Sunlight is pleased that Rep. Susan Davis is offering a simple but important amendment to fix the DISCLOSE Act—the bill... View Article
Continue readingAs the money pours in, will we know where it’s coming from?
As the 2010 election cycle heats up, voters will be exposed to the usual bombardment of campaign ads—many of them... View Article
Continue readingPublic Data in your Email
I've been playing around a bit with Rapportive lately. It's a web service that lets you see information about the sender of an email based on publicly available social media profiles. It works on top of Gmail. If you're using Rapportive and see an email from me, it'll show you a picture of me alongside my work history from LinkedIn, my recent twitter activity, and a picture of me.
People put a lot of information about themselves online through the use of social media, but they also pop up in databases the government provides, too. So when we heard Rapportive was offering the ability for developers to create third party raplets we decided to throw something together.
Continue readingDISCLOSE Shines a Bright Light on Corporate Expenditures but Leaves Political Activities in the Shadows
We couldn’t agree more with the name of the bill introduced today by Senator Schumer and Representatives Van Hollen and... View Article
Continue readingVoters are Left in the Dark about Who Funds Senators’ Campaigns
Today, most citizens will be frantically filing their taxes with the IRS, or patting themselves on the back for getting... View Article
Continue readingSunlight Testimony for Senate Rules Committee
Today the Senate Rules Committee held the first of what’s likely to be a series of hearings on Capitol Hill... View Article
Continue readingFEC Guts Post-Abramoff Reform
The Federal Election Commission — the supposed referee of fair campaigning — has just created an ethics loophole big enough for lobbyists to fly a corporate jet through.
Continue readingOpen Data We’re Thankful For
While this is a little late-- late's better than never for giving thanks. And this year, we've got a lot to be thankful for. Open Data in Open Government is making leaps and strides. The Vice President is talking data quality in government on the Daily Show. ABC News along with Recovery.gov's controversy have brought government data into prime time. It's been a long time since transparency like this has seen this kind of attention.
At this time of Thanksgiving here in the United States I wanted to give thanks for the new and changing government datasets that we have now. Some are truly amazing.
Continue readingOur FEC Testimony
I went in to testify last week on how the FEC can improve their website. Their hearing was actually the first to be streamed live on the Internet. I'm hoping we can get a recording up soon.
It went well. The commissioners were very amenable to feedback and heard what we had to say. I delivered all your comments, and they were receptive to all of them. Primarily in my own testimony I talked to the FEC about how they should spend less time making maps and more time making bulk data available in extensible formats, and that they should hire a New Media Director to carry the ball on this stuff and make sure it happens.
Continue readingSunlight Provides Comments to FEC to improve its Web site
Yesterday, the Sunlight Foundation filed comments in response to the FEC’s request for ideas on how to improve its Web... View Article
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