Tag Archive: advocacy

Transparency can help transit agencies earn public trust

by Greg Jordan-Detamore Mar 27, 2019 12:05 pm

A number of transit agencies face crises of public confidence, and greater transparency can help address this.

What’s next for the international open government agenda?

by Julia Keserű

policy

Dec 8, 2014 10:17 am

Sunlight's key takeaways from the Americas Regional Meeting of OGP and recommendations for the Partnership and the broader open government agenda.

Why open data and accountability are not the same thing

by Emily Shaw

policy

Jun 4, 2014 1:55 pm

Open data is a tool, not an end in itself, much as a hammer is not an end in itself. It is just one factor necessary to produce the transparency that allows us to achieve accountability.

Who has a say in Washington: Policymakers listen to interest groups instead of the public

by Matt Grossmann

May 19, 2014 12:49 pm

The American public believes that “the government is pretty much run by a few big interests looking out for themselves” rather than “the benefit of all of the people.” But is there actual evidence to prove this?

DC Approves Campaign Finance Reforms

by Alisha Green

policy

Dec 3, 2013 4:42 pm

In a legislative meeting today, DC council members unanimously approved a bill that moves campaign finance in the District toward greater transparency. The legislation requires electronic filing of campaign finance information and the publication of that information online within 24 hours -- language that Sunlight's local team recommended in the bill's drafting process.

Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, who moved the bill through Council, thanked Sunlight for our role in this win for transparency:

Thanks also to the @SunFoundation for their input on transparency reforms that are cornerstone of this DC campaign finance reform
— Kenyan R. McDuffie (@CM_McDuffie) December 3, 2013

OpenGov Voices: Creating an Early Warning System for Political Activism

by Adam Green Apr 19, 2013 12:45 pm

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. Adam Green

Adam Green is the CTO of UniteBlue.com -- a social network for progressives based on Twitter. UniteBlue connects and organizes political activists on a national and state level. You can reach. Adam at adam@uniteblue.com.

One of the great challenges for political activism in each of the 50 state legislatures is providing timely information on bills as they move through the legislative process. The data provided by the Sunlight Foundation Open States API is comprehensive, but combing through it to find the limited number of bills that activists have the time to focus on can be overwhelming. I have found over 88,000 bills in the current session alone. We are now developing an early warning system at UniteBlue.com that can assist our volunteers in filtering this information flow down to a manageable level.

While the entire process will take months to complete, in this guest post I’d like to propose a triage model that can be used as a first step. Triage is the medical model used in hospital emergency rooms and during disaster responses. A high flow of patients is screened using certain “signatures” to determine which ones need to be seen first, such as blocked airways or dangerous vital signs. The process of triaging the high flow of bills coming from the Sunlight data will follow a similar model.

Scout: Sunlight’s New Custom Alert Service

by Nicko Margolies Jun 11, 2012 2:56 pm

A core mission of the Sunlight Foundation is to enable citizen participation through technology and lower the bar to access government. Through our free tools we're constantly looking for ways to produce a more transparent and accountable government. Today, we're proud to introduce Scout, a tool that allows you to create customized keyword alerts to notify you whenever issues you care about are included in legislative or regulatory actions.