Planet Open Government Open Source Hacking

What's Going on in the Labs

2010-09-03T20:50:01+00:00

This is the first in a monthly series of updates letting you know what we're working on here in the Sunlight Labs offices.

If you're like us, you're busy creating and don't take the necessary time to document and communicate what you're up to. Here in the labs, we've been great about announcing when we're finished with a product but we haven't really kept the community informed on what we're working on before we're done with it. We're going to improve this. Starting with this post, we're going to give you a monthly rundown of what we're working on here in our D.C. offices. With this and other proposed initiatives like improved documentation of our projects and making labs staff available for IRC "office hours," we hope to do a better job of keeping you in the loop and making ourselves available for questions or comments. Please let us know what you think about these proposals. With that, here's what we're up to at Sunlight Labs:

Open State Project

James, Michael, Dan and our Google Summer of Code student, Gabriel, spent a lot of time this summer getting our first five states (Texas, Wisconsin, Marlyland, Louisiana and California) up to 100% completion. This week, we released the public API to this data. Be sure to check it out and let us know what you think about it. More information on the Open State project can be found here.

Influence Explorer

We recently soft-launched Influence Explorer, a tool that uses data from TransparencyData to identify the largest donors to federal and state campaigns. Ethan, Alison and Andrew (who just joined us this week) are putting the final polish on Influence Explorer before we officially launch, but we'd love for you to give it a test run.

National Data Catalog

David, Ryan, and Google Summer of Code student, Mike Dvorscak have been busy keeping the National Data Catalog fresh by keeping existing importers current and adding new importers when needed. Be on the lookout for new features at the end of the month, including the ability to report and discuss missing data sets, make a list of your favorites to share with others, and view Sunlight-curated categories of data sets.

TransparencyData

The Transparency Data team (Ethan, Alison, and Andrew) are actively keeping the data fresh and loading campaign finance and lobbying data. This past June, data for contracts and grants was added to the database. As always, the database can be searched at transparencydata.com and accessed via the Transparency Data API.

SubsidyScope

Kevin and Kaitlin continue working with the Pew Charitable Trust on the SubsidyScope project. They're currently finishing up work on the Energy Sector and starting to dive into Housing Sector data. The energy section of the SubsidyScope site should be released sometime next week.

ClearSpending

I don't want to ruin the surprise on this one, just know that Kaitlin has been working very hard on something that we expect to announce this week. It's gonna be great, stay tuned!

Mobile Apps

Eric and our Google Summer of Code Student, Evelina, spent the summer making our Congress application for Android even better by giving you the ability to "favorite" bills and legislators and view roll call votes from the House and Senate. They're constantly working to improve the app so expect to see more features, including background notifications on votes, laws, news and more.

The Real Time Congress iPhone application is constantly being tweaked with performance updates and minor feature additions. We're currently working on a major update that should see the light of day later this year.

If you're on another mobile platform, we haven't forgotten about you. We're developing Real Time Congress in PhoneGap, which will allow us to deploy to several mobile environments and Eric is busy working on a Windows Phone version of the Congress app for Android.

Politiwidgets

Eric and Ali are working closely with an exciting potential partner to expand the flexibility of our Politiwidgets and add geolocation capabilities to them.

HTML5 Application

Luigi took the lead on this and is working to have a new HTML5 application ready to go. Like many of our apps, this one revolves around Congress, but we're taking a new approach to take advantage of a new platform. We're not sure what we're calling it yet, but it provides a real-time, user-friendly view of the workings of the House and Senate. Expect to see something in early October.

Design

Ali and the design team are invaluable and they're some of the hardest workers in the labs. It's always safe to assume that where there's a project, the design team is there, making it beautiful, keeping it standards compliant, and offering advice on interface and functionality. Recently, they've devoted their attention to Politiwidgets, ClearSpending, our new HTML5 app, some small things for the Android app, and various other odds and ends. Our design team will soon be expanding, something we're all very excited about here.

National Priorities Project

We spent a good part of the year working with our friends at the National Priorities Project to make the vast amounts of federal budget data that they use available via API. NPP is currently working on the API documentation prior to public release and will have something for you in the coming weeks. Stay tuned on this one, it's an impressive set of data. If you speak code, you can check out what we built on the NPP GitHub repo.

FEC Disclosures

In addition to getting Party Time and the Report Group site into top shape, Aaron's been figuring out how to deal with the FEC's plans for new disclosure types and schedules for this fall's election. Keep an eye on the Reporting Group site for information about what he comes up with.

Systems

Tim's been plugging away heroically at our long-planned move to Amazon's cloud -- most recently he's been figuring out some thorny issues related to reconciling the load balancing system with AWS's rationing of IPs. And this weekend he gets the pleasure of swapping our MX records at 4AM.

Foundation Support

When not working on TransparencyData, Jeremy is always on hand to make sure our code is efficient, pretty and standards-compliant. He's now devoting his time to supporting the entire Sunlight Foundation and you'll continue to see his great work in the Sunlight Foundation site, a new labs site, and the evolving Sunlight Live platform.

Drumbone and Docserver

Eric and I are continually improving the databases and APIs that fuel the mobile applications and the upcoming Chrome application. We're beginning to port the existing Real Time Congress and Docserver APIs (that feed the iPhone app) into Drumbone to have a single source that feeds all of our congressional data apps.

Capitol Words

Capitol Words will be back soon, we promise! Jessy and Aaron are working hard to bring back the Capitol Words site and API with new features including our most requested feature, the ability to search phrases. If you're not familiar with Capitol Words, check out this screencast and all of the fun things we've done with it at Sunlight to see what we had before. We can't wait to show you what we've come up with, expect an announcement in the coming months.

See you again in early October!

Interior Decorator Charged With Defrauding Government Donated Big to National Republican Senatorial Committee

2010-09-03T20:14:49+00:00

A Washington, D.C.-based interior decorator faces a felony fraud charge brought by the Department of Justice.

But Darlene Mathis-Gardner, president and founder of Systems Design Inc., is not just any interior decorator.

Mathis-Gardner is a major financial supporter of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

And her company has secured $9.6 million in government contracts since 2001, with two-thirds of that amount being awarded for work on contracts “not available for competition.” That doesn’t include a $5.4 million contract that was awarded -- and then rescinded -- after a political uproar earlier this spring.

