Our friends at CREW are providing a fantastic resource for reporters, bloggers, citizens and government document junkies--GovernmentDocs.org: An online compendium of scanned images of documents acquired from government agencies through the Freedom of Information Act by (right now) a handful of nonprofit groups (including the correspondence logs collected through Real Time's FOIA project). Documents that once would have been filed away can have second and third lives online, where they can be read, annotated, tagged, and otherwise scrutinized by anyone who signs up to create an account.CREW also uses OCR technology to make the images word-searchable ...
Continue readingGovernmentDocs.org Debuts from CREW
Our friends at CREW are providing a fantastic resource for reporters, bloggers, citizens and government document junkies--GovernmentDocs.org: An online compendium of scanned images of documents acquired from government agencies through the Freedom of Information Act by (right now) a handful of nonprofit groups (including the correspondence logs that Anu's been acquiring for our RealTime project). Documents that once would have been filed away can have second and third lives online, where they can be read, annotated, tagged, and otherwise scrutinized by anyone who signs up to create an account. CREW also uses OCR technology to make the images word-searchable; the results aren't always perfect but they do make the documents easier to navigate. CREW's release is online here, and, full disclosure: Sunlight Foundation supported the creation of the site.
Continue readingDefense Conference Report Contains more than 2,000 Earmarks
A source on the Hill emails about the just released conference report for Defense Appropriations, saying that it "contains a massive number of earmarks – 2,049 to be exact." I'm going to round the figures somewhat (they were calculated on the fly) but total cost of the earmarks is $4.9 billion. Included are 24 new earmarks costing about $59 million that were “airdropped” into the conference report. "These earmarks were considered by neither the House nor the Senate and were immaculately conceived in the conference report," he says. I've started skimming the report, and not everything is going up. According to EarmarkWatch, for example, Rep. James Moran had sponsored or co-sponsored 29 House Defense earmarks totalling $47,000,000 in the House bill; after conference, his name was still attached to 29 earmarks, but the amount budgeted for them will be $40 million.
Continue readingTwo Internet Cultural-Shift Videos
This video speaks also to that cultural shift, discussing exponential growth of digital culture.
Continue readingNew Fundraising Technique
I wonder just how transparent this will be.
Continue readingDisclosure of Bundlers Coming from Obama
ABC News' The Blotter reports:Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said Monday evening he would release new details on the levels of campaign contributions raised by "bundlers" for his presidential campaign, "something that no other candidate has done," according to campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
But it doesn't appear that the intended will be as complete as what Democratic candidate John Kerry or President Bush revealed in 2004 about those who raised the biggest bucks for their campaigns.
Update: I should have mentioned that this annoucement comes one day after Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun Times called Obama to task for his lack of disclosure.
Continue readingGrantees Musing
Some of grantees are stepping out...two of them have interesting pieces published within the past several days. The (Salida, Colo.) Mountain Mail ran a column today by Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, on the total disarray the budget process is in on Capitol Hill. In June, the paper published a very informative column Ryan wrote on mining reform, which the House passed last week.
Also last week, The Chronicle of Philanthropy published Gary Bass' piece "Advocacy is not a Dirty Word". In the piece, Gary, founder and e.d. of OMB Watch, makes the case that non-profit organizations, as well as the foundations that fund them, should engage public policy as advocates. It?s a message he more fully outlines in his new book "Seen but Not Heard: Strengthening Nonprofit Advocacy".
Continue readingThe Machine is Using Ron Paul
A lot of Internet and politics experts have been sitting around waiting for someone in the 2008 presidential race to emerge as the next Net candidate in the mold of Howard Dean. After last night it appears that that candidate has been found. Ron Paul, a backbench 9-term congressman who previously sought the presidency on the Libertarian ticket in 1988, raised over $4 million online yesterday to set the record for most money raised by a presidential candidate online in a 24 hour span. The amazing thing about this haul of money is that it was not organized by the campaign but was instead a supporter generated “cashmob”. (The supporters actually referred to it as a “money-bomb”.) The Paul campaign took advantage of their supporter’s enthusiasm by creating the most transparent campaign finance decision possible: to publish in real-time each online donation as it happens. By making their campaign finance transparent the Paul campaign encouraged their supporters to do their own work by showing them exactly what they were accomplishing. It’s Howard Dean’s bat on crack.
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
One of Sunlight's resident creative geniuses (yes, there are many of them) have taken all the Defense Appropriations Earmarks and made them available for viewing within Google Earth. (You can only view this using Google Earth which you can download from this page.) The regular Google Maps version is available here.
And as they say: a picture really is worth a 1,000 words. One of our policy wonks loved the flight simulator that allows you to fly over earmark locations. It allows you to fly your choice of two aircraft anywhere around the globe, with custom layers visible from the aircraft. The simulator is hidden within the latest version of the program, and takes some getting used to controlling, but is certainly an entertaining way to experience the Earth's actual geography-and to educate yourself politically at the same time.
Continue readingFoil the Attempt to Foul FOIA
Rebecca Carr's Secrecy File, which reports on developments about the growing level of secrecy in the federal government and how it impacts the public's right to know, tells us of an attempt to exempt certain information from FOIA in the pending Farm Bill. OpentheGovernment.org is on the case, lobbying furiously against it. Lend them a hand.
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