The Sunlight Foundation, Code for America, and Omidyar Network are joining forces to investigate municipal procurement trends, best practices, and... View Article
Continue readingReducing Paper, Increasing Transparency: Public Records in Ohio
While "public records management" might conjure images of dusty filing cabinets and stacks of yellowing paper, many state and local governments are taking steps to modernize public information in a way that makes it more easily accessible and engaging.
Continue readingDon’t defund the E-gov fund
For the past several years we have been fighting to maintain funding for online transparency programs that the federal government supports through its E-gov fund. 2013 is no different. The fund supports important initiatives, including the IT Dashboard, Performance.gov, and more, that have been shown to improve government efficiency and accountability, saving at least $3 billion. In addition to helping the government save money, these technologies have been a boon to the private sector, creating jobs and releasing valuable information. President Obama requested $20.15 million for the E-gov fund in his FY 2014 budget request, but Congress is considering combining the fund with another fund and cutting its budget. This Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee is going to mark up the FY 2014 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill that controls the E-gov fund's fate. If they choose to fully fund the E-gov fund, Congress will be making a smart investment in technology and transparency. We happily signed on to three letters to leaders of the House and Senate committees with the power to pay for the E-gov fund urging them to fully invest and allow these programs to thrive. You can find one, sent to the chair and ranking member of the Appropriations committee, here. The others, sent to relevant subcommittee chairmen in the House and Senate are embedded below.
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 readingStates Lead on E-Filing, Will the Senate Catch Up?
It seems our Senators have a thing or two learn from their home states when it comes to campaign finance reporting: 31 states currently require mandatory electronic reporting ("e-filing") of their elected representative's campaign finance records -- a leap above our Senate, which has failed to pass no-brainer e-filing legislation for over a decade. Sunlight conducted a review of the current state of similar filings in the states (see chart below), and the results are pretty surprising -- in a great way. State governments across the country -- 92% of them, in fact -- require at least optional, if not mandatory electronic filing for both houses of their bicameral legislatures.
Continue readingThe Legislation Will Not Be Televised
This map distinguishes five levels of legislative web and broadcasting comprehension on a sliding scale from “Best” (including all recommended elements: video formatting of floor proceedings and committee hearings, archived, and broadcasted via a variety of mediums) to “Worst” (missing several of these recommended elements). For more info (or to watch!) see the NCSL's original roundup here.
Open legislative data is integral to a functioning legible participatory democracy. The legislative data canopy covers everything from information about who represents you to the nuts and bolts of the legislative process to final letter of the law, with each element carrying its own series of challenges and considerations when it comes to public access. Timely and archived legislative process data (i.e. bills, amendments, committee meetings, votes, and contextual information, such as: research reports, legislative journals and lobbying information) are crucial to supporting citizen participation and informed voting. Video documentation of the legislative process represents the barebones of open and accountable legislative process data -- passive recordings of events as they happen for prosperity and public inclusion -- and yet this information is still not comprehensively available in most U.S. states.
Continue readingContinued cuts to legislative branch budget hurt transparency, accountability, and capacity.
This morning, the House Appropriations Committee's Legislative Branch Subcommittee marked up its FY 2014 funding bill, agreeing to a plan that would cut funding for Congress and legislative support agencies well below FY 2013 levels, and even beneath sequestration levels for most offices.
Committee leadership claimed that cuts were necessary to "lead by example" and help get the government's "fiscal house in order," but, in reality, the cuts will likely limit accountability, access to information, and the ability of Congress and the legislative support agencies to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. The shrinking budgets could also make it more difficult for Congress to implement a number of important transparency initiatives.
Specifically, the plan would continue several years of cuts to House operations and the Government Accountability Office that have diminished the capacity of both bodies.
A Decade of Nondisclosure: A Brief History of the Senate’s E-Filing Failures
For more than a decade, the Senate has failed to pass no-brainer legislation requiring Senators and challengers to file campaign... View Article
Continue readingAloha Hawaii Open Data Legislation!
Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie is signing the nation’s third statewide open data policy into law today (at 11 a.m. HST/5 p.m. EST). The bill, Hawaii House Bill 632, was originally drafted in November 2012, but the open data movement in Hawaii and push for legislation has been chugging along for years now. Chief Information Officer Sonny Bhagowalia and Burt Lum, the executive director of Hawaii Open Data, crafted Hawaii’s Open Data Bill to support the data release that has been going on over the last year (via the city’s Socrata-hosted open data portal, currently boasting over 150 datasets) and in concurrence with a larger program that updates the state’s IT infrastructure.
Continue readingCalifornia Crying Wolf About Cost of Public Records?
Though all appears to be quiet on the public records front in California after a proposed rollback tucked into a budget deal brought an outpouring of criticism and several political dances, the events of last week still haunt the Golden State’s citizens. And rightly so. There are still many unanswered questions about why language weakening public records laws for California cities (by allowing them to “opt out” of records act compliance) was included as part of the budget process.
The budget bill itself cites that requiring local governments to follow those provisions (versus just giving them the option) has financial implications for the state. In 2011, the Commission on State Mandates decided that the state would reimburse local governments for certain public records costs. This decision came from a voter-approved initiative that required the state to repay local governments for state-mandated measures. Perhaps this is why the legislature thought that destabilizing local-records access could be a cost-saving measure, one that simply saved the state money by ensuring that fewer records-related reimbursements have to be paid.
Is the current law really costing the state money though?
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