The Open Government Directive has pushed agencies forward to start soliciting feedback from the public. We threw together this quick screencast to show you just how to do it. Check it out after the jump.
Continue readingSunlight Labs on The Changelog
Jeremy and I are on the newest episode of The Changelog, a terrific podcast about open source development. We talked about the work we do here from our offices in D.C. as well as the great work the entire Sunlight Labs community does across the country.
You may remember Wynn Netherland, one of the show's hosts, from TweetCongress and the big splash they made last year. Along with co-host Adam Stacoviak, Wynn also interviewed Apps for America winner Jeremy Ashkenas back in December.
Enjoy the show!
Continue readingSenate committee calls for tighter regulations on property, bank accounts of foreign politicians
The subcommittee's 325-page report found that U.S. bankers, lawyers, real estate agents and escrows overlooked foreign political officials moving millions of dollars into the country. For years, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the 40-year-old eldest son of Equatorial Guinea's president was using U.S. banks to move $110 million. Obiang Mangue, also the Minister of Agriculture and Forestry of the oil and timber rich western African country, used U.S. financial institutions, including Wachovia Bank, Citibank, Union Bank of California and Bank of America to move money through five shell companies, attorney-clients and other accounts.
Continue readingPotential Murtha successor Norm Dicks knows the favor factory
The Coming Government Data Flood
Government is releasing data at a breakneck pace, and it is just getting started. One interesting side effect of our National Data Catalog is that we're regularly parsing all of the data on data.gov, and we're able to do interesting things with the aggregate metadata. By parsing out the release date for each dataset on data.gov, and grouping each release by quarter though it's easy to see that since the second quarter of 2009-- when Data.gov was released, the federal government has released more raw datasets than it ever has in the past. Take a look at what's happened after Data.gov launched:
Defense appropriations to remain a favor factory?
Roll Call reports that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer believes Rep. Norm Dicks will replace the late John Murtha as chair of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Dicks numbers the now-defunct PMA Group as his second-largest career donor; David Heath, then of the Seattle Times, reported on Dicks' relationship to the firm that closed its doors in the midst of a federal investigation (ongoing) into its campaign contributions to members of Congress who provided earmarks for its clients. In his 2009 report, Heath wrote:
In the past two years, Dicks pushed for nine earmarks worth $20 million for PMA clients. Those ...Continue reading
9 Beliefs at the Heart of Open Government
As we begin to engage the public in a regular, and sustained campaign to bring about the full potential for accountability and economic opportunity that open government promises, it's important hat we have some common principles and assumptions about where we're coming from and where we stand. And it's time to start clearly defining what those things are.
Continue readingCitizens United Part 2 – Lobbyist Disclosure
Sunlight recently developed a seven-point plan for a comprehensive and meaningful disclosure regime in a post-Citizens United political world. John... View Article
Continue readingDC Gov Builds Amazing Open Gov Dashboard
On Saturday, the White House released its Open Government Dashboard. It features a big chart with 29 agencies on it measured by four attributes. I suspect that the technology behind this dashboard is likely an excel file, alongside staffers or interns checking each agency website for compliance. It's a start of something-- but a chart does not a dashboard make.
Here in Washington DC, amidst a couple feet of snow (with more on the way!), Mayor Fenty released Track, a real way for citizens to watch their government's performance. Both substance wise and technically, it out-atheletes the White House's Open Government dashboard.
More on how after the jump
Continue reading5 Guiding Principles for a National Transparency Campaign
We believe that a disaffected, disengaged, cynical public threatens democracy in the United States as few other things can. At its heart, our campaign is about building the political and community clout necessary to combat this problem. We think we can invigorate democracy by coming together, demanding transparency with serious political muscle, using the very latest in technology to make government information more meaningfully accessible to us, and holding government accountable with it.
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