The involvement of several non-profit advocacy groups in the debate over the Air Force's $40 billion air-refueling tanker contract highlights how important transparency is for not just the government, but also for those that ask us to trust their opinions of it. (Quick synopsis of the controversy: Boeing won the contract in 2003, then it was suspended after an Air Force staffer was successfully prosecuted for corruption related to the deal, then Northrop Grumman and European Aeronautic Defence and Space won the contract and now Boeing is contesting that.) One of the groups, Citizens Against Government Waste, has been recruiting others to join their support of the Northop contract, which they see as a better value for taxpayers. An opposing set groups, including Frontiers of Freedom and the Center for Security Policy, are backing Boeing on the grounds of keeping major arms contracts within the U.S. The problem for the Washington Post reporters covering the story was that, after some digging, they found that several of the groups had taken funding from either Boeing or Northop and were collaborating with the companies on their advocacy efforts. The cynicism this practice caused was palpable in the piece:
Continue readingTom Watson
Micah sez:
Go read British Cabinet Officer Tom Watson's speech on the "Power of information" and imagine a Member of Congress making a similar speech on how technology can radically reinvent government. Imagine one of our presidential candidates making it (even Barack Obama, who has done the most thinking on this topic.) You can't. But maybe, if we pay more attention to our cousins across the pond, soon someone will.
I have a meeting with Watson in the middle of April. Can't wait.
Continue readingFast Start for Soft Money Groups in 2008 Election
Forgive me, but I couldn't help but be startled by the above headline of the latest analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute. I mean, the much lauded campaign finance reform effort of a few years ago - the so-called McCain- Feingold bill was supposed to have banned soft money. In fact all the campaign finance reform groups -- I don't think there was a single exception -- made a devil's bargain. In order to get that much praised ban on soft money, the reform groups agreed to double the limits that individuals could give to campaigns. (Someone has yet to explain to me how allowing the less than one-tenth of one percent who give big money to give even more money was a reform.) McCain still carries the mantel of "reformer" because of his championing the legislation
This was a no brainer to predict even then: soft money is back in a big way.
What to do now? See this.
Continue readingOpen Government Site Govtrack Goes Open Source
GovTrack.us Opens Source Code
Josh Tauberer, founder and creator of GovTrack.us (and Open House Project contributor), announced today that his site is now "officially totally open source." Josh's broadened commitment to opening the code that runs his site is very exciting; GovTrack can now benefit from the same kind of public examination and participation that the site encourages from citizens in dealing with their national legislature.
While the database of legislative information is in the public domain, "the front-end and back-end are licensed under the new GNU AGPL license, which basically means that you cannot modify the files without making the modifications publicly available," writes Josh. Scott Wells, Sunlight's administrator, and an enthusiastic open standards advocate, observed that this license is "the fun, new one", proving that Josh is as adept at licensing options as he is at screen-scraping and designing the semantic web.
Greg Elin, on the Sunlight Labs blog, suggests that everyone have at the source code. Josh deserves some reinforcements, after singlehandedly putting together such a complex site on which so many other sites rely.
Legistorm Launches Blog
Legistorm, the Web site that shares similar goals to Sunlight, that is to make Congress as transparent as possible, has launched a blog. I'm putting it in my RSS reader and I'd guess most readers of this site will want too also.
On this site you can find information about Congressional staff and lawmaker salaries, travel, personal financial disclosures and more.
Update about the hysteria on Capitol Hill about posting staffer's financial disclosure forms.
Continue readingWynn Tests New Transparency Laws
Lame duck Rep. Al Wynn, recently defeated in a Democratic primary, announced that he would be retiring from Congress early to take a lobbying job with the law firm Dickstein Shapiro this June. Unlike previous members who have announced their retirement through the revolving door Wynn will remain in Congress, with a fully negotiated and signed contract to work at the firm, until June, giving him unparralleled access for a newly minted lobbyist. Dickstein Shapiro has already released a press release announcing the hire. Unlike Wynn, Trent Lott, Richard Baker, and Billy Tauzin all retired quickly upon announcing their completed lobbying job negotiations. This poses serious conflict of interest questions for Wynn but also serves as a true test of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act and its provisions governing member job negotiations (a provision already filled with loopholes). The Point of Order blog explains:
Continue readingOMB Watch Launches Regulatory Resource Center
Yesterday, OMB Watch, a Sunlight Foundation grantee, launched its Web-based Regulatory Resource Center, which they built to provide guidance for citizens wanting to get involved in the federal government's regulatory decision making. It promises to be a valuable resource, serving as the place to go to understand how regulations work. The center has two parts: Advocacy Center and the Policy Library. The Advocacy Center shows users how to comment on regulations and how to use Regulations.gov, the government's site that allows public comments. The center also has a page that helps users find, read and interpret the Federal Register. The Policy Library has a flow chart showing how regulations come about, a list of regulatory agencies explaining what each one does, and other neat tools.
Congratulations to our friends at OMB Watch. They continue to thrive at the cutting edge of government transparency and accountability. Check it out!
Continue readingLinking to Sections
In Sarah Lai Striland's write-up of PublicMarkup.org's launch yesterday, on the Wired Threat Level blog, she manages to do something rather remarkable. She links to one of the bill's provisions:
One idea from Sunlight that all journalists are sure to welcome: Limiting the time government agencies can delay fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests. Sunlight suggests implementing a rule that would force government agencies to fulfill such requests within 60 days of the requests' original due dates.All she did was hyperlink, which is regular fare on blogs. This is rather extraordinary, however, because the links takes you to the actual provision of a piece of legislation. As Congressional legislation is currently published, this is nearly impossible, as bills are published in html or in pdf formats, erecting a barrier to substantial analysis and discussion. Would legislation be different if all news stories and discussion of them were easily traced to the actual text of the bill, or if you could find your way from the bill other relevant analysis and context?
Small, useful, practical steps online lead to enormously different results, and make new kinds of engagement possible.
PublicMarkup.org
Today, Sunlight is launching a new online collaborative, legislative initiative at a new site: PublicMarkup.org. We have drafted what we think can become model transparency legislation for the government -- the Transparency In Government Act of 2008 -- and we now need your help to further shape, refine and edit it. Our hope is that the final product can be used as a model for transparent government.
The bill on PublicMarkup.org offers some initial thinking about updating current congressional disclosure requirements for the Internet age. It specifies technological and reporting requirements to make more information about lawmakers and their influencers, the work of Congress and of the executive branch meaningfully accessible to the public, with an emphasis on digitizing and publishing congressional information online. Several of the provisions are the direct result of the Open House Project, and the conversations and ideas that have grown out of it.
Developing this model bill via PublicMarkup.org offers an exciting opportunity to experiment with collaborative bill-drafting online. As this is our first stab at creating such comprehensive transparency legislation, we want others to tell us if we aren't being aggressive enough, or are too aggressive in our initial approach to these issues. For example, should we have included a requirement mandating daily filing (not monthly) for lobbyists? Part our team thinks that if lobbyists aren't required to file daily, then citizens will often know after the fact about who was being lobbied about what. What do you think?
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