She has contributed $38,250 to federal candidates and committees since 2005, according to the Center’s research. Of this sum, 93 percent benefited Republicans. And three-fourths of it specifically benefited the NRSC.

Mathis-Gardner donated $29,000 to the NRSC between November 2005 and January 2010. Of this, $23,750 came during the 2008 election cycle. During fiscal years 2007 and 2008, Mathias-Gardner earned $6 million from government contracts.

“It’s not that out of the ordinary for business that get a lot of money from government contracts to make donations,” Gary Therkildsen, a federal fiscal policy analyst with the nonprofit government watchdog OMB Watch, told OpenSecrets Blog. “But this case raises eyebrows.”

The government has accused Mathis-Gardner of providing false information between March 2007 and March 2008 to secure a $1.3 million government contract for interior design services at the D.C. headquarters building for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security.

“Mathis-Gardner and her co-conspirators misrepresented independent contractors as the company's employees, submitted false information regarding their background and qualifications and created fictitious documentation of the company's past performance in order to convince government officials that they were qualified to perform the work,” according to a Justice Department press release.

Mathis-Gardner has agreed to plead guilty to a one-count felony charge that she conspired to defraud the U.S. government, according to the Justice Department’s release, although Mathis-Gardner told the New York Post on Wednesday, “That's not true. I'm not guilty."

Amy Jackson, the attorney who is representing Mathis-Gardner, declined to discuss the fraud case or her clients’ campaign contributions.

“I appreciate being contacted, but I’m not going to answer any questions,” Jackson told OpenSecrets Blog.

In February, Mathis-Gardner asked for the money back that she had donated since President Barack Obama took office. She was given a full $5,000 refund. An NRSC official confirmed that Mathis-Gardner initiated the refund, but declined to comment further for this story.

Earlier this year, Systems Design also weathered a political storm over a multimillion-dollar contract.

The company was slated to produce custom crystal stemware for the State Department under no-bid deal, according to the New York Post. Yet after politicians on both sides of the aisle protested about the company outsourcing the work to a Swedish firm, the State Department decided to re-award the contract and open it for bidding from other U.S. companies.

Mathis-Gardner’s fraud charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Her punishment has not yet been established by the court.

In addition to the NRSC donations, Mathias-Gardner’s other political giving is as follows:

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Recipient	Amount	Cycle
Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.)	$4,000	2008
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)	$2,000	2008
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)	$2,000	2008
Senate candidate Jim Gilmore (R-Va.)	$500	2008
Presidential candidate Barack Obama (D)	$500	2008
Presidential candidate John McCain (R)	$250	2008

Center for Responsive Politics’ researcher Carolyn Sharpe contributed to this report.

Next version of the Linked Open Data cloud based on CKAN!

2010-09-03T17:57:50+00:00

Many of you will be familiar with the now ubiquitous Linked Open Data cloud diagram, maintained by Richard Cyganiak. The diagram illustrates efforts to link together many different data sources, from the CIA World Factbook to DBpedia, a structured database of information extracted from Wikipedia. It looks like this:

We’re very pleased that the diagram’s maintainers, Anja Jentzsch, Richard Cyganiak, and Chris Bizer, have decided to use CKAN to maintain a registry of information about the datasets, from which the diagram will be automatically updated. They have put out a call for up to date information about datasets included in the diagram until next Wednesday 8th September.

From their announcement:

We are in the process of drawing the next version of the LOD cloud diagram. This time it is likely to contain around 180 datasets altogether having a size of around 20 billion RDF triples.

For drawing the next version of the LOD cloud, we have started to collect meta-information about the datasets to be included on CKAN, a registry of open data and content packages provided by the Open Knowledge Foundation.

The list of datasets about which we have already collected information is be found here:

http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/lodcloud/

In addition to basic meta-information about a dataset such as its size and the number of links pointing at other datasets, we also collect additional meta-information about the license of the dataset, alternative access options like SPARQL endpoints or dataset dumps, and whether there exist a voiD description of the dataset or a Semantic Web Sitemap.

So if your dataset is not listed yet and you want to have it included into the next version of the LOD cloud, please add it to CKAN until next Wednesday (September 8th, 2010).

Also, if we have collected wrong information about your dataset or if your dataset is only partially described up till now, it would be great if you could add the missing information.

Guidelines about how to add datasets to CKAN as well as about the tags that we are using to annotate the datasets are found here:

http://esw.w3.org/TaskForces/CommunityProjects/LinkingOpenData/DataSets/CKANmetainformation

We thank all contributors in advance for their input and help, which hopefully will allow us to draw the next version of the LOD cloud as accurate as possible.

The Day in Transparency 9/3/10

2010-09-03T15:39:40+00:00

Here is Friday’s look at transparency-related news items, today’s congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events.

News Roundup:

Disclosed meeting logs show that Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and other firms have been lobbying the Federal Reserve after the financial regulation bill was signed into law. (The Wall Street Journal)($)
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board wants to make its enforcement proceedings public. (The Wall Street Journal)($)
Open Secrets looked at the challenges facing campaign finance reform proponents. (Open Secrets)
OMB Watch supported an effort to post government contracts online. (OMB Watch)
In anticipation of Hurricane Earl, FEMA and other agencies are posting relevant data and resources on their websites. (InformationWeek)

Relevant committee hearings scheduled for 9/3:

None

Relevant bills introduced:

None

Transparency events scheduled for 9/3:

None

Chuck Norris Triggers the Vote, Vitter's Prostitution Ring Ties Highlighted and More in Capital Eye Opener: Sept. 3

2010-09-03T15:07:13+00:00

Your daily dose of news and tidbits from the world of money in politics:

TEA PARTY, NRA GET BOOSTS FROM CHUCK NORRIS: Action movie star and conservative activist Chuck Norris badly wants you to vote this November. Norris stars in a new ad for the National Rifle Association, in which he implores, “Folks, there’s only one way to protect our rights, register to vote.” The advertisement (shown below) is part of the NRA’s “Trigger the Vote” campaign. “Do you realize that our Constitutional rights are just like our bodies? They both need exercise to stay healthy?” Norris further proclaims on the campaign’s website. ”If you aren’t registered to vote, you’ve already surrendered. I will never surrender, and neither should you.”

