Our friends at NetSquared.org understand as well as anyone the tremendous potential the Web holds for non-profits and NGO's working for social change. They help these groups build strategic capacity, knowledge and skills through online tools, greatly enhancing their effectiveness and impact.
And voting has begun for NetSquared.org's Mashup Challenge to decide which projects will go on to the 3rd Annual NetSquared Conference (N2Y3), which is to take place May 27 - 28 in San Jose, Calif. You may remember that our grantee MapLight.org was a winner last year.
The community will select the 20 mashups that will go to the conference on March 24. At the conference, NetSquared will ask the 20 selected project teams to present their mashups and attendees will vote to select the top three. They will receive a share of $100,000 in prize money.Here's the link to this year's candidate projects.
Continue readingMaybe We Need Some New Ideas for Earmark Reform?
Here's something that hasn't gotten much attention that should. Late last week, OMB Watch released a valuable background brief on earmarks that gives a good overview of the earmarking process.
Dana Chasin says that the real issue for earmarks is the lack of transparency in the process that has led to corruption. The most effective earmark reforms, Dana writes, would be timely disclosure, revealing to the public what earmarks are being proposed by what lawmakers. He makes a strong case that an outright ban on earmarks won't reduce federal spending...and that really shouldn't be the real focus since earmarked funds are a tiny fraction of the federal budget.
We at the Sunlight Foundation agree that transparency is the needed reform. The Honest Leadership and Government Act of 2007 made some important reforms by providing some of the needed transparency, particularly for the House, but there is so much more that needs to be done.
This document from OMB Watch provides some very useful guidance a set of reforms that could be achievable first steps and that might actually provide some transparency and accountability. Those are good initial goals and they might just prove sufficient.
Continue readingThis Explains It!
From the Wall Street Journal:
What is it about a Web site that might make it literally irresistible? Clues are offered by research conducted by Irving Biederman, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, who is interested in the evolutionary and biological basis of the human need for information.......coming across what Dr. Biederman calls new and richly interpretable information triggers a chemical reaction that makes us feel good, which in turn causes us to seek out even more of it. The reverse is true as well: We want to avoid not getting those hits because, for one, we are so averse to boredom.
It is something we seem hard-wired to do, says Dr. Biederman. When you find new information, you get an opioid hit, and we are junkies for those. You might call us 'infovores.' "
Now we know!
Continue reading
Citizen Scrutiny is the Bugfix
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.
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.
Continue readingSunshine Week
It's Sunshine Week here in DC and, well, the sun is shining which is an auspicious beginning. This is a hugely important national initiative launched six years ago about the importance of open government and freedom of information. How important? According to a Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University survey released today just 4% of the surveyed Americans believe the federal government is very open -- and 44% believe it is very secretive.
Participants in Sunshine Week activities which are held throughout the country include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public's right to know. Here in D.C. there are two panels on Wednesday at the National Press Club plus a lecture by Professor Lawrence Lessig that Sunlight and Omidyar Network are sponsoring on Thursday. More details tomorrow on both of these.
Continue readingJust How Bad Is it?
It looks as if the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) could use Sunlight's database expertise.
Wired.com writes about a GAO report issued earlier this week that blasts the agency for doing an "appalling job" of tracking, responding and resolving complaints regarding telecommunications services. GAO's report states:
Limitations in FCC's current approach for collecting and analyzing enforcement data constitute the principal challenge FCC faces in providing complete and accurate information on its enforcement program... Limitations in FCC's current approach for collecting and analyzing enforcement data constitute the principal challenge FCC faces in providing complete and accurate information on its enforcement program.
Rep. Ed Markey, chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, requested the investigation that focused on the agency's enforcement efforts between 2003 and 2006.
How bad is it? Bad.
Continue readingWelcome to Washington, Mr. Foster
Chris Soghoian writes at his blog Surveillance State about how Capitol Hill just got its first computer geek lawmaker. Last Saturday, Bill Foster, a physicist with a Ph.D. from Harvard, won a special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who resigned late last year. Here's a lawmaker who no doubt understands the power of technology for Democratic renewal.
Lawrence Lessig writes that Foster is "the kind of CHANGE Congress needs."
And Foster's already had an impact. Tuesday evening, Foster cast what was quite possibly the deciding vote on H.Res.895, which would establish an Office of Congressional Ethics. Nice start.
Continue reading
Coburn Doesn’t Give Up
Continue readingEarmark foes are preparing to force a vote that would oblige senators to disclose all campaign contributions connected to their pet projects.
As the battle over the budget heats up, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and other senators are readying an amendment in case Democrats propose an alternative to a Republican-led moratorium on earmarks, as Coburn suspects.
How Little Anyone Knows About Government Contracting…and Why It Matters
Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a troubling report on the U.S. Defense Department (DoD) hiring of private contractors to assist in its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It really illustrates how little we know about government contracting and why the lack of transparency is a problem.
Imagine this. DoD doesn't even know how many private contractors it has on the payroll. AP reports that a senior defense official, in congressional testimony last month, estimated that there are about the same number of private contractors in each of the two war zones as there are American troops, 163,000 in Iraq and 36,500 in Afghanistan. But no one apparently knows for sure. The GAO found that private contractors outnumber DoD employees in some offices, and handle sensitive jobs like writing contracts and awarding fees.
Continue readingDisclosure for Presidential Library Contributions
On Saturday, The Dallas Morning News ran an op-ed from Sen. Joe Lieberman in which he called on President Bush to make all documents public regarding his presidential library. This followed President Bush's press conference on Feb. 28 where he discussed his planned $200-million-plus library in Dallas on the campus of Southern Methodist University, saying that he would accept donations from foreign sources and that if donors wanted their names kept confidential he would consider that request, according to The New York Times.
Fundraising for presidential libraries continues to be a blind spot when it comes to disclosure. Unlike contributions to an electoral campaign, gifts to the libraries are unlimited and undisclosed, and they can receive money from corporations and foreign governments. As Think Progress reports, Bush-the-Elder accepted large donations from foreign governmental figures, including a donation that is believed to be in excess of $1 million from the United Arab Emirates. A presidential pardon for a six-figure contributor to Bill Clinton's library and political campaigns left the indelible impression with many that a presidential pardon was purchased, according to 2007 congressional testimony of colleague Sheila Krumholz, director of the Center for Responsive Politics.
Good for Lieberman for calling out Bush.
Openness and transparency in the way government does business is not a passing fancy for Lieberman. He was the lead sponsor of the E Government Act of 2002 and is the sponsor of the proposed E-Government Reauthorization Act of 2007.
Continue reading
59063
