There's recently been a lot of discussion about government secrecy: how much of it is desirable, and how and when that secrecy must be violated in service of the greater good. Unfortunately, we now found ourselves in the position of having to make such a disclosure.
Many of you may be familiar with NORAD's Santa Tracker. As the story goes, back in the late fifties a typo on an ad for a hotline to Santa misrouted calls to the predecessor of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. The colonel on duty instructed the men answering the phones to report Santa's position to the children who called, and a new tradition was born. It's grown from there: there's a Twitter feed, an iGoogle gadget, Google Earth functionality, a mobile site and even an SMS interface. It's all a charming way for a defense agency with a very serious mission to get in the holiday spirit. Or is it?
Continue readingSunlight Congress API & The 112th Congress
We've recently gotten a few questions about our Congress API and when it will include new members elected in November.
The reason that these members are not yet in the Congress API is that most* new members will not take office until January 3, 2011 when the 112th Congress convenes. Because the 111th Congress is still in session we are waiting until these members are sworn in and have offices assigned to them to add them to the API. Rest assured though that we have begun work on tracking down all of the relevant information for the representatives and senators elect and should have a large update for the first week of the new year.
Note: Some individuals, such as Mark Kirk in Illinois were elected in special elections and have already been added to the API. To keep track of what changes have been made already look at our apidata repo.
Continue readingWhat’s Going on in the Labs
Wow. So November was eventful...
PAC Generator
Nicko in communications came up with the idea, Jeremy ran with it and we have a hit. We released our PAC Name Generator last week and the response was great. I'm pretty sure that I beat the game when my PAC name came up as "Scheming Gentlemen for What You Believe In PAC." Try to beat it. You can't.
Checking Influence
Last week we also launched the Checking Influence bookmarklet, a tool that allows you to see how companies that you do business with are influencing politics through lobbying and campaign contributions. Give it a shot. It might surprise you. For more info on Checking Influence, see our introductory blog post.
New states added to Open State Project API
James announced that data for Florida, Virginia, and New Jersey were added to the Open States API.
ForeignLobbying.org
A new version of the Foreign Lobbying Influence Tracker, a joint project from Sunlight and ProPublica, was launched with updated data.
Continue readingStream Congress: An HTML5 App in the Google Chrome Web Store
Earlier today, Google announced their Chrome Web Store. For its launch, Sunlight is thrilled to announce a new HTML5 app called Stream Congress. Stream Congress gives you a quick look into what exactly your members of Congress are up to. Resembling a lifestream (but for Congress), the app takes in data points from various sources and combines them into a clean, real-time interface. Consider the app to be in a Developer Preview for now: we're going to launch it in earnest when the new Congress begins in January. Your feedback is appreciated.
Today, I wanted to share with the Sunlight developer community the process behind building this HTML5 app. It really does feel like we're entering a new era of the Web, and it's important for the civic hacking community to lead the way.
Continue readingBetter Draw a District
High school civics classes teach that democracy is in the hands of voters. This view, though empowering, only tells part of the story. To really understand a democracy, you need to understand how votes are counted. One must shed light on the very machinery that powers our representative democracy: the sometimes bizarrely-shaped geographic boundaries called congressional districts.
One day, there will be a brilliant, easy-to-use tool that enlightens our citizenry on the intricacies of gerrymandering and the political machinations therein. But that day is not today. Today we launch the crude, far-from-serious, yet very fun Better Draw a District, the last and longest-awaited in the series of projects we created as part of our Labs Olympics teambuilding event.
Continue readingReminder: Submit a Patch, Win a Kindle
Back in October we announced that to celebrate our 100th GitHub project we'd be giving away a Kindle (or Gift Certificate) to say thanks to one lucky contributor to our Open Source projects.
If you find yourself with a bit of extra time during this holiday season and want to help make government more transparent please take some time to contribute to one of these projects (or any of the 100 others). In order to be eligible be sure to fill out the entry form.
Continue readingIntroducing Briefing Book
At Sunlight, we spend a lot of time following the money in an attempt to measure influence in the legislative process. While we obviously believe in the benefit of shining a light on these connections, the truth is that it's only part of the story. With our next experiment, a briefing book application, we aim to provide citizens with access to research and opinions that influence legislation currently under consideration by Congress.
Continue readingAnnouncing Checking Influence
This morning the Data Commons team released their newest tool: Checking Influence, a bookmarklet that lets online banking users gain insight on how the merchants with whom they do business are influencing our political system. We think it's a great example of the future of influence disclosure -- hopefully you'll agree.
But I won't prattle on about it any more here. The announcement blog post goes into more detail. I hope you'll give that a read, and give the tool a try.
Continue readingWhat Can Recovery.gov Tell Us About Ice Cream?
It's been a while since recovery.gov was in the headlines. ARRA money continues to go out the door, but it's safe to say the program is winding down. The Administration has been taking a quiet victory lap, including this charming video, in which Vice President Biden calls up an ice creamery in Santa Cruz that got off the ground thanks to a Recovery Act loan:
Here's a crazy idea: why don't we look up this loan on recovery.gov and see what else we can discover about it?
Continue readingCongress App, Present and Future
I just published what will likely be the last update in 2010 for the Congress app for Android. It's a small update that asks upgrading users if they'd consider making a small donation to the Sunlight Foundation, if they've found the app useful.
You can donate through the Android Market by scanning the QR code to the right, or if you want to give more you can donate through the web.
2010 was a great year for the Congress app. Well over 300,000 people have downloaded the app, it's been well reviewed, has been a featured app in the Android Market, and has been featured by T-Mobile and Sprint in their respective channels. Over the course of 2010, we added comprehensive information about bills, voting history, and background notifications for just about everything in the app.
We plan on expanding the Congress app even further for the 112th Congress.
Continue reading
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