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.

    Accountability, better services and economic opportunity

    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.

      Will you read the Open Government Memo on an iPad?

      I love the Open Government Memo, I think it represents some of the most thoughtful and seminal policy strategy I’ve seen in 20 years in government. I don’t know who actually wrote it for the President, but I think that person should get a medal. And whoever reads it and doesn’t find inspiration for technology’s potential role towards advancing the ideals of our democracy is simply missing out.

        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.

          Gov 2.0 guide to the Public Online Information Act (POIA)

          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.

            Open source matters to open government. Really.

            “Open source and open government are not the same,” I’ve been reading recently. When discussing the role of open standards in open government transparency projects, Bob Caudill at Adobe, is concerned that open source and open standards are being conflated. He likes open standards just fine, but …

              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.

                What the Open Government Directive Means for Open Source

                On the heels of the Open Government Memo of January 21st, 2009, the Obama Administration has issued the Open Government Directive. The Directive tells agencies what they must do to meet the expectations set by the Memo. The directive names many deadlines for agency compliance, most of them around reducing FOIA backlogs and increasing the amount of agency data released to the public. This isn’t surprising, since the Memo names transparency, collaboration, and participation as the guiding principles. Transparency is the easiest to articulate and implement — just get the data out there in a useful form. Josh Tauberer’s Open Data is Civic Capital: Best Practices for “Open Government Data” is an excellent handbook for doing this. If you want to track agencies’ progress, the Sunlight Labs folks have produced the outstanding Open Watcher.

                  ‘Open Gov the Movie’

                  Open Gov the Movie is a 14-minute compilation of interviews with prominent open gov advocates, including U.S. Deputy CTO Beth Noveck, Sunlight Foundation’s Jake Brewer, City of Manor’s Dustin Haisler, Tim O’Reilly, EPA’s Jeffrey Levy, Deloitte’s Steve Lunceford and National Academy of Public Administration’s Lena Trudeau. The film was created by Delib.

                    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.’

                      Next Page »