It's Electronic Records Day, and it's a good opportunity to examine how governments are faring when it comes to creating, managing, and sharing public records in electronic formats.
Continue readingSenate electronic filing should be a done deal — we’ll keep fighting until it is
This month, we've been highlighting bills that would ensure the public has information on D.C. influence. Now we bring you the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, legislation that should have been passed a long, long time ago.
Continue readingTransparency bills could offer easy wins, but will Congress bite?
Congress returns from summer vacation with expectations that they will accomplish almost nothing before Election Day. But if members want to point to some accomplishments before voters go to the polls, they should look at bills aimed at strengthening transparency.
Continue readingThe state of state and local campaign finance: D.C. primary edition
While not yet perfect, D.C.’s campaign finance website has a number of features that allow reporters and other researchers to access many aspects of campaign finance data in bulk form.
Continue readingDisclosure doesn’t belong in the back of a filing cabinet
Filing Cabinets via Flickr user Nick Perez Senate campaign finance documents. House disbursement information. Important regulatory filings. Time and again... View Article
Continue readingOpen data is the next iteration of public records
The way we think about access to information is changing along with advances in technology. It's time for public records to be proactively released online.
Continue readingBoilerplate Open Data Policy and Why It’s a Problem
Copying and pasting boilerplate legislative language is as old as law itself. In fact, legal precedent is built on throwbacks, edits, and remixes. The modern day copying and pasting feature has served as a technological blessing in legal matters that require a high level of repetition, such as producing demand letters for common legal claims, or, for one of Sunlight’s favorite exercises of individual rights, completing a public records or freedom of information request. However, when copying and pasting enters more nuanced areas of law, such as contract or legislation drafting, significant complications can arise. Without the proper edits or engaged collaborative thinking required in policy drafting, the ever tempting copy/paste model falls short. Below we explore just how borrowed open data legislative language thus far has been and examples of where it’s been the least helpful.
Continue readingGovernment Shutdown + Arcane Senate Rules = Less Transparency in New Jersey Senate Race
“We told you so,” is so petty, but, well, we told you so. We predicted that disclosure of Senate campaign... View Article
Continue readingAnother Victim of the Shutdown: Senate Campaign Finance Disclosure
Congress has failed to keep the government running for more than a week, and even though life on the campaign fundraising circuit has slowed somewhat, the government shutdown won’t stop members of Congress from asking for—and receiving—campaign contributions. The unseemliness of elected officials dialing for dollars from fat cat contributors while 800,000 federal workers are shut out of their jobs is bad enough. But, as a twisted result of the government shutdown, Senate candidates will get a pass on filing their disclosure reports on time and the public will be completely in the dark as to who is funding their campaigns.
Announcing the Open Data Policy Guidelines, Version 2.0
As more communities recognize the power and possibilities of sharing public data online, there is an increasing need to articulate what it means to open data -- and how to create policies that can not only support these efforts, but do so in a sustainable and ambitious way.
To this end, we are releasing the second version of Sunlight’s Open Data Policy Guidelines. Originally authored last summer and informed by the great work of our peers and allies, the Guidelines are a living document created to help define the landscape of what open data policies can and should do. For this latest version, we’ve reordered and slightly rephrased the Guidelines’ 32 provisions for clarity. We’ve also grouped them into three categories as a way of demonstrating that open data policies can define What Data Should Be Public, How to Make Data Public and How to Implement Policy.
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