Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight 
Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Marc Joffe is the founder of Public Sector Credit Solutions (PSCS) which applies open data and analytics to rating government bonds. Before starting PSCS, Marc was a Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics. You can contact him at marc@publicsectorcredit.org. Marc is also one of the winners of Sunlight Foundation’s OpenGov Grants.
High profile bankruptcy filings by Detroit and other cities, along with concerns about public employee pensions, are increasing borrowing costs for state and local governments. Higher interest payments to bondholders mean higher taxes and fewer services. However, with transparent data and analytics, local government bonds can get reasonable interest rates -- as this post will illustrate.
Over the last 70 years, municipal bond defaults have been rare. In a typical year, no more than one in 1,000 municipalities fail to make timely payments on their tax supported debt. Also, interest on municipal bonds is exempt from federal income taxes and usually free of state income taxes as well.
Because of their low risk and favorable tax treatment, municipal bonds have typically yielded less than US Treasury bonds – making it easy for states, cities, counties and school districts to finance new infrastructure. Time series data available from the Federal Reserve (a portion of which is depicted in the accompanying graph) show that yields on “munis” were lower than Treasuries from 1953 until the 2008 financial crisis. This discount returned briefly in 2010, but since Meredith Whitney predicted a wave of municipal bond defaults on 60 Minutes in December 2010, muni yields have exceeded Treasury yields – often by substantial margins.
Municipal and Treasury data Continue readingWhen will Open Data come to your town?
Whether you’re steeped in the open government world (as we at Sunlight are) or are not yet familiar with capital-O capital-D Open Data Policies, there are two key elements you’ll see taking a bird’s eye view at open data policies in this U.S.: They’re new and they’re gaining momentum.
Continue readingIn Philippines, Summer of Potential for Open Government
As a member of the Open Government Partnership Steering Committee, the Philippines is uniquely positioned to be a highly visible leader on open government. However, the legislature’s failure to pass a freedom of the information bill has brought this role into question.
So, what’s going on in the Philippines?
In the parliament, bills on internet freedom, legislative crowdsourcing, and parliamentary openness have all been introduced this summer. The other branches of government are also turning increasingly towards technology to improve governance. All this suggests that the Philippines’ role as an open government leader may be back on track, but only if this summer’s promising work is sustained.
Party Time at five! Take our transparency challenge
August. It’s the month official Washington escapes the steaming city and heads elsewhere—and that includes the political fundraisers. But members of Congress and other politicians don’t stop their race for cash when they go home to their districts; instead, they take the parties with them.
This week, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., is hosting donors for a Cubs game in Wrigley Field. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho has a “hook and bullet” fundraiser for his political action committee in Sun Valley. On Saturday, Rep. Bill Owens, D-N.Y., will fete big givers at the Saratoga race course.
We know about all this and much, much more because on this day five years ago, we officially launched Sunlight’s one-of-a-kind database of political fundraisers, Political Party Time. Since then, we have archived some 18,000 invitations and, in the process, gained new insights -- for better and for worse -- into the folkways of American political life.
From the mini-golf course on DC’s gentrifying H Street NE to the links of Kiawah Island’s Sanctuary course, from Krispy Kreme breakfasts to champagne brunches, from Lambeau Field to a Beyonce concert, we’ve tracked the literally round-the-clock efforts of our nation’s elected officials to raise campaign cash and travails of their equally relentless fellow travelers: the lobbyists who must fork over the cash for a chance to dine on what goes for MRE’s in “This Town:” hors d’oeuvres on a toothpick.
It’s a system nobody really loves: not the lawmakers who publicly bemoan the hours they spend raising money nor the lobbyists whose inboxes burst with ever more innovative reasons for them to spend time away from their loved ones.
Transparency Case Study: Public Procurement in the Slovak Republic
Introduction
Transparency and open data policies and initiatives have reached a state of maturity where it is crucial for us to evaluate them to learn what works, what doesn’t and why. Transparency is not likely to be a cure-all, but we think it is a cure-some; so, we need to figure out where and how it should be best applied. As part of that process, we have been conducting a series of in-depth case studies on the impact of technology enabled transparency policies around the world. Our initial case studies look at transparency in public procurement and we have chosen four countries to study. This analysis discusses our findings about public procurement disclosure by the Slovakian government.
