File this under "Two steps forward, one step back."
Secrecy News highlights a change in disclosure policy by several federal defense intelligence agencies in anticipation of last week's launching of USAspending.gov. Claiming that online disclosure of their unclassified contracts would compromise security, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) asked the Department of Defense for and received permission to keep the documents secret. "I appreciate your concerns that reporting these actions to the publicly accessible website could provide unacceptable risk of insight to your individual missions and budgets," wrote Shay D. Assad of the Under Secretary of Defense in a December 7 memorandum (pdf). "But when it comes to intelligence spending, there will actually be a net loss of public information because categories of intelligence contracting data that were previously disclosed will now be withheld," writes Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News editor.
Continue readingEarmarks Boost Small Kentucky Businesses
After it hired a lobbyist and its employees' contributed to a member of Congress' leadership political action committee, a
Over the last three years, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., says he has earmarked at least $10.4 million in defense funds for Phoenix Products, Inc., a small company in McKee, Ky., that makes aircraft accessories, including custom V.I.P. interiors for Black Hawk helicopters that offer the finest leather," fabric, naugahyde and carpet, according to the firm's Web site.
In the 2008 Defense Appropriations Act that was signed into ...
Continue readingPut Me In Touch with Democracy!
Boing Boing highlights CommitteeCaller.com, a new app that allows people to easily call an entire congressional committee to express their views. Consider it speed dial for congressional committee members. The site was built by Fred Benenson, a master's degree student at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, as a final project for a class he was taking this fall. "The web application utilizes the open source Asterisk PBX system to connect you to every senator or house member on a particular committee," Benenson writes in the Boing Boing post. "No more digging around the 'net entering zip-codes to retrieve phone numbers of representatives," he writes. He is working on a state legislature version as well.
Benenson says he created the site out of frustration after spending hours dialing every member of a particular congressional committee. He realized that calling individual committee members should not have to be so laborious, and the process ought to be able to be automated. "I was able to aggregate a database for myself containing all 540 110 th Congress representatives and their committee affiliations," Benenson writes. He created a secondary database containing all 5,000 specific affiliations. And he states he'd be happy to share both databases with anyone who is interested in developing a similar application.
Continue readingOmnibus Bill Thwarts Transparency, Accountability
Regardless of what happens to the Omnibudgetbusterblusterbus bill -- sorry, my fingers slipped -- the Omnibus spending bill (made searchable by our friends at the Heritage Foundation), it's fair to say that citizen oversight of Congress (and congressional oversight of Congress, for whatever that's worth) took a shot to the chin today. The Hill's Alex Bolton reports that the bill's 3,565 pages contain somewhere between 8,983 earmarks (according to Taxpayers for Common Sense), 9,200 earmarks (according to a Senate staffer) and 11,402 earmarks (according to Heritage's excellent Ominibuster blog). There are hundreds of new earmarks previously undisclosed--115 worth $117 million in the previously "earmark free" Homeland Security bill--that have been "airdropped" in at the last minute. Rep. Marsha Blackburn just noted on C-Span (I'm watching as I type) that the bill weighs in at a hefty 35 pounds when printed. Members have only a few hours to digest all that paper before voting. The bill will appropriate something like hundreds of billions of dollars in funds. In what other arena of life do you make such momentous decisions with so little time to think? "Rush into that subprime mortgage," "buy that stock of a company you'd never heard of before," "a week is plenty of time to find out if someone is worth marrying," -- thus does our Congress decide how to spend our money. This is primarily a failure of the majority (regardless of which party is in the majority--the Republicans were equally opaque) and of leadership, which prefers to dump a monstrosity of a bill--stitched together behind closed doors--on their colleagues with no time for debate, and no time for their constituents to make their opinions known.
Continue readingThe GAO’s Unheeded Mandate
I recently came across a mandate that the GAO perform periodic reviews of financial disclosure practices across the government, which appears to be unenforced and unimplemented. (more)
Continue readingMajor Victory for Transparency
This afternoon, our friends at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) got a major victory for all who care for openness and transparency.
A federal judge ruled that the logs kept by the Secret Service of visitors to the White House and the Vice President's residence are public records and subject to Freedom of Information Act requests. The Bush White House had been fighting the release of the documents in an effort to hide evidence and details of visits from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and prominent religious conservative leaders. The White House insists that the logs are presidential records and should not be public, and wants the Secret Service to destroy its copies of the logs once they are turned over to the White House. They were wrong.
In sum, according to CREW: "As a result of today's ruling, records of visits to both the White House complex and the residency of the vice president are now publicly available through the FOIA."
Continue readingHidden in Plain Sight
Last week, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and OMB Watch, both Sunlight Foundation grantees, released a report highlighting how many federal agencies' databases and websites contain flaws making them hard to search with commonly used search engines. The report, "Hiding in Plain Sight: Why Important Government Information Cannot Be Found through Commercial Search Engines," shows how vital government information appears "invisible" to ordinary Americans using the Internet. Congress passed the E-Government Act of 2002 to promote the public's access to government information and services. Based on this report, there a whole lot of work that still needs to be done.
The report not only points out the flaws in current government databases that make it hard, if not impossible, for ordinary citizens to find the data they are looking for, but it also provides fixes that would encourage greater accessibility of information by making it more searchable.
Continue readingThe Washington Independent
The Center for Independent Media (CIM) is poised to launch its new Washington outpost -- The Washington Independent. Allison Silver, a former editor for The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, will be news editor. Laura McGann, formerly with TPMmuckraker, is on board as managing editor. They are attracting some significant talent.
The Center was launched in 2006 to support talented bloggers with journalism and internet training, as well as to provide logistical support. The brains behind it are David Bennahum, founding writer for Wired magazine, and Ali Savino, a former Microsoft programmer. Thus far the group has fostered four state-based news sites, Colorado Confidential, Iowa Independent, Michigan Messenger, and Minnesota Monitor. Each site operates independently, and as CIM's website states, "the sites' contributors do more reporting than most bloggers and are more opinionated on key local issues than most daily news reporters."
Continue readingFriday YouTubes: David Weinberger
Cisco posted this video of David Weinberger (Cluetrain Manifesto; Everything is Miscellaneous) discussing the Internet and it's use in the public sector and by the presidential candidates:
Continue readingMontana Leads in Openness and So can Yours (if you ask)
Since its launch, on Tuesday, the Punch Clock Map has gotten some excellent support. The one of note is this editorial in Montana's Helena Independent Record:
Delegation leads in openness
By IR staff - 12/13/07Naively, no doubt, we were hoping that the Montana congressional delegation’s practice of posting their daily schedules on the Internet might catch on in Washington.
After all, it’s an easy way for members of Congress to show their commitment to transparency in government and maybe even help repair that institution’s tattered image.
No such luck. A national watchdog organization called the Sunlight Foundation recently applauded U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and Sen. Max Baucus and U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg for being among only eight of the 535 members of Congress to post their schedules.
A foundation spokeswoman said congressional members often say they don’t want to reveal their schedules for reasons of security. That’s a particularly lame excuse. All they need to do is post their scheduled a day late, as the Montana delegation does. Yesterday’s schedule isn’t of much help to any bad guys lurking out there. The real reason so few are willing to make their schedules public is that they probably fear political operatives will be poring over their itineraries, searching for any ammo they can find for future attacks. Continue reading
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