Our problem has been far too little transparency in the legislative chamber — not too much.
Continue readingIntegrating the US’ Documents
A few weeks ago, we integrated the full text of federal bills and regulations into our alert system, [Scout](https://scout.sunlightfoundation.com). Now, if you visit [CISPA](https://scout.sunlightfoundation.com/item/bill/hr624-113) or a fascinating [cotton rule](https://scout.sunlightfoundation.com/item/regulation/2013-10114), you'll see the original document - nicely formatted, but also well-integrated into Scout's layout. There are a lot of good reasons to integrate the text this way: we want you to see why we alerted you to a document without having to jump off-site, and without clunky iframes. As importantly, we wanted to do this in a way that would be easily reusable by other projects and people. So we **built a tool called [us-documents](https://github.com/unitedstates/documents)** that makes it possible for anyone to do this with federal bills and regulations. It's [available as a Ruby gem](https://rubygems.org/gems/us-documents), and comes with a [command line tool](https://github.com/unitedstates/documents#usage) so that you can use it with Python, Node, or any other language. It lives inside the [unitedstates project](https://github.com/unitedstates) at [unitedstates/documents](https://github.com/unitedstates/documents), and is entirely public domain.
Continue readingBreaking the Law, by Reading It
The United States continues to keep some of its most important laws behind a paywall. Many of the US’ public... View Article
Continue readingToward Better Access to Regulations
Every day in Washington, DC, thousands of government officials are at work writing, revising, and publishing regulations affecting everything from... View Article
Continue readingFederal Agencies Continuing to Weaken FOIA
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a foundational law that guarantees US citizens the right to request and receive... View Article
Continue readingHow to Count Regulations: A Primer for Regulatory Research
Data and Research Intern Alex Engler wrote this post. The regulatory process is a politically charged arena, where the perception of over-regulating, or not regulating enough, can become a political liability. Whether it’s Tom Donohue of the Chamber of Commerce warning of the oncoming “tsunami” of regulations from President Obama, or the National Resource Defense Council striking at the Bush administration for an “assault on our clean air protections,” there can be no doubt that the perceived level of regulation matters. However, one should look skeptically towards assertions about the degree of rulemaking, especially when those assertions include specific numbers. These claims are often based on research that can be structured so as to intentionally mislead. And beyond the political motivation in how one measures regulatory action, there are also many opportunities for genuine methodological error.
Continue readingGetting the Jump on Regulations
Did you know that new regulations are available online before they’re published in the Federal Register? As of this week,... View Article
Continue readingFederal Register XML Release
According to the Washington Post and BoingBoing, the Government Printing Office will today release, for the first time, the XML... 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 readingElectronic Public Inspection Desk
Here’s some good news. The Office of the Federal Register within the National Archives provides access to the official text... View Article
Continue reading