The website also gives reasons to vote this year, including seven meetings by the United Nations in 2010 about restricting guns, U.S. government officials confiscating guns after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and supporting members in the military who are “are fighting to protect those 27 words in our Constitution that give us the right to bear arms.”

Norris, this election cycle, has also backed the tea party movement to the hilt. In January, he and his wife, Gena, each contributed the legal maximum of $5,000 to the Tea Party Express’ political action committee. Notably, on the group’s report to the Federal Election Commission detailing these contributions, Norris’ occupation is listed as “Chuck Norris/Entertainer/Actor” -- because, well, Chuck Norris is not just a man, it’s a full-time job.

LOUISIANA DEMS TARGET VITTER’S INFIDELITY: Has Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) been let off the hook for his connections to prostitution rings? Has Vitter gotten preferential treatment thanks to his position of power? The Louisiana Democratic Party is asking those questions in a new five-and-a-half minute YouTube video (see below). The video is presented in a documentary format and provides fictional reenactments of Vitter’s alleged dalliances with prostitutes and the quotes of one New Orleans sex worker who says Vitter paid her for sex. It also showcases several Louisianans speaking out against Vitter, including one man who says he voted for Vitter six times and will “never again” cast a vote in his favor.

Records indicate Vitter placed five telephone calls to Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the D.C. Madam, between 1999 and 2001. Those details became public in 2007, as Palfrey stood trial after being investigated by government agents. Around that time, Vitter apologized for “a very serious sin” but never confessed to what his transgressions exactly entailed. Palfrey, after being convicted on several counts, including money laundering and racketeering, hanged herself in 2008. This is the first time Vitter has stood for reelection since the scandal. Dems hope raising the issue will cut into the 14-point lead he currently enjoys over Democratic challenger Charles Melancon.

ROVE-BACKED GROUP KEEPS NEW ADS COMING: Television viewers in Nevada, Colorado, Missouri and Kentucky are seeing new attack ads paid for a group called “Crossroads GPS” targeting the Democratic Senate candidates in each state, Talking Points Memo reports. Crossroads GPS, or Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, is a 501(c)4 non-profit group conceived by some of the highest profile Republican strategists, including Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s political guru, and Ed Gillespie, a former chair of the Republican National Committee. The group was launched in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling that overturned a ban on corporate donations to groups producing communications that advocate for or against federal candidates.

Because it is organized under section 501(c)4 of U.S. tax code, donations to it are not tax-deductible, and it is allowed to engage in more overt political messages and lobbying compared to 501(c)3 non-profits, which face more restrictions but are allowed to raise tax-deductible donations. This status also allows the group to avoid disclosing any information about its donors until well after the election -- as it won’t submit any filings to the Internal Revenue Service until months into 2011.

One of the group’s related organizations, American Crossroads, has registered with the Federal Election Commission and reported raising $5.3 million through the end of July, according to a Center for Responsive Politics review of its most recently filed report. The bulk of that money came from wealthy individuals and corporations. Individuals, groups and corporations giving more to American Crossroads than they legally would have been allowed to give to a political committee prior to Citizens United include Southwest Louisiana Land LLC; Tejon Exploration Company; TRT Holdings Inc.; Dixie Rice Agricultural Corporation; the Jerry Perenchio Living Trust; B. Wayne Hughes, the chairman of Public Storage; investor William Harte; investor Dian Graves Stai and investor J.J. Matthews.

And such spending by organizations of all political stripes is likely to continue unabated during the next 60 days until the election. Evan Tracey of Kantar Media/CMAG, which tracks media spending, recently told trade publication Advertising Age that groups are on pace to spend a record $3 billion on TV ads this year. So far groups have spent a combined $864 million on political TV ads so far this cycle -- $50 million more than was spend during the 2008 elections, Tracey said.

Have a news tip or link to pass along? We want to hear from you! E-mail us at press@crp.org.

The Day in Sunlight 9/3/2010

2010-09-03T14:19:53+00:00

Here is a look at what happened yesterday on the Sunlight network.

Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) has introduced legislation that could give the public access to thousands of congressionally mandated reports. (Sunlight Foundation Blog)
Scott Stadum looked at Google Fusion Tables, a project form Google that aims to make collaboration on large datasets simpler. (Sunlight Foundation Blog)
The Federal Elections Commission is planning to release near-real time independent expenditure data and electioneering communication data next week. (Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group)
Rep. John Campbell (R-CA), who is being scrutinized by the Office of Congressional Ethics, held a fundraiser at a D.C. townhouse owned by a lobbying firm. (Party Time)
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) plans to use Boise State’s season opening game in D.C. to fundraise. (Party Time)

New York Politico David Mejias, Jailed on Multiple Misdemeanors, Frequent Donor to Prominent Democrats

2010-09-03T05:13:14+00:00

David L. Mejias, a domestic violence lawyer and former Democratic congressional candidate who's now running for a New York State Senate seat, faces menacing, stalking and reckless endangerment charges stemming from an incident Thursday with an ex-girlfriend.

Mejias, who says he's innocent, also has a history of contributing to prominent Democrats in Congress, including two former presidential candidates: now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.

Other recipients of the $4,000 in federal-level campaign donations the Center for Responsive Politics identifies Mejias as having made since 2000 are Reps. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and Timothy Bishop (D-N.Y.), as well as former 2000 Democratic congressional candidate David Bishop. A full accounting:

Mejias served as a Nassau (N.Y.) County legislator from 2003 to 2009.

His current endorsements, as listed on his campaign Web site this morning, include human rights and women's rights groups such as Human Rights Campaign, Equality Long Island and NARAL Pro-Choice NY.

During Mejias' 2006 congressional campaign, in which he lost to Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.), lawyers and law firms ranked as Mejias' top industrial/special interest area donor, the Center's research shows:

Newsday reports that police say Mejias followed his ex-girlfriend in his car, forced her off the road, screamed at her, then chased her when she attempted to flee. The Wall Street Journal writes that the woman ultimately drove away and called police, who arrested Mejias. The politico was held on $1,000 bail.

Mejias wrote in a statement Thursday that he intends to "continue and expand upon the work I have done to protect Long Island families. The values of equality for all and equal protection and safety under the law have shaped me and embodied all facets of my life, both personal and professional."

He continues: "My passion to uphold these values has not been diminished by these unfounded allegations."

