Government is understandably wary of publishing personal identifiers, though they're often vital to transparency. Fortunately, there are technological approaches to this problem --government should embrace them.
Continue readingA Sunshine Week Call for Greater Transparency
As part of Sunshine week, I had the opportunity to testify at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing to share a few of Sunlight's ideas about making the executive branch more transparent. Video and text of my opening statement are below. It almost goes without saying that we're very interested in the transparency bills the Oversight Committee will be marking up this Wednesday.
Visitor Logs Hearing in Energy and Commerce Committee
I testified earlier today before the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It was a... View Article
Continue readingCarney Dodges Lobbying Questions
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked a series of questions today based on the Politico story I blogged... View Article
Continue readingPopping the White House Visitor Logs Bubble
In today’s Politico, Chris Frates reports on how some lobbyists now apparently feel like they’re being shuttled there instead of... View Article
Continue readingLobbyists and White House Visitors
Recently and continuously, the White House has been releasing the "White House Visitor Logs," showing America who is coming in to meet with the President and his staff. At the same time, the Center for Responsive Politics releases cleaned up data on lobbyist filings. We thought it'd be interesting to find the intersect between the names in both sets of data.
After the jump, you'll find our results along relevant information from both sets of data. Now-- this is important: just because the names match doesn't mean they're the same person. Because the White House doesn't release any other form of identity information besides the name, we're unable to tell whether or not the name in one dataset actually refers to the same person in the other. John Adams in one dataset may be a different John Adams in another.
Continue readingThe Legacy of Billy Tauzin: The White House-PhRMA Deal
More than a million spectators gathered before the Capitol on a frosty January afternoon to witness the inauguration of Barack... View Article
Continue readingPresident Obama on Influence Peddling
President Obama’s weekly address explained on his administration’s efforts to combat influence peddling, and the steps it is considering taking... View Article
Continue readingSo, you want to know who is visiting the White House?
Last week, the White House released another set of visitor logs online and in a format that can be parsed... View Article
Continue readingWhite House Visitor Logs — 25k Records Released for Late September
Today the White House released its log of White House visitors for the period of September 16-30, 2009. (Here’s today’s... View Article
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