For the Slovakian case study, we conducted interviews or sent questionnaires and surveys to members of the following groups: members of transparency NGOs, journalists who have covered procurement, academic researchers, the Slovakian Government Office of Public Procurement and the Slovakian Business Alliance. The experiences of these diverse respondents have allowed us to develop an equally diverse and comprehensive picture of the impact of the public procurement reforms enacted in Slovakia over recent years.
Our major findings: Slovakians' increased access to public data has led to increased oversight and engagement by the civil sector and the public. However, because of a lack of enforcement, corruption in public procurement remains a significant problem.
Continue readingOpenGov Conversations: Greg Michener on Creating Effective Transparency Policies
Transparency is a slippery concept but important enough that it should be handled with some degree of precision. Unfortunately, the concept is often stretched out of shape and credit-hungry policymakers adopt transparency policies with little regard for preconditions. Here I’m going to take a few positions on preconditions, and my underlying point is that transparency is highly contingent. In order for transparency policies to work we need to take a more cautious approach to conceptualizing ‘transparency’ and to understanding the incentives of supplying and demanding transparency.
Continue readingOpenGov Conversations: Tim Davies on Creating Effective Transparency Policies
Transparency and accountability are so often discussed in the same breath that it’s not uncommon to find them treated as synonyms. The same is increasingly true of openness and transparency. Yet these three terms, openness, transparency and accountability each refer to distinct parts of a process of bringing about change, and there can be gaps, failures and frustrations at each step of the way. Governments engaging with open data often presenting this as equivalent to transparency. Yet as Larsson writes“Openness might… be thought of as a characteristic of the organization, whereas transparency also requires external receptors capable of processing the information made available” (Larsson, 1998). That is to say, openness doesn’t necessarily lead to transparency unless the information made available is both usable, and there are people capable of using it. This makes the transparency relationship one with two parties: the institution being ‘open’, and the receiver able to make sense of the information provided, encouraging us to ask who an institution is becoming transparent too. For example, greater transparency to elites might have very different effects from transparency that also reaches grassroots communities and a broader base of citizens.
Continue readingOpenGov Conversations: Alice Powell on Creating Effective Transparency Policies
Before delving into how transparency policies work, and under which conditions, we need to unpack what these terms mean for the extractive industry. Transparency policies and interventions are designed to bring light to aspects of natural resource management which have been shrouded in secrecy. This can include the basis on which a certain company was chosen for a project or the tax payments a company has made. Making this information available empowers citizens to ask how their revenues were spent or why a contract went to a certain company. This helps prevent deliberate mismanagement (giving a company a contract because your brother-in-law owns it) and also mismanagement due to lack of competence (local authorities not properly collecting taxes). Our goal is ultimately for all citizens to benefit from their natural resources. Without transparency, this isn’t possible. How can you know a community is receiving the correct amount for its natural resources, if you don’t know how much a company has paid in taxes? Transparency works through small and incremental steps, not as a silver bullet. Transparency policies enable and empower actors to ask the right questions and supports them in their campaign for change.
Continue readingOpenGov Conversations: Alexander Furnas on Creating Effective Transparency Policies
Change is hard, and slow in coming. As Weber famously said, “Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.” When things do change, they change for a reason. They key for us is figuring out why, and what role transparency plays in that process. The theory of change that I subscribe to is one in which outcomes change when incentives change for key stakeholders. In this light, we must evaluate transparency against its ability to alter the incentives for actors within a system.
Continue readingWhat Have they Got to Hide? Lawmakers Should Allow Meetings with Lobbyists to be Disclosed
Recently, my colleague Lee Drutman concluded that banks met with regulators at the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission more than five times as often as reform-minded consumer groups in the past two years. His analysis provides a valuable tool for the media, academics and the public to better understand who is trying to shape financial industry regulations.
His conclusions, and the follow up questions that can now be asked (Did the banks get what they wanted? Are consumers’ interests being served?) are only possible because the agencies posted information about the meetings online.
Which begs the question: If the regulators can provide information about who is trying to influence the regulations they write, why doesn’t the public have access to similar information about meetings Members of Congress or their staff have with lobbyists?
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