New bills in the House and Senate are aimed at blocking a new Executive Order before it’s ever signed. The... View Article
Continue readingEgypt’s PR shop terminates their US operation
A few weeks after Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak stepped down in response to the public outrage against his 30 year rule, the Egyptian government’s PR outfit in Washington terminated their operation, records show. Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter and Associates ended their representation of the Egyptian press office on February 28, 2011, shortly after Mubarak resigned on February 11.
From November 2010 to March 2011, the Egypt Press and Information Bureau paid the lobbying group $200,000 in fees and expenses. The lobby shop was hired in April 2009 and was paid a total of $985,000 during that period ...
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 5/26/2011
Here is Thursday’s look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events. News... View Article
Continue readingTools for Transparency: Know Your Acronyms & Hashtags
You might have started noticing hashtags (like the ones seen on Twitter) and acronyms are frequently popping up in Facebook... View Article
Continue readingLobbyists for Morocco go on a meeting spree soon after political upheaval
A nonprofit established by the government of Morocco went on a lobbying frenzy earlier this year, coinciding with the time when pro-democracy demonstrations in the country took an ugly turn. The Moroccan-American Policy Council, which is the registered agent of the Moroccan government met with 130 congressional offices on February 23, 24 and 25 just days after the riots broke out, FARA records show.
Protests in the country started on February 1, when a protestor lit himself on fire, immitating the incident that sparked the Tunisian revolt and in a few weeks turned violent with riots on February 21. A ...
Continue readingSunrise (5/26/11)
FACEBOOK HIRES GOP LOBBYISTS —DealBook: “In an effort to expand its power base in the nation’s capital, Facebook has hired... View Article
Continue readingSave the date – The Hidden Budget: Tax Expenditures
On June 13th, the Advisory Committee on Transparency will hold a panel discussion on tax expenditures, entitled “the Hidden Budget,”... View Article
Continue readingImproving Public Oversight of Government: The Access to Congressionally Mandated Reports Act
Public oversight of government could become a lot easier if legislation introduced yesterday becomes law. The “Access to Congressionally Mandated... View Article
Continue readingMeet the fellows
Thanks to a generous grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies, Sunlight will be inaugurating on June 1 the John E. Moss Fellowships, an intensive, hands-on training experience designed to better prepare young journalists for the opportunities and demands of the digital news environment.
This first class of Fellows was competitively selected from applicants across the country and will work on a range of projects, from producing Sunlight Live events, to reporting on the 2012 presidential campaign; from daily blogging on issues of transparency to developing a curriculum and producing lessons to help other journalists better learn how to find, use and ...
Continue readingThe Consequences of the e-Gov Cuts
If you haven't already, please be sure to check out my colleague Daniel Schuman's post over at the main Sunlight Foundation blog, where he details the consequences of the cuts to the e-Gov fund. The short version: in a letter to Sen. Carper, federal CIO Vivek Kundra is reporting that the cuts will negatively affect upgrades to a broad variety of executive branch transparency- and good-government-related websites; lead to the cancellation of FedSpace and the Citizen Services Dashboard; and hinder efforts at improving data quality.
There's no doubt this is bad news -- that the administration is already making excuses for not following through on fixing data quality is particularly discouraging. But there's also no question that things could have been worse. This fight isn't over yet, but our community has already made a big difference.
So thanks for your help, and for sticking with us as we try to ensure that our government doesn't stagger backward from its early, tentative steps into the online era.
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