New Orleans Democrat Won't Discuss Accusations of Bilking Nonprofit Funds for Personal Use

2010-09-02T22:29:28+00:00

Despite trouncing his primary challengers in Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District, Democratic state Rep. Cedric Richmond’s campaign has no interest in discussing accusations of impropriety raised by a group that spent more than $92,000 on independent expenditures against him in the final days before Saturday’s election.

A group called Louisiana Truth PAC hammered Richmond with accusations, aired by New Orleans blogger "American Zombie," that Richmond established at least one 501(c)3 nonprofit group and “bilked the organization’s cash flow for personal use,” including buying a diamond bezel for his “blingiddy-bling, white gold, Rolex watch.”

Louisiana Truth PAC argued Richmond is another William Jefferson, the longtime New Orleans congressman who infamously stored $90,000 in cash in his freezer and was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison last year after prosecutors won his conviction on bribery charges.

Today, Richmond spokeswoman Tanzie Jones declined to comment to OpenSecrets Blog about Louisiana Truth PAC or the charges it levied.

"No comment," Jones said. "We're not going to comment about allegations."

As OpenSecrets Blog previously reported, Louisiana Truth PAC was formed by New Orleans trial lawyer Stuart H. Smith, a Democrat who had previously contributed the legal maximum to one of Richmond’s opponents, state Rep. Juan LaFonta. In the end, LaFonta received about 21 percent of the vote, compared to Richmond's 60 percent.

The group’s funders will not be known until campaign finance reports are filed with the Federal Election Commission later this autumn. The group is legally allowed to raise unlimited amounts from individuals and corporations -- illegal until earlier this year -- because of recent federal court rulings, including Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission.

Mariner Energy, Owner of Latest Exploding Gulf Oil Rig, Slated to Merge with Political Lobbying Force Apache Corp.

2010-09-02T21:44:47+00:00

An oil rig owned by Mariner Energy, Inc. exploded this morning, just west of the where the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20.

Although Mariner and its employees have not been very politically active during the past two decades, the company is party to a pending merger with a subsidiary of Apache Corp., a notably political company. The merger would combine the two powerful independent oil and gas exploration companies. And the merger will reportedly cost Apache $2.7 billion.

So far during the 2010 election cycle, Apache’s political action committee has donated $20,000 to political candidates and entities, but has raised more than double that amount, makring a fund-raising record for the company PAC.

Apache's lobbying has also exponentially increased during the past decade, the Center for Responsive Politics finds. The company's expenditures go from $120,000 in 2000, down to zero from 2004 to 2007, and all the way up to an all-time high of $710,000 in 2010 (and that’s just during the first half of this year). It was among those companies lobbying on the major legislative response to the BP oil spill, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported.

Furthermore, 18 members of Congress reported financial interests in Apache during 2008, the most recent year for which data are available and processed by the Center.

Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), the only member of Congress who reported holding Mariner stock in 2008, reported selling it off in June 2009 at a value of between $1,000 and $15,000, according to a Center review of his 2009 personal financial report filed last month. Hours after the explosion, stock prices for both companies fell.

Mariner has also had ties to big political players in the past.

The company was previously owned by an affiliate of Enron -- the corporate giant that imploded several years ago after a massive accounting fraud. While a subsidiary of Enron, Mariner spent $120,000 on federal lobbying in 2001 and $40,000 on lobbying in 2002.

Mariner has also been owned by the Carlyle Group, a global asset manager that has in past year been advised by former presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. Carlyle Group acquired it in March 2004 and sold it in 2005. That company has also actively invested in lobbying and federal candidates over the years.

The Vermilion 380, Mariner’s oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, is different from the Deepwater Horizon in that it is an anchored -- rather than floating -- platform. It is located in more shallow water, as well. And it is only siphoning oil that has already been drilled, rather than actively drilling it.

At first, reports suggested that the latter meant that oil would not be able to leak out; however, more recent Coast Guard announcements have stated that a mile-long oil sheen has been spotted.

Center for Responsive Politics researcher Dan Auble and money-in-politics reporter Michael Beckel contributed to this report.

Obama Readying Massive Tax Cut Package?

2010-09-02T19:30:00+00:00

Remember that in-the-works Obama jobs proposal I wrote about the other day? Given that deficit hawks in the Senate have recently forced the Democrats to pare a $123 billion jobs bill back to a $33 billion unemployment insurance bill (H.R.4213), and that they have been blocking a $30 billion small business jobs bill (H.R. 5297) for over a month, I expected this new proposal to be pretty mild. But according to a report out tonight from Lori Montgomery at the Washington Post, the bill that the White House is preparing to unveil may cost the government as much as $400 billion in lost revenue:

With the recovery faltering less than two months before the November congressional elections, President Obama’s economic team is considering another big dose of stimulus in the form of tax breaks for businesses – potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two people familiar with the talks.

Among the options are a temporary payroll tax holiday and a permanent extension of the research and development tax credit, say people familiar with the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to describe private deliberations.

Permanently extending the research credit would cost roughly $100 billion over the next decade, tax experts said. And depending on its form and duration, a payroll tax holiday could let businesses keep more than $300 billion they would otherwise owe the Treasury.

While significantly less than last year’s $814 billion stimulus package, both ideas would be far more dramatic than anything the White House had been expected to propose.

Annie Lowrey at the Washington Independent points us to a recent CBO report on various stimulus measures and their effects on GDP and employment. And while a payroll tax holiday isn’t as stimulative as spending measures like unemployment insurance and infrastructure investment, as far tax-side measures go, it was found to be the most stimulative form of cut.

Tools for Transparency: Google Fusion Tables

2010-09-02T18:58:21+00:00

Just look at any one of Sunlight’s projects and you’ll realize that it takes a mountain of data to help keep government open and transparent. From district information to campaign expenditures to lobbying dollars, making sense of large data sets is an intensive, concerted effort.

Many of your own projects use dozens of spreadsheets, take up thousands of rows of data and live somewhere on our laptop, accessible only to you. This works to a point, but in an era of sharing, collaborating and web-based storage, it isn’t an optimal solution.

Google Fusion Tables is an experimental project from Google Labs with the goal of making sharing and collaborating on large sets of data much simpler. Fusion Tables isn’t focused on the traditional database system that requires “complicated SQL queries and transaction processing,” but is rather focused on “fusing data management and collaboration: merging multiple data sources, discussion of the data, querying, visualization, and web publishing.”

