their coverage with the addition of Nebraska and Iowa. The team is also working to add more special sessions and several features utilizing the actual text of legislation. James will soon be heading up north to Boston so be on the lookout in the coming months for exciting Sunlight North news.
Sunlight Live / Datajam
Luigi has continued to plug away at Datajam, a new platform to power Sunlight Live. In addition to the core platform, Dan has been working on a modular comment and discussion system for events. If you've been hankering to run your own real-time, data-driven events, you won't have to wait much longer. Datajam will be well-documented and open-sourced for everyone to use by the end of the year.
Subsidyscope
Clearspending 2011 has launched! In addition to the launch, Kaitlin and Drew have been working on a corporate identifier project. The site will feature a visualization of the impracticality of continuing to use DUNS numbers as the de facto standard for identifying corporations. It is based on a 2D JavaScript port of the Traer processing library and the "nice branching" processing sketch by Natasha Harper and Katie Adee. Kaitlin is currently working on two presentations for the Association for Budgeting and Financial Management conference (super wonky) and one for Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw (super European).
K2
K2, the codename for our second Knight Foundation mobile app, is moving along nicely. The final name and logo are days away from approval, data has been finalized and scraped, and design is moving from comps to build out. Ryan, Caitlin, and I are quite excited about this app and hope to have something good to show you for next month's Labs Update.
SunlightFoundation.com
The big news on the Foundation front is that we are embarking on a rebranding, redesign, and content reorganization of the main SunlightFoundation.com web site. Ali is getting to work on comps and mood boards and I'll be looking at a reorganization of our blog content. In addition to the redesign, we've been pushing out new campaign pages. See our Super Committee page to find out what we've been working on to bring transparency to the committee.
Team Design
Now back to full staff, Team Design has been swamped with new work. Chris has been knocking out presentations for Sunlight speaking engagements and worked on design for a few new projects. Caitlin has been working on Capitol Words (I promise, it's coming soon!) and K2. Ali has been working on the design for Kaitlin and Drew's corporate identifier site, a new visualization for federal budget projections over time, updates to Influence Explorer, the redesign for Sunlight Foundation and a microsite for the Reporting Group for research they're doing on financial databases.
Team Management
Tom has been doing the usual odds and ends, wrapping up some grant proposals and writing some reports for grants we've been working on. It's all very glamorous! Somewhat less boringly, he's also getting ready to head to the Code for America Summit next week. The big news, however, was the launch of Superfastmatch, a joint project with Media Standards Trust. Superfastmatch is an open source tool for quickly finding overlapping text between documents in a huge corpora. We've got some great stuff planned for Superfastmatch so stay tuned.
Team Sysadmin
Between searching for an entrepreneur to marry and making scallion oil pancakes, Tim has been working to improve our core infrastructure. In the office Tim has been buying new hardware to replace the switches we've had since we were a very small organization. Once the new hardware is installed and the chains of wireless routers are removed, we hope to have dead-zone free wireless access throughout the office. We now have data-filled Munin graphs for all of our servers. Tim also went to a Varnish meet-up at the SURGE conference.
Tidbits
- Aaron has been helping our reporting group make improvements to their site that will allow users to keep up with electronic FEC filings, particularly those from presidential candidates and members of the Super Committee.
- Our mobile game, Decipher DC, is on hold for the moment as Daniel works on an analytics and metrics dashboard.
- I'm headed to sunny Miami, FL tomorrow for PyCodeConf. Send me a message if you are going so we can meet up!
- The Labs is holding an open house later this month, so keep an eye on the blog here for information. We'll post invites once we figure out the maximum number of lasers and dry ice we can buy.
- Goodbye, 1800 Cafe! You've fed us well with delicious scrapple, egg and cheese sandwiches since we've been here in Dupont Circle.
2Day in #OpenGov 10/4/2011
Here is Tuesday's look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup:
- The Senate is battling over cuts to the GAO that might force the agency to downsize its workforce. Opponents argue that cuts will hinder the GAO's ability to identify waste, fraud, and abuse in Federal spending. (ExecutiveGov)
- After a 10 year process, the National Archives and Records Administration has completed development of their Electronic Records Archives. The ERA was designed to collect and archive electronic records created by Federal agencies. IBM has won a contract to operate and maintain the system. (Federal Computer Week)
- One of John Kerry's (D-MA) top foreign policy aides, Frank Lowenstein, has stepped down to join the Podesta Group. He will work primarily with international clients, reflecting the Podesta Group's recent growth in foreign markets. (New York Times)
- A former staffer to House Speaker John Boehner, Jay Cranford, is leaving the House to become a name partner at boutique lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford. The firm is primarily known for its financial services work. Cranford is expected to focus on expanding their energy and technology practice. (National Journal)
- Legislators rate lobbyists as an important source of information, although they prefer to look to their legislative leaders, staff, and colleagues first, according to data compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures. (Lobby Comply and NCSL)
- Alaskan lobbyists will only be able to donate to candidates that represent them under new redistricting alignments, according to a decision by the Alaskan Public Offices Commission. This will prevent lobbyists whose districts are shifting from donating in multiple races. (Lobby Comply)
2Day in #OpenGov 10/3/2011
Here is Monday's look at the week's transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup:
- The Super Committee has grown increasingly opaque, refusing to share details of their meetings with the press and public. Lobbyists, however, are being kept in the loop by aides to committee members. (Politico)
- The Congressional Budget Office has released a cost estimate for the DATA act. According to the report, the act would cost $575 million over five years to implement. (Federal Computer Week)
- One of the FEC's most respected experts, Bob Biersack, has retired after 30 years with the commission. Biersack has served in a variety of positions during his tenure, but is known as the FEC's unofficial data guru and was instrumental in creating the agency's electronic filing system. (Roll Call)
- A new poll shows that most Americans trust their local governments to handle local issues, a marked contrast with respondents low confidence in the Federal government. (Politico)
- Members of the whistleblower community gathered last week for the 2011 Washington Whistleblower Assembly. The meeting focused on ways to protect and increase whistleblower protections. To learn more about the current discussion surrounding whistleblowing take a look at our ACT event on the subject (POGO)
A Transparent Super Committee Would Be Headline News
That lobbyists are influencing Super Committee members is a “dog bites man” story. Corporate lobbyists are eager to earn their... View Article
Continue readingSolyndra investor had three White House meetings on energy policy
George B. Kaiser, the Obama campaign bundler and Tulsa oilman whose foundation's investment in Solyndra has raised questions of whether political influence played a role in the now-bankrupt solar panel company's winning $535 million in federal loans, had three White House meetings to discuss energy policy from Dec. 2009 to April 2011.
