Finally got around to reading IBM’s guide to implementing open government and wanted to share highlights. The report, An Open Government Implementation Model: Moving to Increased Public Engagement, was written by professors Young Hoon Kwak (The George Washington University) and Gwanhoo Lee (American University).
The Justice Department has produced 17 videos on everything you ever wanted to know about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
If you live in the U.S. and have turned on your TV or surfed the web in the past 24 hours, chances are you have seen one, or more likely hundreds, of political ads. You cannot shake the wall-to-wall political coverage about the significance of next week’s election.
As sovereign power passes to the new king upon the death of the old, so do I propose that Ellen Miller’s proclamation that “the drive for data transparency has stalled” yields a pursuit for transparency and open government that is filled with renewed vigor – and new perspectives.
Sunlight Foundation Executive Director Ellen Miller said what’s been on many minds of late during her ‘Open Government Scorecard’ speech at Gov 2.0 Summit today. In a nutshell, “the drive for transparency appears stalled,” she said. Miller highlights the lack of data quality on data.gov and USAspending.gov and gives an overview of Sunlight Foundation’s new Website, ClearSpending.org, a scorecard for data accuracy on USAspending.gov.
The promise of government accountability, better government services, and new economic opportunity is why we do what we do.
At the Sunlight Foundation, we spend each day striving to make government more open and transparent by ensuring government data is easily accessible to the public online and in real-time. Around the country there are countless others trying to do the same.
Sunlight Foundation has launched TransparencyData, a new Website that lets users easily access the past 20 years of federal and state campaign contributions all in one place. The site merges data from OpenSecrets, FollowTheMoney.org and lobbying information from the Senate Office of Public Records.
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.
As I start this post, I’m on the Orange line of the Metro heading home from Transparency Camp 2010. I timed my arrival almost exactly with that of the train using an iPhone app. Now I’m typing on a super-powerful laptop with a huge display. Many Metro stations have 3G access and even though I don’t tether my phone to my computer to use 3G on my laptop, I’m sure it can be done. I have nearly all of the comforts of the digital age at my disposal nearly all of the time.
TrackDC is an open government effort by the District of Columbia to make budget, data, contact and other government information accessible to citizens and the media.
Government transparency is that rarest of political phenomena — a great idea with support across the political spectrum and popularity among the public. Yet, here we are in the 21st century with every tool we would need to make government more transparent and accountable, and still we are operating with a government that often behaves as it did in the 19th century.
So, transparent government is a good thing, but we do not yet have one. Now what?
Ingres Vice President of Product Management Deb Woods discusses Open Source for America and government policy issues around open source. Ingres is an OSFA founding member and Woods serves on its Steering Committee. She also runs the open source blog and podcast Out of the Woods.
As we’ve written about quite a lot so far in 2010, we are launching a national campaign to make government more open, transparent, and ultimately: accountable.
Today, we’re excited to put out one of the most important parts of building this campaign: the “mark†that will be emblematic of what we as an open government community stand for.
Sunlight Foundation is a Washington, DC-based 501c(3) non-profit organization founded in 2006 to focus on “making government transparent and accountable.” Its name comes from a quote by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Sunlight was co-founded by Michael Klein and Ellen Miller. Miller serves as its executive director.
It Was A Very Good Year for Sunlight Foundation in 2009, and they kicked 2010 off with a drive to recruit transparency leaders at the local level. You can join here.
Watch Sunlight’s 2009 retrospective and goals for 2010 video and stay tuned for more.
MAPLight.org Executive Director Daniel Newman
shares what his organization is doing and what it means for politics and money.
As a volunteer in politics, trying to improve my community, I realized the tremendous influence of wealthy interests which slant laws to their benefit. I co-founded MAPLight.org to shine the light of transparency on the river of money that underlies our politics and to help citizens hold their politicians accountable.
OpenNASA, an employee-established public blog, is a “collaborative experiment in open, transparent and direct communication about your space program.†Team openNASA shares lessons learned, and what others can learn from them.
On January 21, 2009, President Barack Obama signed a ‘Transparency and Open Government’ executive order. Here is video of the signing and full text of the memorandum.
Sunlight Labs has joined with Mozilla, Google, Redhat, Fedora, Open Source for America and Code for America to promote the Great American Hackathon. The two-day event, December 12-13, aims to “to solve as many open government problems as we can with as many hackathons across the country as possible.”
‘Integrated’ is the new ‘open’ for government
37signals points out Apple’s use of the word ‘integrated’ as opposed to ‘open’ in the ongoing ‘open’ versus ‘closed’ debate (Apple changes words in order to change the debate), and it has important relevance to the open government movement.