It’s been 225 years since the signing of the U.S. Constitution in September 1787, so the three years that have... View Article
Continue readingInternational Declaration on Parliamentary Openness
Tomorrow morning, I'll be joining a number of other organizations in addressing a broad gathering of parliamentary officials at the World e-Parliament Conference. We'll be formally announcing the Declaration on Parliamentary Openness, a joint document prepared and drafted by the growing movement of Parliamentary Monitoring Organizations, or PMOs, operating throughout the world.
This is the clearest, most broadly representative effort yet to represent global norms for legislative transparency. It's intended to create common goals and expectations for a representative branch of government that is transparent and accountable, increasingly by using new technology to represent citizens better.
Sunlight is participating as both a PMO, since our advocacy, reporting, and technology are so often about political influence and substance in Congress, and also as a convener, joining with the National Democratic Institute and the Latin American Network for Legislative Transparency to connect PMOs from around the globe. We created OpeningParliament.org to serve as a resource for the group and our activities, and since our kickoff meeting in May 2012 (adjacent to TransparencyCamp), the community has grown dramatically, and worked together to shape and sharpen the declaration. Over 80 organizations have now endorsed the declaration, and we're proud to be presenting it to officials from the world's Congresses, Assemblies, and Parliaments tomorrow.
2Day in #OpenGov 9/14/2012
NEWS ROUNDUP: Government A side of corruption with your politics? CREW released their latest list of most corrupt members of Congress... View Article
Continue readingLooking Forward to the THOMAS Beta Website
In the near future, Congress is expected to release a major upgrade to its aging legislative information website THOMAS. The... View Article
Continue readingTransparencyCamp 2013: Dates Revealed!
Get out those calendars! We’ve got a great announcement: TransparencyCamp 2013 May 4 – 5, 2013 Washington, DC Preregister here.... View Article
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 9/13/2012
NEWS ROUNDUP: Government Obama’s schedule doesn’t show the whole picture: The Obama administration likes to note the fact that they release... View Article
Continue readingHow the NSF allocates billions of federal dollars to top universities
As another college year begins, tens of thousands of academics will once again be scrambling to submit proposals to the National Science Foundation, hoping to secure government funding for their research. Each year, the National Science Foundation (NSF) bestows more than $7 billion worth of federal funding on about 12,000 research proposals, chosen out of about 45,000 submissions. Thanks to the power of open data, we can now see how representation on NSF federal advisory committees connects to which universities get the most funding. (Federal advisory committee membership data is a feature of Influence Explorer.) Our analysis finds a clear correlation between the universities with the most employees serving on the NSF advisory committees and the universities that receive the most federal money. Overall about 75% of NSF funding goes to academic institutions. Even when controlling for other factors, we find that for each additional employee a university has serving on an NSF advisory committee that university can expect to see an additional $125,000 to $138,000 in NSF funding.
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 9/12/2012
NEWS ROUNDUP: Government White House opens up on open source: The White House launched a resource page for developers to access... View Article
Continue reading2Day in #OpenGov 9/11/2012
NEWS ROUNDUP: Government Data driving the economy? More and more companies are utilizing government data for commercial purposes and politicians from... View Article
Continue readingCongrats to OpenGov Champs Homicide Watch DC on Meeting Kickstarter Goal
As the director of our ongoing mini-documentary series OpenGov Champions I am pleased to see that Homicide Watch DC, one... View Article
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