Google Fusion Tables allows you handle large amounts of data: you can upload files of up to 100 MB in formats like Excel, CSV and KML. You can also programmatically update, delete, query and visualize data using their API. Plus, you can merge your own data with existing public sets, allowing you to add further value and context to your own information.

While Fusion Tables is an experimental Google project, it shows great potential in allowing the less technically savvy to easily leverage large data sets while communicating and collaborating much more effortlessly.

For more information, check out the video and related links below -

sf.govfresh_Lawrence

2010-09-02T17:28:10+00:00

San Francisco’s aggressive open data efforts were on display this week, as civic and technology leaders took the stage at sf.govfresh, an event highlighting technology innovation in City government. City CIO Chris Vein (who also was recently interviewed by ideation solutions firm BrightIdea) and Department of Technology innovations manager Jay Nath explained how the City is leveraging innovators in and out of government to create a culture that creates valuable new applications at little to no cost. Jay’s presentation on Open 311 APIs is here.

The event on Wednesday night also features several local developers who’ve built mobile and Web applications using open data from San Francisco and other government agencies. These included Routsey, MomMaps, and Crimespotting. You can find the entire catalogue of apps built with SF data at the SF Innovations Showcase.

Lawrence Grodeska, pictured, of SF Environment, explained efforts to create a common standard for apps focused on recycling information and called on local developers to submit proposals to develop the next generation of SF’s “EcoFinder.”

Event host Adobe livestreamed the event, and a replay is available here.

Also on Wednesday, I was on air for John Moore’s Social Ecosystem Lab podcast to talk about the SF City Attorney’s social media programs and broader open government efforts in San Francisco. You can listen to that interview here.

- Adriel Hampton

Statelight: Transparency in a Box, Pt. 3

2010-09-02T15:20:10+00:00

As we set the stage for advocating on local and state transparency issues and highlight some policies issues of note, inevitably the question comes:

How exactly do you go about learning more about policies in your state?

Whether you’ve already picked a policy focus, want to learn more about what role open government policies could play in your state, or are just chasing curiosity, you need to answer this question. To make your search for answers clearer — more transparent if you will — we’ve laid out a series of questions for you to ask to help get you started with your research.

ONE: What issue area do I focus on?

In our last episode of Transparency in a Box, John laid out three issue areas that will be of interest to many state advocates: ethics and campaign finance, budget transparency, and legislative data. Depending upon which policy you choose there are different resources that outline the answers to a crucial question for your research:

What information does the government currently provide about this policy? Or, what’s knowable from your government?

The answer to this question will vary by state and issue. If you’re interested in learning about how to determine what the situation is in your state for ethics and campaign finance, jump down to TWO. If you’re looking to do research on budget transparency, jump to THREE. And for your legislative data needs, head to FOUR. For general open government resources, jump to FIVE.

TWO: How can I figure out what information is available for ethics and campaign finance?

Where to look: Your state likely has a department of government that oversees campaign finance laws, either as part of the office of its Secretary of State or Board of Elections. (For a good example, check out Michigan’s site for Lobbying Disclosure.) Personal Financial Disclosures can be harder to find and are sometimes available from a statewide ethics office. (See Florida’s example. ) For a beginning look at your state’s code of law, the Library of Congress provides some great links, though you may need to do an additional search to find out your state’s ethics regulations. And while not a perfect resource, you should also play with CREW’s Ethics in Your State tool. Although the corruption rankings are two years old, you’ll find helpful resources for groups working on ethics and campaign finance in your state along with media resources that might help give you a greater sense of your state’s situation.

What to look for: You can focus on one of the three policies below or search for information on all of them. In each instance, you’ll want to find out whether these things are actually available and if so, how much information is provided to the public and how much is online:

Personal Financial Disclosures
Campaign Contributions
Lobbying Disclosure

How this policy is enacted: Campaign finance policies are determined by the passage of laws or by executive orders. Finding this sort of information will do a lot to tell you about why things are the way they are now, which is important to understand if you’re interested in working to make this policy more transparent.

THREE: How can I figure out the transparency of my state’s budget?

Where to look: Your state’s budget portal. If you’re unable to find what you’re looking for there, try looking for more information on your governor or comptroller general’s website. Although you should always go the source (i.e. your state’s official website) there are other sites that can help inform your search and understanding. For instance, check out this resource from the Center for Fiscal Accountability, which hosts useful links and news about budget transparency, listed by state. The Sunshine Review also posts a guide to budget transparency listed by state.

What to look for: Are budget proposals posted online in addition to actual expenditures? How timely or complete is the publishing? Does your state have an open website for its budget/spending?

How this policy is enacted: Many states (but not all) have an online budget portal that shows how money is spent. These portals could be enacted by law, but are more likely based on an initiative from your governor or your comptroller general who can build such a site when made a gubernatorial priority.

Related to this portal is the general process by which your state sets its spending priorities. This system can vary from one state to another, but generally involves your governor submitting a proposal for a budget and your legislature eventually approving it. The actual process, from submission to approval, is incredibly complex with a number of open and secret negotiations.

FOUR: How can I figure out what legislative data my state publishes?

Where to look: The official source of legislative information in your state, most likely your state legislature’s website, which you can find quickly on this comprehensive list. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) The Library of Congress also publishes a resource on state laws that should help your search. Each state page includes links for that state’s bills and legislative session laws. The Open States Project is also working on collecting a variety of legislative data for each state and may be a good source for research or collaboration.

What to look for: Keeping in mind that there are variety of ways to interpret “legislative data transparency” (which John goes into more detail with in his post), two to focus on:

1. Look to see if your state legislature posts its bills, amendments, and votes online. See whether the information is searchable and what the timeline is that your state uses for posting these documents online. Does your legislature note whether bills have to be online before a vote? If so, how long before?

2. You should also check to see how the state is making its legislative data available. This is the more technical side, but it’s crucial to creating innovative web platforms that can aggregate and share bills, votes, and amendments. Most states display bills and other legislation in HTML; others post actual data files in order to empower more advanced analysis and reuse. For a great example of open government work in this field, see the New York State Senate, a leader in making raw data available to developers.

