Transparency is a slippery concept but important enough that it should be handled with some degree of precision. Unfortunately, the concept is often stretched out of shape and credit-hungry policymakers adopt transparency policies with little regard for preconditions. Here I’m going to take a few positions on preconditions, and my underlying point is that transparency is highly contingent. In order for transparency policies to work we need to take a more cautious approach to conceptualizing ‘transparency’ and to understanding the incentives of supplying and demanding transparency.
Continue readingCrowdsourcing to Fight Corruption: Aleksei Navalny and the RosPil Experiment
A few weeks ago, Russia’s most popular and controversial opposition figure, anti-corruption activist Aleksei Navalny, was tossed in prison on charges of conspiring to steal money from a state owned lumber corporation -- only to be set free less than a day later pending action from a higher court. The shocking turn of events has once again thrust Navalny and his campaign against public sector corruption into the global limelight. While Navalny’s legal future may occupy the headlines, we wanted to focus on Navalny’s anti-corruption website RosPil, a state procurement monitoring site where troves of government contracts and tenders are scrutinized by eager volunteers searching for signs of corruption.
What Have they Got to Hide? Lawmakers Should Allow Meetings with Lobbyists to be Disclosed
Recently, my colleague Lee Drutman concluded that banks met with regulators at the Federal Reserve, Treasury and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission more than five times as often as reform-minded consumer groups in the past two years. His analysis provides a valuable tool for the media, academics and the public to better understand who is trying to shape financial industry regulations.
His conclusions, and the follow up questions that can now be asked (Did the banks get what they wanted? Are consumers’ interests being served?) are only possible because the agencies posted information about the meetings online.
Which begs the question: If the regulators can provide information about who is trying to influence the regulations they write, why doesn’t the public have access to similar information about meetings Members of Congress or their staff have with lobbyists?
Sunlight APIs have a new home
As building blocks for our tools, our APIs are core not only to our work but also to the hundreds of outside applications and services that they power. (Hold up, what are APIs again?) In the past half year, we have taken your feedback and build a prominent API site that’s accessible from the main Sunlight Foundation navigation. The new API section features completely re-written and re-organized documentation, a summary of the status of each API and an interactive query builder to help developers build their requests. We’ve also added real time statistics for our APIs, so anyone can see their aggregate use over time.
Need inspiration? Want to help?
Aside from accessing our APIs, we have also collected real-life examples of our APIs at work-- just check out the gallery of projects using our APIs to see just some of the projects that can be built with our data. Then head over to the Community tab to see current data projects that we and other OpenGov-ers are working on. You can filter these projects by ones that need technical help, non-technical help and also projects to inspire.
Learn how to join the efforts on standardizing election data, to detailing key relationships between influencers and politicians, to scraping state level spending data and a whole host of other projects. Have a project you want to add? Submit it here.
Change.gov is Back Up
Change.gov, the website of the Obama transition that went missing sometime last month, is now back online. The agenda, including... View Article
Continue readingRegulating Money in Politics a Global Shortcoming
Open government advocates around the world (including Sunlight) are thrilled to see how more and more governments commit themselves to openness. Unfortunately, a vital piece of the transparency agenda--party and campaign funding--remain depressingly opaque. Because the financing behind how candidates and parties come to power influence later policy and spending decisions, it is critical that countries address political finance transparency. Sunlight is committed to create a strong base for reform by combining our efforts with other activists and sharing our expertise in a meaningful way.
Continue reading90 Percent of Business Execs Support Transparency Reforms for Money-in-Politics
Good news for making the case for campaign finance transparency! The Committee for Economic Development, a nonpartisan business-oriented public policy nonprofit, released an illuminating report and survey of business leaders this week that shows large majorities of American business executives agree the campaign finance system is in need of complete overhaul, with 90 percent of survey respondents supporting reforms that disclose all individual, corporate and labor contributions to political committees.
The Sunlight Foundation’s Comments on the FAA’s Proposed Open Data Policy
On May 1, The Federal Aviation Administration published a [Proposed Open Data Policy](https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/05/01/2013-10295/notice-for-data-and-information-distribution-policy) in the Federal Register, and requested public comment by [July 28](https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/06/03/2013-13086/notice-of-proposal-policy-for-distribution-of-faa-data-and-information-extension-of-comment-period). The FAA proposed 10 broad guidelines for its open data policies, among them points about non-exclusivity of access to data, the appropriateness of employing cost recovery from external entities, and the transparency with which they execute on the policy itself.
The Sunlight Foundation had something to say about each of these issues, and so we submitted the public comment below, which we hand-delivered today to the FAA's Docket Office inside the Department of Transportation. Our comment should show up on [Docket Wrench](http://docketwrench.sunlightfoundation.com/docket/FAA-2013-0392) and [Regulations.gov](http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketBrowser;rpp=100;so=DESC;sb=docId;po=0;dct=PS;D=FAA-2013-0392) before long. In the mean time, read what we submitted:
Progress on Senate Electronic Filing Bill–Will it be Enough?
With no debate, minimal discussion and not even a whisper of an objection, the Senate Rules committee yesterday sent S. 375, the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, to the floor of the Senate by a voice vote. The understated proceedings reflect the nature of the legislation. The Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act is, at its core, a technical fix to an antiquated paper filing process. It's not a major change to the law that would require hours of debate. If the Senate were a rational body, the noncontroversial legislation would be enacted immediately and without fanfare. But assuming the Senate is rational is a big “if.”
Continue readingObama Promises Disappear from Web
Change.gov, the website created by the Obama transition team in 2008, has effectively disappeared sometime over the last month. While front splash page for for Change.gov has linked to the main White House website for years, until recently, you could still continue on to see the materials and agenda laid out by the administration. This was a particularly helpful resource for those looking to compare Obama's performance in office against his vision for reform, laid out in detail on Change.gov. According to the Internet Archive, the last time that content (beyond the splash page) was available was June 8th -- last month. Why the change?
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