Sunlight Foundation

Is open government closing?

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.

TransparencyData.com shines light on campaign contributions from last 20 years

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.

‘Design for America’ contest aims to make government data more accessible

Sunlight Labs is holding a civic design contest, Design for America, in an effort to “make government data more accessible and comprehensible to the American public.” Categories are Data Visualization, Process Transparency and Redesigning the Government.

New on GovFresh: ‘Fresh from: Sunlight’

Fresh from: Sunlight is a new GovFresh feature that highlights the latest transparency and open government news directly from Sunlight Foundation and Sunlight Labs. Contributors will include Sunlight’s best and brightest, including transparency hunk Jake Brewer.

Introducing the Cycle of Transparency

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?

Introducing Sunlight Live

As the Open Government Directive was announced in a live webcast back in December, Sunlight tried something a little different by covering the event live in a variety of formats at once.

As is a norm around here, we basically just got a lot of people in a room, tried a bunch of stuff and paid attention to what seemed to work. At the end of the announcement we simultaneously had a tweet stream from across the open government community going, a live blog, and a Google Wave. We threw the obligatory word cloud at it, sent email blasts, and followed up with blog posts about the Directive’s many components.

It was fun and seemed to be pretty effective. And it also got us thinking …

An emblem for open government

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 whips up Real Time Congress iPhone app

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.’

Gov 2.0 guide to Sunlight Foundation

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.

Salute the Sun(light) Foundation

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.

Great American Hackathon set for Dec. 12-13

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.”

Gov 2.0 Hero: Clay Johnson

GovFreshTV talks with Sunlight Labs Director Clay Johnson.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Jake Brewer

Sunlight Foundation Engagement Director Jake Brewer discusses Gov 2.0, open government and transparency.

Gov 2.0 Hero: Ellen Miller

Sunlight Foundation Co-founder and Executive Director Ellen Miller discusses open government, transparency and gov 2.0.

Digital Democracy Contest aims to ‘Empower students to engage 21st Century government’

The Global Networked-Intelligence Contest (GNIC.org) and Sunlight Foundation have partnered to promote the Digital Democracy Contest, an effort to engage social studies classes through a Web-based game that helps students “navigate and evaluate government information online.” The program includes lessons plans, information videos and a competition to help students practice research skills.

The contest is funded by a MacArthur Young Innovator Award.

Sunlight Labs’ Clay Johnson talks open gov at OSCON 09

Clay Johnson, Director of Sunlight Labs, talks open gov, “Apps for America,” and calls on developers to become active in their country at OSCON 09.

Quotable:

“What we believe is that open source plus open data equals better government. And my job is to find opportunities for developers, open source developers, to change their country. Nothing less.”

‘Making Government Transparent’

Sunlight Foundation’s new video ‘Making Government Transparent.’

Let the Sunlight in

What’s so govfreshing about the Sunlight Foundation is that they don’t take themselves (too) seriously, yet still manage to effectively push an important issue.

I was honored to meet several members of Team Sunlight here at Transparency Camp West, and it’s refreshing to see Washington D.C. being infiltrated with both an earnest and innovative approach to democracy.

Gov 2.0 Radio: Talking Gov 2.0 With Clay Johnson

GovLoop founder Steve Ressler and Adriel Hampton will be joined by Clay Johnson, Director of Sunlight Labs (@cjoh on Twitter). To discuss Sunlight’s Apps for America Contest, lus much more!