If you’re having problems searching for information on this subject on your legislature’s website, you may have to turn to your search engine of choice. Use a combination of keywords including your state’s name and phrases like “legislative data,” “general assembly data,” “data system,” and “online.” Your search results may turn up a free resource (see Rhode Island’s example) or a proprietary one. Look for contact information from an associated government official to learn more.

How this policy is enacted: Legislative data is controlled by legislative procedure and changes to existing policy may require a change of your assembly or chamber’s rules, or may also be able to be changed by an initiative of the technical staff of the legislature.

FIVE: Where can I learn more about general states-related open government stuff?

There are number of resources scattered around out there, but a good place to start is to check out the work of organizations within your state. This directory of state and national organizations is a great place to find out about who’s already working on issues in your state and what issues they focus on. My colleague, Sarah, is also compiling a review of state transparency efforts. Check back to see how your state is doing.

While not an open government site, per say, this digest of state laws, hosted by the Library of Congress (mentioned above) is a great “one-stop” source for state-specific government sites. Head here when you’re looking for pages listing your state’s bills, legislative session laws, and other odds and ends.

OpenMuni Wiki is a collaborative platform where people share case studies and best practices for open government policy and advocacy. Although the site started with a more local focus, it has since expanded to include state-level concerns and should be turned especially when you’re looking into open standards for government data. If you’re looking for even more ideas or inspiration from the work others are doing around the country, OpenMuni offers a great list of like minded efforts. Poking around these groups will show you the lay of the open government land and again provides the opportunity to collaborate on ongoing transparency projects. Similarly, check out CityCamp to see how folks working on a municipal level are actively gathering public officials, citizens, and experts of every sort together to problem solve local transparency issues. Getting involved with a CityCamp can be a great way to connect with people already in the field.

This post only gives you an tiny view of all the work being done to get transparency for different levels of governance. There is still a great need to organize for change on a state level, and to be successful these transparency initiatives need to communicate with one another. If you do decide to join an open government group or to craft your own initiative, post your efforts where others can find and connect with you and your work. We host an open government projects page so that you can archive your work, ask questions of your peers in the field, and check out the work others are doing, though connecting with folks over Govloop or OpenMuni will be useful to you, too.

Have a favorite open government site that I missed? Please (!) share it with us below. (Extra points if it has a state focus.)

In Virginia, your “sacred” “right to know” isn’t respected

2010-09-02T15:11:23+00:00

Reason Magazine’s Radley Balko draws attention to secrecy at the Fairfax County, Alexandria, and Arlington Police Departments.

The Fairfax, Alexandria, and Arlington police departments are among the least transparent in the country. Their application of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act allows them to turn down nearly all requests for information, as was made clear by a series of reports by reporter Michael Pope.

There is obviously something wrong here. With Freedom of Information Acts, the presumption should be on disclosure. Unlike some instances of information withholding, the officials of these departments seem to be well aware of the fact that they are infringing on citizens’ right to information. Their attitude says it all, according to Balko:

Police were not only stingy with information; they were smug and arrogant about it. When asked why she couldn’t release the name of a Virginia police officer who shot and killed an unarmed man last November, Fairfax County police spokeswoman Mary Ann Jennings replied, “What does the name of an officer give the public in terms of information and disclosure? I’d be curious to know why they want the name of an officer.”

The attitude of the spokeswoman is completely opposed to citizens’ rights. There are exemptions to the Freedom of Information Acts (FOIA), and there are instances where the case can be made for withholding information.

But the department isn’t making a case. It is claiming its authority as an excuse to keep information that is public by its nature secret, such as a public official’s name, because it can. And it doesn’t have to answer to you.

There’s more information to better paint the attitude of these departments:

After [reporter Michael] Pope’s first article on the lack of disclosure, Alexandria Commonwealth’s Attorney Randolph Sengel, the city’s elected chief prosecutor, responded with a sneering, condescending letter to the editor brimming with contempt for outsiders who try to hold law enforcement agencies accountable. “Last time I checked there were multiple safeguards in place to assure the integrity of the criminal justice system,” Sengel wrote. “Conscientious and dedicated judges, prosecutors, public defenders, and law enforcement officers work in a system which is as transparent as it needs to be…The sacred ‘right of the public to know’ is still (barely) governed by standards of reasonableness and civility.”

The “right of the public to know” is in quotes.

The public does have a right to know. And this right is, basically, sacred. The government is directly accountable to taxpayers. While checks are in place within to make sure public bodies act ethically, the most important check is the ability we have as citizens to demand answers from the people we pay to look after our interests.

Here’s hoping the hard work of Virginia reporters, like Mr. Pope, continues shining light on irresponsible police departments’.

You've Heard of Adopt-a-Highway But What About Adopt-a-Doc?

2010-09-02T14:16:54+00:00

I'm sure you've heard of adopt-a-highway programs but have you heard of OSTI's adopt-a-doc program?

OSTI, the US Dept. of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information, provides public access to over 2.6 million science research reports and citations published by Department of Energy (and predecessor) organizations. These include technical reports, journal articles, conference papers and other materials.

OSTI's done a great job of digitizing copies of the technical reports published by its National Labs and other organizations. (Journal articles and conference papers are generally excluded due to copyright restrictions).

But it hasn't scanned them all. There are more than 250,000 DOE technical reports in need of digitization, and that's where adopt-a-doc comes into play.

If you find reference to a non-digitized technical report (not journal article or conference paper) in, for example, the Energy Citations Database, you can search for that title on the adopt-a-doc page to confirm it is "adoptable", and then sponsor the digitization of that report for $85, the cost of ordering a hard copy.

In this way the report becomes available not just to you but also to all other researchers and members of the public. If you'd like, an electronic sponsor certificate or acknowledgement in honor of someone else will become part of the document for all to see.

What a great way to make important research available to those who need it! --Nora

GOP Hopes for Wave Election, Google Dissed by Silicon Valley Rep and More in Capital Eye Opener: Sept. 2

2010-09-02T13:55:20+00:00

Your daily dose of news and tidbits from the world of money in politics:

REPUBLICANS LEAD IN POLLS AND TOTAL MONEY RAISED: A new Gallup poll gives Republicans their largest lead ever -- a 10-point spread, 51 percent to 41 percent --- in Gallup’s tracking of midterm elections, which dates back to 1942. But GOP candidates are also leading the race in another arena: campaign funding.