While Kaiser was a frequent caller at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., his foundation issued a statement stating that the Tulsa billionaire "did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan." Obama administration officials told ABC News that the purpose of his contacts ...
Continue readingBank VP Advocates for Less Democracy
In the recent “Too Much of a Good Thing,” Peter Orszag suggests that if we had a little less democracy,... View Article
Continue readingSunlight Weekly Roundup: “Transparency with conditions is not transparency”
The Austin Independent School District agreed to release a report that deals with the closing, repurposing, and consolidation of nine... View Article
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 9/30/2011
Look forward to the weekend with Friday's transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup:
- The Department of Homeland Security doesn't want you to communicate with their communications staff. They released extensive records in response to a FOIA request, but redacted work phone numbers and email addresses for all communications contacts. Sunlight's Gabriela Schneider blogged about a similar issue yesterday. (Federal Times)
- A bipartisan group of Senators is decrying proposed cuts to the GAO's budget. They fear that the cuts will hamper the agency's ability to seek out waste and abuse in the Federal government. (The Hill)
- A group of 20 House Democrats has called for an inquiry into allegations that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas violated ethics rules by failing to report his wife's income. (Roll Call)
- A group in New Orleans is crowdsourcing ideas to improve their city with Neighborland, a new website. They hope to spark discussion and inspire locals to push their ideas forward. (Lobby Comply)
Labs Olympics: The J Team
Unlike last year, I wasn't just a mere spectator of the Labs Olympics. I got to participate this year and take a couple days off from the usual watch-dogging we do here at the Sunlight Foundation. My team's goal was to take our combined skills of web development, research and story telling and create a product very different from the usual web applications and data tools we usually strive for.
I was lucky enough to be on a team with Daniel Cloud, Ethan Phelps-Goodman and Eric Mill. Originally, the four of us struggled to come up with a project that would be topical, technical and entertaining. After an extended brainstorming session where we considered projects surrounding campaign finance, the London riots and natural disasters around the world, we decided to create the ultimate data visualization using (drum roll, please) Jell-O! To be clear, our idea was not inspired by the London artists that sculpt things out of Jell-O. Our use of the jiggly substance was completely coincidental.
As we talked about what we could build and what would be of interest, we kept in mind that this year’s competition, unlike last year’s, was not limited to building applications. Our end result could be, and was encouraged to be, tangible. So when we considered mapping areas recently hit by earthquakes -- D.C., Denver and California (of course) -- it occurred to us that we should not only map those areas, but also make those maps dynamic by making them light up, and vibrate, too!. We investigated ways we could embed LED lights in a three dimensional Jell-O mold, and quickly ran into several obstacles. It looked like the Peggy 2 was going to be our LED board until we realized we’d have to solder 625 LEDs. Given the time and skill level that would require, it didn’t seem realistic. We then gave up on embedding LEDs in Jell-O and decided to go for the more obvious choice, a layer of Jell-O in the shape of the United States on top of a horizontally-oriented LCD monitor. 
So it was set: we were going to use sophisticated mapping software new to all of us (especially me, since I’m not a developer) to map earthquake and other government data and then distract our audience entirely by putting a sticky mass of gelatin on the table and somehow, someway, make it jiggle on cue.
To create the underlying map visualizations we used the TileMill mapping stack from Development Seed. We collected dentist and diabetes data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to map the change in obesity rates over time and the number of dentists per capita. We mapped earthquake data using information from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
TileMill lived up to its promise of providing an easy to use complete solution for people with little experience mapping, as was true for most of us. Once the maps were designed we exported them to static images and displayed them as a slideshow.
Once the slideshow was created we chose a large monitor to display it on and wrapped the whole thing in Saran wrap. After we sculpted the states using Jello, we placed it on the protected monitor and displayed the maps we generated beneath the translucent dessert. When it came time to display the earthquake data, we had to resort to an over-sized neck massager to get the Jello to jiggle. Our early experiments involved installing vibration motors from a Play Station 3 controller into a layer of Jell-O. While it was definitely a sight to behold, we didn’t get the range of motion we had hoped for. Ultimately, making it shake was not an easy task. 
The final product looked very much like an early prototype for a more sophisticated device, the one we had imagined in our planning phases. Perhaps intrepid tinkerers will take what we learned and build upon it to form something bigger, better and more delicious.
I’ll spare you all the suspense and let you know our team, the J-team, didn’t win. Keep checking this blog for a post by the winning team. Everyone who works in a office will appreciate their creativity and problem solving ability.
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