Tag Archive: Personal Democracy Forum

Federal Agencies and Web 2.0

by Ellen Miller Feb 3, 2009 3:00 pm

Elizabeth Newell, at GovExec.com, writes about how federal agencies are beginning to stick their toes in the social media pool.... View Article

CJR’s Transparency Package

by Ellen Miller Jan 23, 2009 5:26 pm

Throughout this month, the Columbia Journalism Review has been rolling out a transparency package, which Sunlight helped to support. There... View Article

Personal Democracy Forum’s “Rebooting America” Essay Contest

by Ellen Miller Apr 9, 2008 6:18 pm

Our friends at Personal Democracy Forum (PdF) have launched an essay contest around the issue of Rebooting America: Democracy in the 21st Century, which is the name of an anthology of essays they are publishing on the topic. PdF will include the contest winner's essays in the book that will include pieces written by leading thinkers and activists and citizens like you. They are publishing the book in conjunction with their Personal Democracy Forum conference June 23-24 in New York City. Contest winners will also receive complementary passes to the conference.

I'm honored to join the likes of Clay Shirky, Yockai Benkler, Susan Crawford, Beth Noveck, Craig Newmark, danah boyd, Scott Heiferman, Tara Hunt, Josh Marshall, Jeff Jarvis, Howard Rheingold, John Bonifaz, Brad Templeton, Mike Turk, James Rucker, Morra Aarons, Patrick Ruffini, Lisa Stone, Joe Trippi, David Weinberger and others in offering ideas on how to reinvent democracy in America using the Internet and Web 2.0.

Citizen Scrutiny is the Bugfix

by Ellen Miller Mar 17, 2008 12:36 pm

That's what Micah Sifry, Sunlight's senior strategic consultant and executive editor of the Personal Democracy Forum says today, about an E-Tech on a panel on "civic hacking" -- online activists taking government data in its raw and user-unfriendly state, and making it accessible and helpful to citizens.

Sounds familiar.

The panel discussed a number of British sites launched by our colleagues at mySociety.org as well as the hacking of the UN at UNDemocracy.com, where you can now get easy access to the transcripts of the U.N. General Assembly and the Security Council in structured formats, information that was previously very hard to get your hands on. Neat stuff.

"When an institution is broken," Micah writes, "more scrutiny can only help fix it."

Yup.

Debates 2.0

by Ellen Miller Jul 25, 2007 12:36 pm

Sunlight's senior strategic consultant, Micah Sifry, has a really nice op ed in the NY Daily News today, that pretty much summarizes my thoughts about CNN's YouTube debate two nights ago. (He has taught me well.) A big step forward BUT....

Imagine if the next time there's a presidential candidates debate on TV, you could go online to vote beforehand on which questions should be asked, and the top choices from the public were included in the mix. Imagine that during the debate you also could grade the candidates' answers, and see how your peers and the rest of the public were grading them, in real time.

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A Day Well Spent

by Ellen Miller May 16, 2006 11:08 am

The Sunlight staff spent yesterday at the Personal Democracy Forum conference (podcasts are available), a day well spent. After comparing notes this morning each of us came away with new information and new connections in the intersecting worlds of technology and politics. If you were there you know what I mean. Probably best of all we had a chance to meet some of our colleagues (like Josh Koenig at Trellon who is principally responsible for this website) and Michael Bassik of MSHC Partners who designed our Congresspedia web ads. (We'd never met even though Michael's office in just down the block from ours!). Alas, there were lots of folks there that I wanted to connect with, but didn't have a chance, like Mike Krempasky of RedState.org, Rebecca Donatelli of Campaign Solutions, Joe Green of Essembly.com and Jerome Armstrong, but knowing that we were all there gives me the excuse to call them up -- or email them -- to try to get together for coffee or lunch. And finally, there were some wonderful longstanding colleagues like David Donnelly, Allison Fine, and Nancy Watzman to brainstorm with about the future directions of Sunlight. All in all, quite the remarkable collection of people.

Kudos Are Due!

by Ellen Miller Apr 22, 2006 6:30 pm

In the rush to our launch this coming Wednesday – stay tuned for how to call in to our telephonic press conference – I want to just take a moment to reflect on the extraordinary amount of strategic thinking and planning and real work product that has been undertaken in the 4 months since the Sunlight Foundation was incorporated. What we will be announcing on Wednesday – the awarding of grants to create new databases and our discussions about how to mash information together to make it even more robust, the launching of a Congresspedia, establishing three new blogs, our initial efforts in distributive journalism and on-line tutorials – is work that might have taken another organization a year to put together! Kudos to all of us.