That's what Micah Sifry, Sunlight's senior strategic consultant and executive editor of the Personal Democracy Forum says today, about an E-Tech on a panel on "civic hacking" -- online activists taking government data in its raw and user-unfriendly state, and making it accessible and helpful to citizens.
The panel discussed a number of British sites launched by our colleagues at mySociety.org as well as the hacking of the UN at UNDemocracy.com, where you can now get easy access to the transcripts of the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council in structured formats, information that was previously very hard to get your hands on. Neat stuff.
"When an institution is broken," Micah writes, "more scrutiny can only help fix it."
Yup.
Continue readingSunshine Week
It's Sunshine Week here in DC and, well, the sun is shining which is an auspicious beginning. This is a hugely important national initiative launched six years ago about the importance of open government and freedom of information. How important? According to a Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University survey released today just 4% of the surveyed Americans believe the federal government is very open -- and 44% believe it is very secretive.
Participants in Sunshine Week activities which are held throughout the country include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know. Here in D.C. there are two panels on Wednesday at the National Press Club plus a lecture by Professor Lawrence Lessig that Sunlight and Omidyar Network are sponsoring on Thursday. More details tomorrow on both of these.
Continue readingDiagram of Financial Support for Public Government Sites
Just How Bad Is it?
It looks as if the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) could use Sunlight's database expertise.
Wired.com writes about a GAO report issued earlier this week that blasts the agency for doing an "appalling job" of tracking, responding and resolving complaints regarding telecommunications services. GAO's report states:
Limitations in FCC's current approach for collecting and analyzing enforcement data constitute the principal challenge FCC faces in providing complete and accurate information on its enforcement program... Limitations in FCC's current approach for collecting and analyzing enforcement data constitute the principal challenge FCC faces in providing complete and accurate information on its enforcement program.
Rep. Ed Markey, chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, requested the investigation that focused on the agency's enforcement efforts between 2003 and 2006.
How bad is it? Bad.
Continue readingWelcome to Washington, Mr. Foster
Chris Soghoian writes at his blog Surveillance State about how Capitol Hill just got its first computer geek lawmaker. Last Saturday, Bill Foster, a physicist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, won a special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who resigned late last year. Here's a lawmaker who no doubt understands the power of technology for Democratic renewal.
Lawrence Lessig writes that Foster is "the kind of CHANGE Congress needs."
And Foster's already had an impact. Tuesday evening, Foster cast what was quite possibly the deciding vote on H.Res.895, which would establish an Office of Congressional Ethics. Nice start.
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A Debate: Information v. Privacy
At Wired.com, there has been an interesting back and forth between Bruce Schneier, world-renowned security technology guru, and David Brin, physicist and award-winning science fiction author. Schneier critiques Brin's view that "freedom is best served when all citizens have enough knowledge to hold each other reciprocally accountable" that he flushed out in his 1997 book The Transparency Society. Schneier fears openness would be a radical departure from the social contract that our present society is built upon, and that it would threaten personal privacy. Brin's rebuttal is that Schneier is wrong about both the social contract and privacy and that ever since the Enlightenment, markets, science and democracy have "flourished in direct proportion to how much their players (consumers, scientists and voters) know, in order to make good decisions." Also, he says "whatever extent these arenas get clogged by secrecy, they fail."
Amen. When almost everything we want to know, do, buy, and connect to is at the tip of our fingertips government should fully embrace the tools of this new age. Information is the currency of democracy, and technology is enabling citizens interact with their government in new and exciting ways, enriching and strengthening democracy.
Continue readingCoburn Doesn’t Give Up
Continue readingEarmark foes are preparing to force a vote that would oblige senators to disclose all campaign contributions connected to their pet projects.
As the battle over the budget heats up, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and other senators are readying an amendment in case Democrats propose an alternative to a Republican-led moratorium on earmarks, as Coburn suspects.
On Government Documents Management
Building on my earlier post about listing collaborative options for government or congressional agencies, I'm thinking about useful ways to distinguish between different types of government information, and what that implies about records management.
At the recent IPDI Politics Online panel on radical transparency, Peggy Garvin made a great point about one fundamental distinction that can be made within government information. She suggested that all government information is either collected from regulated entities, or pertains to the operations of government itself. (much more below)
Rep. Moran Says Earmark Reform is a Passing Fad
There's been a whirlwind of earmark activity of late, with the two Democratic presidential candidates joining the all-but-nominated Republican candidate in backing an effort by Sen. Jim DeMint to institute a one-year moratorium on earmarks. In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is considering a similar ban, and Rep. Jeff Flake, as anti-earmark as any member of Congress, takes it seriously enough to worry that Democrats will get the credit for ending earmarks rather than Republicans. Independent bloggers and organizations like Porkbusters, Americans for Prosperity, the National Taxpayers Union, Citizens Against Government Waste and of course Taxpayers for Common Sense deserve a tremendous amount of credit for driving this issue so hard and so long.
Continue readingHow Little Anyone Knows About Government Contracting…and Why It Matters
Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a troubling report on the U.S. Defense Department (DoD) hiring of private contractors to assist in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It really illustrates how little we know about government contracting and why the lack of transparency is a problem.
Imagine this. DoD doesn't even know how many private contractors it has on the payroll. AP reports that a senior defense official, in congressional testimony last month, estimated that there are about the same number of private contractors in each of the two war zones as there are American troops, 163,000 in Iraq and 36,500 in Afghanistan. But no one apparently knows for sure. The GAO found that private contractors outnumber DoD employees in some offices, and handle sensitive jobs like writing contracts and awarding fees.
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