We know the past few weeks have been a drag – what with government shutdowns and political paralysis in our nation’s... View Article
Continue readingThe Week on Politwoops: Cases of Unintended Transparency
Welcome to another review of recent notable deleted tweets from politicians captured by Politwoops.
Continue readingYou’re Invited to Sunlight’s Annual Open House!
Leaves are turning colors in Washington, fall sweaters are making a grand appearance and things are starting to get a... View Article
Continue readingIndia’s FOI Anniversary Spurs Political Finance Transparency
The eighth anniversary of India’s freedom of information law, the Right to Information Act (RTI), could become an important milestone in the country’s transparency agenda. The 2005 sunshine law has already made a tremendous impact on how Indian decision makers respond to public scrutiny efforts, and this year has seen a heated public debate around the finances of political parties with the anniversary creating momentum to rethink (and maybe even redesign) the country's current political finance transparency landscape.
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 10/23/2013
National News
- Bit Torrent site ISOHunt was forced to shut down last week as part of a conflict with the MPAA. Turns out they turned off the lights a few days early to avoid allowing their site from falling into the hands of a group of "rogue archivists," the Archive Team that aims to preserve information from disappearing websites. (TechDirt)
- Yesterday I noted that the US Chamber of Commerce spends millions of dollars every quarter on lobbying, turns out there are 20 other organizations that dropped at least $1 million on lobbying during the 3rd quarter of 2013. The big spenders included the National Association of realtors, AT&T, the Open Society Policy Center, General Electric, and more. (Roll Call)
- A new book from Peter Schweizer, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and conservative proponent of campaign finance regulation, draws attention to the lavish tactics used by Congressional leadership PACs to raise money. (New York Times)
- A new search engine is boosting speeds and traffic at Thailands largest library of digital legislative information. The Parliament of Thailand holds documents dating back to 1932, the start of Thailand's constitutional rule. (FutureGov)
- As Michael Bloomberg prepares to cede control of New York City after years at the helm, his team is hoping to set the digital path forward for the next Mayor. The Bloomberg administration's final Digital Roadmap outlines progress on 40 initiatives that have come out of the NYC Digital Office since its 2011 inception and outlines potential priorities moving forward. (Tech President)
- An investigative report out of Wisconsin shows that Supreme Court justices in the state get gobs of campaign cash from attorney donors and rarely recuse themselves from cases involving donors. The analysis also found that justices tend to look favorably on arguments from lawyers that donated to their campaigns. (Wisconsin Watch)
- San Francisco, often a first mover on open data and technology issues, is looking to beef up their existing open data ordinance. The update would provide clearer open data standards, strengthen privacy protections, set timelines for data release, and more. (GovFresh)
Political influence by county: A new way to look at campaign finance data
Over the summer, the Sunlight Foundation partnered with Azavea, a Philadelphia-based firm that specializes in mapping and geo-spatial analysis, to create location-based analyses of the federal campaign finance data we display on InfluenceExplorer.com. The partnership produced new and more accurate ways to identify trends in political spending according to location that were previously hard to complete because of complications in the mapping process. Many of the findings were mapped.
Continue readingHow Much Did Healthcare.gov Actually Cost?
The new healthcare exchange site has been the topic of several news stories these past few weeks. Many of them are quoting vastly different numbers for how much it cost to build. You'd think that sites like USASpending.gov or the Federal IT Dashboard1 would be able to give us some idea. But in reality, that's just not how federal spending is reported.
Much of government spending is bundled into huge contracts called IDIQs (indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity) that are meant to span many years and may go to multiple recipients. They're a lot like regular contracts except they can have very vague requirements and once the IDIQ itself has been competed, the government no longer has any requirement to compete any contract within that IDIQ. CGI Federal has one of these IDIQ contracts with the Department of Health and Human services. It was signed in 2007, long before the Affordable Care Act became law, and lasts until 2017. Within each IDIQ, the government creates purchase or task orders for specific services, which you can find in the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS). You can see a list of all the task orders for the CGI Federal IDIQ here.
Given a few constraints (was the task order post-ACA? does the description sound like it might contribute to healthcare.gov?) I highlighted in blue my guesses at what task orders might be related to healthcare.gov. I think my guesses err on the over-inclusive side. Even so, if you add them up, it's about $70 million. That's not unheard of for a government website and it's certainly far lower than the $600 million cost that has been reported in some places. But the fact that we can't figure it out shows the dire state of federal spending transparency.
Announcing the Global Open Data Initiative’s New Declaration on Open Data – And Inviting Your Feedback
The Global Open Data Initiative partners are excited today to share a draft Declaration on Open Data, and would welcome comments and feedback on its contents. This post was co-authored by the Global Open Data Initiative partners, and the original can be viewed here.
Open Data has enormous unfulfilled promise to change how governments work and to empower citizenship. Even as more governments and issue experts discover new potential in the public release of data, civil society groups still need clear guidelines and mechanisms for cooperation. Global Open Data Initiative hopes to help provide both, and we hope this draft declaration will help us fill that gap.
By building on existing efforts to gather guidelines and best practices, and by building a clear, joint voice made up of outside groups, Global Open Data Initiative hopes to provide a CSO-led vision for how open data should work.
How to know the Senate better through data visualization
The shutdown has been averted. The debt ceiling has been raised. For now. In the process, Congress’ public approval has fallen to around 10 percent – and as low as 5 percent in one poll. But how much do you know about who actually serves in Congress? How do you know who to even disapprove of? Today, we unveil a new interactive tool that will allow you to get to know the U.S. Senate a little better. While it’s easy to focus on prominent Senate leaders like Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) or prominent grandstanders like Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), we think it matters who our 100 senators are: What are their backgrounds? What is their education? What did they do before coming to the Senate? Who do they depend on most to support their campaigns? All of these factors shape how they collectively make decisions. For this reason, we’ve created an interactive tool that allows you to explore the U.S. Senate. You can see how Senators break down across a wide variety of dimensions.
Continue readingToday in #OpenGov 10/22/2013
National News
- The Chamber of Commerce might be butting heads with some of the more conservative members of the Republican Party, but that hasn't stopped the business group from spending lavishly on lobbying. According to recent filings, the Chamber dropped more than $4 million per month over the past quarter to influence the government. (Roll Call)
- Want to get a sense of Twitter's political priorities in advance of their IPO? The company first filed to lobby in July of this year and included a long and varied legislative do to list on their reports. (Roll Call)
- The Census Bureau released an updated schedule for the various economic reports that they normally released but were delayed by the government shutdown. The shutdown will push many of these reports back by several weeks. (Government Executive)
- Intellectual Ventures, accused of being one of the larger patent trolls terrorizing innovators, is stepping up its lobbying in the face of mounting media pressure and movement on the Hill to reform patent laws. (The Hill)
- Kathleen Wynn, the premiere of Ontario, Canada is using the opaque, and costly, cancellation of two gas plants as political cover to push for more government transparency. The politician wrote a rare open letter to citizens pledging to set "the default to open." (The Star)
- With the second anniversary of the Open Government Partnership fast approaching some countries have unfortunate splits between their OGP commitments and their attitudes towards journalists. Many journalists do not know about the OGP, and commitments tend to ignore issues of free speech and media freedoms. (The Guardian)
- This article looks at the growing open data movement in American municipalities through the lens of steps being taken in San Fransisco, including a performance barometer. (The Guardian)
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