Yesterday, two Democratic New York State Senators jumped ship to caucus with the Republicans, potentially shifting the majority from the... View Article
Continue readingLunchtime Link Round-Up
Some open government/transparency posts from around the web: The Food and Drug Administration, in conjunction with their Transparency Task Force,... View Article
Continue readingMember Expenses Continued
Earlier this week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that lawmaker office expenses would be placed online at the earliest possible time.... View Article
Continue readingSenate Judiciary Committee Posts Sotomayor Questionnaire Online
The Senate Judiciary Committee has posted a completed questionnaire from Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. You can see the whole,... View Article
Continue readingFDA Creates Transparency Task Force
Following up on President Obama’s January 21 memo requiring agencies to promote transparency and openness, the Food and Drug Administration... View Article
Continue readingNew Lobbying Rules Round-Up
By now, you may have seen that the White House has updated the stimulus lobbying rules to expand the communications... View Article
Continue readingRedesigning The Government: The U.S. Supreme Court
President Obama's nomination of Judge Sotomayor has brought increased attention to the U.S. Supreme Court. It also has led us to reexamine the Court's web site, which is long overdue for an overhaul. In its current form, its web design is suggestive of the 1990s, and its functionality is similarly dated. The Justices appear to agree. They've recently ask Congress for money to move control of the site in-house, taking over responsibility from the GPO. This move would allow them, in their words, to "better control and manage the web site and to be able to expand the data and services provided by the site more efficiently." The current web site has many shortcomings. It doesn't contain briefs by the parties and omits all but a few relatively recent Court opinions. Its navigation is a nightmare and its design fails to incorporate modern techniques such as RSS feeds and XML. Much information is unnecessarily locked in PDFs. And yet, in January 2009 the nine-year-old site received 18 million hits. To help the Court update its web presence, the Sunlight Foundation has put together the following mock-up. The most important aspect of the mock-up is that it takes into account the web site's diverse users. It accommodates the general public and students, legal researchers, court researchers, and litigants. Accordingly, we believe the redesigned web site must be simple, straightforward, and robust. It must strive to make the Court's proceedings transparent, incorporate modern design principles, and meet the higher expectations of today's web user. This post is the next in a series of government web site mock-ups that suggests how parts of the government should transform their online presence. Previous iterations have included: USA.gov, FEC.gov, EPA.gov, and Data.gov. Under the fold, we have the mock-up and detailed descriptions of how the Supreme Court web site should be redesigned.
Continue readingCongressional Statements of Expenditures, the MP Expense Scandal, and the Case for Transparency
What would happen here in the States if congressmen were revealed to have used their office allowances (Member’s Representational Allowance)... View Article
Continue readingOpen Government Initiative Open for Comment
Yesterday, the Office of Science and Technology at the White House filed a request for public comment on the administration’s... View Article
Continue readingFive Day Fail, Again
There have been a few campaign promise flops from President Obama (example: Armenian genocide), but none so obviously wrong-headed as... View Article
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