So far, Republican Senate candidates have raised a total of $234 million in the 2010 election cycle, compared to $226 million raised by Democratic candidates. In House races, Democrats are trailing $355 million to the $361 million raised by Republican candidates this election cycle.

However, Democrats in both House and Senate races are leading in total cash on hand as of Aug. 31, holding just more than a $1-million advantage on the Senate side and a $72-million edge in total cash on hand in House races.

Both parties have, so far, spent more on the more numerous House contests. While Republican candidates have out-spent Democratic candidates $247 million to $220 million in House races, Democratic Senate candidates have spent more than $161 million, compared to Republican candidates who have spent more than $155 million. Last week, OpenSecrets Blog broke down the monthly fund-raising hauls of these six committees so far this year.

FORMER GOOGLE ALLY CRITICIZES POLICY PROPOSAL BUT KEEPS CAMPAIGN CASH: Two-and-a-half years ago, Google, Inc. Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt praised Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) as “almost the perfect example of a congressperson” in a 2008 policy discussion that focused in large part on the importance of net neutrality. Since then, Google personnel have donated $7,900 to Eshoo’s campaign during the 2010 election cycle, including $4,500 from the company’s political action committee.

However, Eshoo, pictured right, a member of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, has criticized Google and Verizon’s joint policy proposal that would allow Internet service providers to offer “additional or differentiated services” on mobile networks, giving users that pay for premium content priority mobile Internet access.

Eshoo formalized her discontent with Google earlier this month, signing onto a joint letter to the Federal Communications Commission, which reads “Rather than an expansion upon a proposal by two large companies with a vested financial interest in the outcome, formal FCC action is needed.”

NEW RULES FOR NEW YORK CHANGE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS: New York City may be home to billionaires, international corporations and Wall Street titans, but a new examination of the city’s 2009 elections show that the most important player may have been the public.

While Mayor Michael Bloomberg retained his job, pouring $108 million of his own money into his reelection campaign, several incumbents were upset on the heels of a wave of small individual donations.

Due to a change in local campaign finance law, the city now matches donations of $175 or less at a 6-to-1 ratio. This, for example, turns a $100 donation into a $700 donation. In 2009, these smaller individual donations skyrocketed, and 70 percent of all donations made were $175 or less. In addition, more than 34,000 citizens made their first campaign contributions during the 2009 election cycle.

Meanwhile, donations from businesses, unions and political committees plummeted, accounting for only 7.2 percent of funds available to candidates opting to utilize public campaign finance in 2009. In 2005, these sources made up two-thirds of public funds available to candidates.

Have a news tip or link to pass along? We want to hear from you! E-mail us at press@crp.org.

Campaign Finance Reformers Facing Major Political, Legal Obstacles

2010-09-02T11:21:32+00:00

This has not been a kind year for campaign finance reformers.

Setting aside the now-famous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling from the Supreme Court, which allowed corporations and unions to spend freely on campaign advertisements, there has been a flurry of challenges to other campaign finance laws in the courts.

Although several of these challenges were filed before the Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United, that decision encouraged opponents of campaign finance reform to push their challenges even further, according to experts on campaign finance cases.

These ongoing lawsuits have challenged three broad sections of campaign finance law: corporate spending restrictions, public financing of candidates and disclosure laws.

Supporters of reform have seen some success against challenges to restrictions on soft money contributions. But public funding for candidates has been stymied in several cases, even in the middle of campaign season.

Campaign finance legal experts say that disclosure laws are the least vulnerable to challenges in the courts.

“It’s sort of been a lot of clouds with some silver lining for campaign finance reformers,” said Tara Malloy, associate counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, in reference to success in disclosure cases. The Campaign Legal Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit group that provides analysis of a campaign legal issues and government ethics.

On other corporate spending cases, the rulings have been mixed. In Republican National Commitee v. Federal Election Commission, the same court that decided Citizens United reaffirmed a lower court’s ruling that upheld a law banning “soft money” contributions to political parties.

Other cases, such as SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, gave groups the green light to raise unlimited sums from individuals for independent expenditure committees -- a subtle difference from the Citizens United case, which involved only independent expenditures funded from corporate treasuries. The same issue is at play in Thalheimer v. San Diego, which touches upon restrictions for both corporate money and large donations from individuals for independent expenditures.

And recent lower court rulings in Connecticut, Arizona and Florida overturned parts of the states’ systems of public financing, targeting the trigger mechanisms that sent state dollars to a publicly funded candidate if an opponent’s spending passed a certain threshold.

Loyola College of Law professor Rick Hasen, who runs ElectionLawBlog.com, is part of the team defending the city of San Diego in the Thalheimer v. San Diego case. He said the case is part of a wider plan by opponents of campaign finance laws to weaken regulations in the wake of Citizens United.

Hasen specifically called out attorney Jim Bopp, who has argued for many high-profile campaign finance cases, including Republican National Committee v. Federal Election Commission and Citizens United before it got to the Supreme Court.

“There’s no mystery to what’s going on,” Hasen said. “These groups have seen Citizens United as an opening to challenge a variety of campaign finance laws to try to push the courts in a deregulatory direction.”

Bopp, however, told OpenSecrets Blog that he is not undertaking a major effort to overturn campaign finance law -- he just represents many clients who frequently run up against laws that prevent them from speaking about public policy decisions.

“It’s just naturally part of my practice that these controversies would arise because of the nature of the clients that I have,” he said.

He agreed the Citizens United ruling made campaign finance laws vulnerable to more challenges.

“We always seek to apply the current state of the law to any challenges of campaign finance law that we make,” he said.

Bopp is also involved in cases challenging disclosure laws for groups supporting gay rights-related ballot measures in Maine and California. He is further involved in a Vermont case challenging the state’s classification of a group opposing abortion rights as a political action committee.

Members of Congress have attempted to adopt responses to the changing legal landscape of campaign finance with the DISCLOSE Act, which would add new reporting requirements for independent expenditures, and the Fair Elections Now Act, a voluntary public financing program that would dole out federal campaign funds to candidates who raise enough small-amount donations in their home state.

So far, such efforts have stalled.

The Fair Elections Now Act has not made it out of committee. And while the House passed the DISCLOSE Act in June, Republican senators have so far blocked it in Congress’ upper chamber.

In challenges such as Doe v. Reed, another Bopp case, litigants have turned to battling disclosure law as well.

