Concessions to the pharmaceutical industry were added to the reconciliation bill after the industry agreed to provide additional savings requested... View Article
Continue readingWhy should public data be online?
While some things don’t really need a public service announcement, we felt our Public=Online campaign could benefit from one. The... View Article
Continue readingWhy everyone should know what makes a good data set; it’s not as hard as you think
In many offices, when technology questions arise, the answer is to reflexively trust the technologists. These are often the folks... View Article
Continue readingThe bailout is investing again
The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has started to grow again, after the Department of Treasury announced in December of last year the bailout would be coming to a close. Earlier this month, the Department of Treasury invested $21 million in small business loans with more investments to come that could total as much as $15 billion.
The money is being spent to purchase securities backed by the Small Business Administration in yet another effort to stimulate lending in the economy. The $15 billion dedicated to this program is considerably smaller than other TARP programs, such as the Capital Purchase ...
Summer Jobs at Sunlight Labs
While we're participating in Google's Summer of Code, we're also looking for some great developers to come spend some time learning the ins-and-outs of public datasets over the course of the summer.
If you're a student who wants to pick up great skills-- learning how to scrape and transform data, learning how to research and verify data's accuracy or learning how to architect big-but-not-very-big datasets, or if you're a super engineer who just wants to give back this summer, we'd be happy to talk to you.
Here are our four Sunlight Labs summer slots:
Continue readingCao, two other Republicans ignore House GOP earmark moratorium
Rep. Joseph Cao, R-La., is one of at least three House Republicans to ignore his caucus's ban on requesting fiscal year 2011 earmarks. Cao requested projects totaling more than $500 million for his district.
He joins perennial earmarker Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, and Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who also requested earmarks despite the Republican moratorium.
Cao was the sole Republican to vote for the original House health care bill in November 2009; at the time, Bloomberg.com characterized him as "the Democratic
majority’s most reliable Republican," noting that the freshman Republican won in a district where President Barack ...
Drafting Guidelines for Government Data Catalogs
A major focus of the Sunlight Labs is to push government to publish its data online. In recent months, we've gained in-depth familiarity with government data catalogs through our work on the National Data Catalog. The most prominent example of a data catalog is data.gov. Since its launch last year, a handful of states and cities have followed suit with their own efforts. As more data catalogs come online, we want to make sure their contents are open and exchangeable. We want to determine how to best structure the data catalog itself, and we want to ensure that the metadata it contains -- the data about the data -- exists in the most accessible way possible.
Last week, Clay posted three challenges for the community to tackle, and this is challenge #3. We're looking to start this conversation now and move towards consensus within a few months. I was at Transparency Camp, digging deeper into this topic, putting us on the path to make recommendations that governments can adopt quickly.
Continue readingEditor’s Note: Correction to Stupak 11 post
A note about our story, "After health care vote, Stupak 11 request billions in earmarks." For Rep. Charles Wilson, D-Ohio, we had inaccurate amounts for both FY2011 and FY2010 in the Google spreadsheet, available here, that accompanied the article. Wilson has requested $84 million in earmarks for FY2011, up from $62.3 million in FY2010. The spreadsheet originally listed these numbers as higher by a factor of ten, which threw off our calculation of the total amount of earmarks requested. We rechecked that number and the rest of our other numbers, and have since corrected the post.
Rep. Wilson's ...
The Week of Our Lives
What happened here this week? Rep. Mike Quigley intoduced the Transparency in Government Act; Reps. Quigley and Darrell Issa launched... View Article
Continue readingHealth Sector Contributions by Party (1990-2008)
From the 1990 election cycle to the 2008 election cycle the health sector contributed over $829 million to candidates for... View Article
Continue reading
59063
