While 2014 was waning, cattlemen across the country were writing the U.S. Department of Agriculture against a proposal to allow certain beef imports from Argentina. Why? Plus, Keystone XL still dominates the news.
Continue readingHow unique is the new U.S. DATA Act?
Where does the DATA Act stand in the international context? We took a look at some of the innovative approaches from other national governments.
Continue readingStan’s our man: Sunlight to host Google Fellow
Stan Oklobdzija, a Californian who can work in seven languages (three of them for programming) is Sunlight's 2014 Google Fellow.
Continue readingA permanent hacker space in the Brazilian Congress
The Brazilian Congress just opened a physical hacker space - open to the public, and right inside the Congress' own building!
Continue readingOpen Budget, Open Process: A Short History of Participatory Budgeting in the US
A simple twist on the traditional budgeting process has us paying attention to payoffs for transparency. Participatory budgeting (PB) is a political process that lets members of a community vote on how certain budget funds should be allocated. By including the public in decision-making, PB has the potential to be an agent of accountability, helping to demystify city budgets, to turn voters into active contributors and informed monitors of government progress, and to help support efforts for proactive budget disclosure. As it stands today, PB helps communities explore many of these opportunities, and it serves as an important gateway to engagement with local government for a wide variety of residents, especially traditionally-underrepresented groups. It’s a transformative process -- one that may cost governments almost nothing, since it just reallocates existing funds -- and it's a process we’re eager to see explored in more detail as more and more communities hold a magnifying glass to budgetary data.
Continue readingBrazil-U.S. trip part of larger PR strategy
Warming up for a summit of hemispheric leaders in Colombia later this week, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff today wraps up a brief visit to the United States, where she met President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and leaders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Despite the high-profile dance card, Reuters quoted some Brazilian officials as complaining that their president didn't get quite the reception she and her country deserves. "There's a feeling that most people in Washington don't appreciate what's happening in Brazil," the news agency reported one official close to Rousseff as saying ...
Continue readingTools for Transparency: A Look from Abroad – Transparency Tools in Latin America
Today, our guest post is written by Mario Roset and Rosario Gonzalez Morón of Wingu, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.... View Article
Continue reading