The following appears in the National Journal’s new “lobbying experts” blog launched last week. I will be posting there regularly.... View Article
Continue reading24 Days Of Local Sunlight – Day 5, 6, and 7
I”m a little behind on my thanking so lets cover a few today. I’m thankful for: Left in Alabama, a... View Article
Continue reading24 Days Of Local Sunlight – Day 4
Today I’m thankful for Taxing Tennessee! The blogger is Ben Cunningham and he is a watchdog on a mission with... View Article
Continue readingA Closer Look at CRS’s Recent Report “Lobbying and the Executive Branch”
The Congressional Research Service just released a report entitled “Lobbying and the Executive Branch: Current Practices and Options for Change.”... View Article
Continue readingOver the years, it’s gotten harder to read the final bill
The year is winding down and for Congress that means it is time to pass the final versions of bills... View Article
Continue readingRecovery.gov data available on FedSpending.org
24 Days Of Local Sunlight – Day 3
Day 3! Today’s blog I’m thankful for is Missouri’s Turner Report who’s investigating has been a Local Sunlight staple. The... View Article
Continue readingAdobe is Bad for Open Government, Continued
"Unfortunately I am declining your request to obtain the text file. The SOD document that we now provide as a PDF is certified by Adobe as authentic. Text files would not be authenticated and the validity of the data they contain would be lost and subject to outside manipulation."
That's the email a friend of ours received after asking for a text version of the House Office Disbursement Data that was released in a 3000 page 9.4MB PDF. He apparently missed the irony of sending this officious message in an uncertified plain-text email.
So we've modified that email for your perusal:
Continue readingMorning Links
1) Big Obama donors complain that they aren’t getting enough perks for all the money they helped raise. Didn’t Obama... View Article
Continue readingA lesson in Humility
On Monday the House of Representatives delivered, as promised, an electronic dump of House Expense Reports. We, at Sunlight Labs had a plan. We knew it was going to be a huge PDF, but we have all the infrastructure in place. We had plenty of bandwidth, knew when the data was coming out, roughly how it was going to look, and that it was likely we wouldn't be able to parse it all with computers. "We'll use TransparencyCorps," we thought, to get that last mile out of the data, so that eventually we'll end up with a parseable database.
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