Earlier this week, Sen. Tom Coburn and a group of Republican senators sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid... View Article
Continue readingCan we have more lobbyist inspired ventriloquism?
I am anxiously awaiting a bipartisan coterie of congressmen releasing identical statements objecting to President Obama’s new policy targeting biologics... View Article
Continue reading72 Hours — Where Do We Stand?
Now that House Leadership has announced that they’ll post the final version of the health care bill online for 72... View Article
Continue readingPelosi & Hoyer Say Final Health Care Bill To Be Online For 72 Hours
Last week, Jake wrote that “it is utterly imperative that the final version of the bill be online for the... View Article
Continue readingDatabase used to track contractor fraud poorly managed, filled with inaccuracies
Congressional watchdogs have often criticized the online tool maintained by the General Services Administration to prevent the award of federal funds to banned individuals and companies. A Sunlight Reporting Group review of the sites data finds that it continues to be badly maintained, with rampant problems including omissions, inaccuracies and other data quality issues.
The Government Accountability Office examined the Excluded Party List System, which lists individuals and entities that are ineligible to receive federal contracts, some subcontracts and grants. The site allows procurement officers to check whether a potential contractor has been debarred, which can result from a contractor ...
Sunlight Labs + CrisisCamp DC: Haiti
It's hard to work on government transparency while this is going on. And here at Sunlight Labs, we like to use our skills for good. This weekend, we'll be supporting CrisisCamp Haiti Hackathon in any way that we can. We're encouraging our developers to go this CrisisCamp Hackathon on Saturday, and putting incentive to it offering them compensatory time off if they show up and contribute to the various projects that will go toward relief efforts. While the event's location is TBD, as long as it is in the DC area, we'll be there to help out. We're going to host the event here at Sunlight Labs and let the CrisisCamp Hackathon folks show us what to do.
The DC tech community and the community at large should find ways to give not only their money but their talent and skill toward saving lives and finding homes this weekend. We hope that if you're in the DC area and have some great tech skills, you'll join us in serving the folks leading CrisisCamp, and helping folks in Haiti.
Update:
We'll be providing space and bandwidth for the event as well. The event is hosted here in our offices at Sunlight. We hope you'll join us.
P.S. There's one in Silicon Valley too
Continue readingTurning Gruber’s Disclosure Failure Into A Future Disclosure Policy
Sen. Charles Grassley is diving into the Jonathan Gruber scandal by asking the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)... View Article
Continue readingWhy You Need to Download the Real Time Congress App for iPhone now
As a former Capitol Hill Communications Director, I can tell you that access to real-time information on what is happening... View Article
Continue readingWatch Congress in Real Time on your iPhone
There are a lot of different iPhone apps out there about Congress. But it seems like they all do the same thing: allow you to look up legislators, find contact information for them and their staff members, call them, and get details about who they are and what they've done. In the Android Marketplace, there's only one app that does that-- our Congress app. But in iPhone land, there's at least a half-dozen.
Our project lead on our new iPhone [app], Josh Ruihley decided to take a different approach. We want to make data about what's happening inside Congress more available to the public. It isn't just who your member of Congress is that matters, but also what they do. It's also important to see what they're reading and who they're listening to, and what the process looks like.
Continue readingReality Check — Health Care Negotiations
To require Congress to negotiate in public is to ban certain communications among Members of Congress. There’s a growing sense... View Article
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