Researchers at the University of Chicago spent the summer training computers to extract all the earmarks from the hundreds of pages of mind-numbing legalese found in each budget.
Continue readingSnap Shot Germany: Gold dealings, but no gold standard
In Germany, a political party is manipulating the electoral system to elevate its importance — testing the limits of a political finance system based on trust and good intentions.
Continue readingSnap Shot Czech Republic: A tale of working Eastern European democracy
Jiří Skuhrovec and the Centre for Applied Economics recently completed a study of the Czech Republic's political system. What did they find? Serious conflicts of interest in the financing of all major Czech parties.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: How the New Jersey Data Book turned public information into accessible open data
How much do government statistics matter to the average citizen? Quite a bit – especially when they’re not accessible. So, the online New Jersey Data Book was launched, allowing anyone to access data about New Jersey in a user-friendly format.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: How California’s putting big local government data online
California has started to replace its traditional reports with big, open, machine-readable and visualizable data sets. Here's how they do it.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: How the Netherlands is making open data a permanent right for all
Despite all of the different promises made by governments make data open by default, many transparency groups around the world are struggling with governments that are reluctant at best, obstructive at worst.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Transparency is not just television
Our problem has been far too little transparency in the legislative chamber — not too much.
Continue readingElections and reform in the birthplace of the Arab Spring
Dr. Magnus Ohman, senior political finance adviser of International Foundation for Electoral Systems, examines the climate for electoral reform in Tunisia.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Opening up government reports through teamwork and open data
Recently, a project started to gather the work of every inspector general (IG) in the U.S. government by using web scrapers. This effort has now hit a major milestone, gathering the reports of every U.S. federal IG that publishes them: 65 inspectors general with over 18,000 reports.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Why local governments should prepare for the DATA Act now
The DATA Act’s passage means big changes ahead for city and county governments.
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