When no one in Nick Gaines’ UC Berkeley freshman political science class could answer the question “Who is your state senator?,” he tuned in, dropped out and started GovHub with co-founder Adam Becker.
How is it possible, in the 21st century, that I can Skype with friends in China, keep up with my friends across the country via Facebook and exchange messages with the CEO of a startup I admire on Twitter, but yet when I try to communicate with my members of Congress, it seems like everything I do is swallowed up by the black abyss?
The Public Online Information Act (POIA) of 2010, H.R.4858, was introduced on March 13 by Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) to put public information online in user-friendly formats in a timely fashion. The bill applies to Executive Branch agencies and is essentially a proactive approach to FOIA (Freedom of Information Act). Sunlight Foundation has launched Public=Online, a grassroots campaign to gain support for the legislation.
I was honored this week to be invited to testify before the Senate Government Affairs Sub Committee hearing entitled, “Removing the Shroud of Secrecy: Making Government More Transparent and Accountable“. A first panel of government leaders including Vivek Kundra, Aneesh Chopra and US Archivist David Ferriero were invited to discuss progress on Open Government. A second panel of industry and advocacy experts including representatives from the Sunlight Foundation, the National Security Archive and Meritalk Online (and Adobe) were also invited, although our testimony was cut short by procedural maneuvers relevant to the health care debate occurring on the Senate Floor. For the two and half hours we were there, Senators Carper and Coburn participated fully. The hearing may be rescheduled to complete the witness testimony, but in the interim, two things were very clear to me: we have come a long way in recent years but the Open Government movement is still missing critical agents of change in government.
Sunlight Foundation released a free Real Time Congress iPhone app now available at iTunes. Real Time Congress includes live floor updates, key document information, Whip notices and hearing schedules. More on the release here. See also Sunlight’s Android app, ‘Congress.’
Alan Silberberg, Nisha Chittal and Jim Gilliam on Congress Camp and the future of Gov 2.0 and the federal legislature. Find out more at http://congresscamp.org. Hosted by Steve Lunceford, Steve Ressler and Adriel Hampton.
GovLoop founder Steve Ressler and Steve Lunceford of GovTwit and BearingPoint along with host Adriel Hampton will be chatting it up with the folks behind TweetCongress, Chris McCroskey, Wynn Netherland.
How developers can win Congress
In a recent post from Coder-in-Chief Clay Johnson, Clay outlines several reasons why developers should run for Congress.