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2Day in #OpenGov 7/29/2011

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Here are Friday’s transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News Roundup: Government

  • The Government Accountability and Transparency Board held its first meeting yesterday behind closed doors. (Tech President)
  • A Border Patrol agent who refused overtime pay and faced pressure and punishment from his superiors told his story to the Advisory Committee on Transparency. (The Washington Post) (Advisory Committee on Transparency)
  • The IRS will make a database of tax-return preparers that includes information like qualifications and unique ID numbers available to the public as soon as 2013. (Bloomberg)
  • A group of House Democrats sent the White House a letter requesting President Obama consider issuing a draft executive order that was leaked in April to require government contractors to disclose political contributions. (Huffington Post)
Access to Information
  • A federal judge ruled that documents relating to Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal must be released because of their value to historians. (Politico)
Ethics
  • An investigation by the Washington Times found that only few people found guilty of campaign finance violations actually spend time in prison for their crimes. (Washington Times)
  • An Obama appointee to the Department of Labor resigned after an Inspector General’s report found “a pattern of conduct” that violated federal ethics laws. (Washington Post)
  • Opinion: Melanie Sloan argues that the ethics process in Washington is sorely lacking enforcement capabilities. (Roll Call)
Technology
  • A tech company called Firmstep launched a Web-based platform designed to help local governments launch accessible websites. (GovFresh)
  • NASA launched a new open website to highlight and encourage transparency efforts within the agency. (Gov Fresh)
  • After numerous websites crashed following speeches by President Obama and Speaker Boehner, members of the House are calling for an end to outside vendors hosting websites. (Roll Call)
  • A new report by the Government Accountability Project declared that agencies should develop specific policies to deal with social media. (Executive Gov)
  • The Department of Labor became the first federal agency to make software development kits available on its website to make its data more accessible. (US Department of Labor)
State and Local
  • Rahm Emanuel’s ethics reform efforts passed through the Chicago City Council after facing initial setbacks. The law will fundamentally change the way lobbyists work in the city. (Huffington Post)
  • Colorado issued a new rule requiring lobbyists to disclose expenditure reports regarding campaign contributions on a biweekly basis beginning in September. (Lobby Comply Blog)
  • Opinion: city council meetings should be televised and made available to the public. (Florida Times-Union)
International
  • Posts on Chinese social media websites regarding a tragic train accident are driving outrage and calls for transparency among local citizens. (Tech President)
  • A group of citizens from Iceland sent the parliamentary speaker a new constitution which was drafted by hundreds users through a popular Internet campaign. (Yahoo!)

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Dodd-Frank: How investment banks contributed to the financial crisis

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The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, passed in response to the financial crisis of 2008, added new regulations and new regulators for some—but not all—of the institutions whose actions led to the crisis. Over the next several days, we’ll be taking a look at each of the major groups of contributors to the economic crisis, who the major players were, what political influence they brought to bear on Congress and regulators, how Dodd-Frank intends to regulate them, and, using our new Dodd-Frank Meeting Logs tool, what rules these groups are trying to influence as ...

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Influence Explorer Text API: Adding Influence Data to Text

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Last month I wrote about Inbox Influence, a plugin for Gmail that highlights the political influence of people, companies and politicians mentioned in your emails. Gmail is just one example of a context where it makes sense to attach political influence data to text. (Another is news stories--see Poligraft.) But what about Yahoo Mail and Hotmail? What about Outlook and Thunderbird? What about RSS readers, PDF viewers and word processors? What about integrating political influence data into server-side systems such as blog engines and content management systems? Sunlight Labs can't do it all, which is why creating tools and APIs for developers is one of our primary missions. Indeed, nearly all of our products--including Inbox Influence--are powered by public APIs.

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Vendor blamed in outage paid $1.4 million last year for services

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Fireside21, a web services company fingered as a possible culprit behind the mass outage of congressional sites in the wake of Monday's televised presidential address, received over $1.4 million from House offices for web services last year, disbursement data shows. The total highlights the dominance of just a few companies providing congressional web services, a category in which five companies received 79 percent of the $5.5 million pie.

On Monday, speaking during a prime-time address, President Barack Obama asked viewers who favor a balanced deficit reduction approach to contact Congress. Several members' websites stopped responding to requests ...

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