So I've been going through FedBizOpps, looking for solicitation notices that specifically mention the elusive lobbying disclosure SF-LLL, and coming across some interesting bits of federal business. This solicitation from the State Department, for example, suggests why Anu has yet to receive any correspondence logs from the agency:
The Freedom of Information Document Management System (FREEDOMS) serves as the lynchpin for the [State] Department's Information Access Program. As such, it tracks and manages the workload of all requests made under any of the information access laws or executive orders mentioned above. FREEDOMS was originally purpose built and implemented ...Continue reading
“How About it Max?”
With the advent of Rep. Rehberg (MT) posting his schedule to his official congressional Web site, Montana bloggers and newspapers have asked if Sen. Baucus would join his fellow lawmakers and post his schedule, as well. Lawmakers who agree to share their schedule show that they’re responsive, open, transparent and above all accountable to their constituents. When citizens can find out who has the ears of their lawmakers they can fairly determine if those lawmakers are making fair decisions. The information is vital to a strong democracy because it allows, for the first time, a voter to engage in the daily life of their elected official. The Montana Standard agrees -- on Sunday they printed an editorial making the point that
With just three people representing the fourth largest state in the country, our congressional delegation already faces a great challenge in trying to stay in touch with Montanans, and this one relatively easy way to keep people in the loop.Given the distance between Washington DC and Montana it could be frustrating to a Montanan to feel connected to their representative. But, with a schedule, people know that members of Congress are, in fact, meeting with people in the district and keeping those needs in mind daily. Bloggers are also asking, Don Pogreba’s blog Intelligent Discontent
It's time for Senator Max Baucus to do the right thing. Following the lead of Senator Tester and Representative Rehberg, it's time for Max to start telling Montana voters how he spends his days in Washington.and Jay Steven’s Left in the West "So you know what this means! Max Baucus is the only Montana federal-level representative hiding his business behind a cloud."
The value of a daily available schedule is not lost and constituents actually see the value and want to see all their Representatives do the right thing. We have seen the power that Montana Bloggers have in demanding accountability from their elected officials, and I am confident that Sen. Baucus will do the right thing by his constituents. There’s hope he’s already considering it. Today, the Billings Gazette published an editorial citing, Sen. Baucus’ spokesperson, Barrett Kaiser stating “…said last week that the senator is considering posting his schedule.”
Continue readingUp to our Earmarks in New Disclosures
Give the 110th Congress and the White House a little credit: we're seeing more information on earmarks than we ever have before. Our friends at Taxpayers for Common Sense just added to their comprehensive compendium of earmarked appropriations a batch from the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies bill (their analysis of that bill is here). Even though the Senate has yet to formally pass its earmark reform measures (in part because Sen. Jim DeMint is holding out for quicker adoption of the rule), the Senate Appropriations Committee has been publishing information on earmarks, including the financial disclsoure letters Senators file when requesting them.
Continue readingUsing RSS for House Committee Schedule Feeds
Do you want congressional committee schedule information in a standard syndication format? We sure would and this is what we propose.
Continue readingGreat use of correspondence logs
The Center for Investigative Reporting and the Los Angeles Times used some of our correspondence logs to track down letters members of Congress were writing to federal agencies requesting funding for certain projects. Here's a link to the LA Times story.
CIR's Will Evans mentions Real Time and posts some of the letters CIR received here.
Continue readingSF-LLL Update: Not for public inspection?
My conversation with Department of Trasnsportation contracting officer Bob Robel (see the Moblity Technologies, Inc. post immediately below) also yielded some interesting information on standard form LLL, which contractors are supposed to file "for each payment or agreement to make payment to any lobbying entity for influencing or attempting to influence an officer or employee of any agency, a Member of Congress, an officer or employee of Congress, or an employee of a Member of Congress in connection with a covered federal action." (Covered federal action here refers to a federal contract or grant.)
Anu and I have been trying ...
Continue readingFHWA discouraging FOIA requests from potential contractors?
Here's a little information on something we started looking into last February:
When a federal agency needs a contractor, it publishes a presolicitation notice on a site called FedBizOpps to alert businesses that a formal solicitation is coming. These presolicitation notices -- here's one -- describe what the contract would call for, often adding that additional information can be gotten through the Freedom of Information Act:
Any requests for business information not posted should be requested under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) guidance.
There are several variations on the theme -- this one tells bidders, "All FOIA requests for the previous ...
Continue readingMy Society Our Society
Ron Brownstein of the LA Times has a really thoughtful column today on what transparency means in the Internet Age. Keying off Sen. Barack Obama's announcement a week or so ago about the need to create more transparency for the work of government, Brownstein highlights the need to go beyond the simple provision of information about what government does in useable ways online (we agree that's necessary but not sufficient) to developing the kind of interactivity between citizens and lawmakers that is the hallmark of our colleagues in England at MySociety.org. That nonprofit's creative use of the Internet to engage citizens to collaboration with government (and the other way around) is setting the standard. Sunlight's already begun a series of conversations with MySociety that we expect yield some ways for us to experiment here in the US. Several future Sunlight efforts are looking in this direction.
Continue readingCiviCRM integrating SunlightLabs API
CiviCRM Integrates SunlightLabs API
If your blog runs on the popular content management Drupal and the community management tool CiviCRM, you'll be pleased to learn the CivicCRM development team is going to make it easier to connect your members to their elected officials with some help from the SunlightLabs API. The SunlightLabs API is a tool for developers that provides handy, machine-readable information about members of Congress. Developers can use the API to more easily look up key information about representatives from different online databases and to find the representatives for a given zip code or state. Since developers have to spend less time managing clerical data around representatives, they can spend more time presenting that information in useful ways to you and I. In this case, CiviCRM developers will be incorporating the data directly into the CiviCRM interface and modules. As David Geilhufe pointed out in an email to us, "People could automatically email all the people in the database within a particular district." The SunlightFoundation.com website runs on Drupal and CiviCRM, so we ourselves will be a beneficiary of this integration. W0ot!
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