The Doe v. Reed case resolves around whether the names of supporters of a ballot initiative to block domestic partnership rights in Washington state should be made public or not.

The Supreme Court earlier this year rejected Bopp’s arguments that all ballot measure petition-signers had the right to have their names kept secret, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported. The high court left open the possibility that these particular ballot measure petition-signers might have that ability, however, and the case is still being litigated in lower courts.

“They might just now be turning to disclosure because sadly now that is what’s left,” said Malloy, of the Campaign Legal Center.

Among the cases currently still pending before the Supreme Court is McComish v. Bennett, which challenged Arizona’s public financing mechanism.

In May, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the state’s “trigger provision” was constitutional. But a month later, the Supreme Court issued an unusual stay in the case. The decision changed the state’s election laws mid-race while the court decides whether or not to take up the case.

“It’s not clear whether or not the Supreme Court is done with its deregulatory project,” Malloy said.

Administrative Conference of the U.S. is ACUS.gov

2010-09-02T04:55:54+00:00

The newly funded and revived Administrative Conference of the United States now has a website at www.acus.gov. The site opens with a condensed history of the agency:

With the Senate's confirmation of Paul Verkuil as Chairman, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) has been re-established after an absence of over 14 years. ACUS was created in 1968 as an independent agency of the federal government, for the purpose of developing recommendations to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the rulemaking, adjudication, licensing, and investigative functions of federal agency programs. Funding was suspended by Congress in late 1995.

I miss the usual statement of mission, but the site links to Title V, section 591 for this purpose.

Currently, the Web site is strong on historical information. It features a bibliography [PDF] of works for 1968-1995 and Code of Federal Regulations citations to historic ACUS recommendations (courtesy the American Bar Association archive at Florida State University College of Law).

We will watch this space.

Related DGI Bog post, The Administrative Conference of the U.S. is Back.

The Development of Structure in the Citation Network of the United States Supreme Court — Now in HD! [Repost]

2010-09-02T04:30:29+00:00

What are some of the key takeaway points?

(1) The Supreme Court’s increasing reliance upon its own decisions over the 1800-1830 window.

(2) The important role of maritime/admiralty law in the early years of the Supreme Court’s citation network. At least with respect to the Supreme Court’s citation network, these maritime decisions are the root of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence.

(3) The increasing centrality of decisions such as Marbury v. Madison, Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee to the overall network.

The Development of Structure in the SCOTUS Citation Network

The visualization offered above is the largest weakly connected component of the citation network of the United States Supreme Court (1800-1829). Each time slice visualizes the aggregate network as of the year in question.

In our paper entitled Distance Measures for Dynamic Citation Networks, we offer some thoughts on the early SCOTUS citation network. In reviewing the visual above note ….“[T]he Court’s early citation practices indicate a general absence of references to its own prior decisions. While the court did invoke well-established legal concepts, those concepts were often originally developed in alternative domains or jurisdictions. At some level, the lack of self-reference and corresponding reliance upon external sources is not terribly surprising. Namely, there often did not exist a set of established Supreme Court precedents for the class of disputes which reached the high court. Thus, it was necessary for the jurisprudence of the United States Supreme Court, seen through the prism of its case-to-case citation network, to transition through a loading phase. During this loading phase, the largest weakly connected component of the graph generally lacked any meaningful clustering. However, this sparsely connected graph would soon give way, and by the early 1820’s, the largest weakly connected component displayed detectable structure.”

What are the elements of the network?

What are the labels?

To help orient the end-user, the visualization highlights several important decisions of the United States Supreme Court offered within the relevant time period:

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803) we labeled as ”Marbury”
Murray v. The Charming Betsey, 6 U.S. 64 (1804) we labeled as “Charming Betsey”
Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, 14 U.S. 304 (1816) we labeled as “Martin’s Lessee”
The Anna Maria, 15 U.S. 327 (1817) we labeled as “Anna Maria”
McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. 316 (1819) we labeled as “McCulloch”

Why do cases not always enter the visualization when they are decided?

As we are interested in the core set of cases, we are only visualizing the largest weakly connected component of the United States Supreme Court citation network. Cases are not added until they are linked to the LWCC. For example, Marbury v. Madison is not added to the visualization until a few years after it is decided.

How do I best view the visualization?

Given this is a high-definition video, it may take few seconds to load. We believe that it is worth the wait. In our view, the video is best consumed (1) Full Screen (2) HD On (3) Scaling Off.

Where can I find related papers?

Here is a non-exhaustive list of related scholarship:

Michael Bommarito, Daniel Katz, Jon Zelner & James Fowler, Distance Measures for Dynamic Citation Networks, Physica A __ (2010 Forthcoming).

Yonatan Lupu & James Fowler, The Strategic Content Model of Supreme Court Opinion Writing, APSA 2009 Toronto Meeting Paper.

Michael Bommarito, Daniel Katz & Jon Zelner, Law as a Seamless Web? Comparison of Various Network Representations of the United States Supreme Court Corpus (1791-2005) in Proceedings of the 12th Intl. Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law (2009).

Frank Cross, Thomas Smith & Antonio Tomarchio, The Reagan Revolution in the Network of Law, 57 Emory L. J. 1227 (2008).

James Fowler & Sangick Jeon, The Authority of Supreme Court Precedent, 30 Soc. Networks 16 (2008).

Elizabeth Leicht, Gavin Clarkson, Kerby Shedden & Mark Newman, Large-Scale Structure of Time Evolving Citation Networks, 59 European Physics Journal B 75 (2007).

Thomas Smith, The Web of the Law, 44 San Diego L.R. 309 (2007).

James Fowler, Timothy R. Johnson, James F. Spriggs II, Sangick Jeon & Paul J. Wahlbeck, Network Analysis and the Law: Measuring the Legal Importance of Precedents at the U.S. Supreme Court, 15 Political Analysis, 324 (2007).
_

Federal Records Management Perspective on Social Media

2010-09-02T02:22:11+00:00

Today the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released their first report on the topic of Web 2.0 and social media. A NARA records management team talked with representatives from 25 federal agencies about their use of these tools; their findings are the basis for A Report on Federal Web 2.0 Use and Record Value [PDF]. The report provides a succinct and insightful analysis of federal agencies' internal and external use of Web 2.0 tools, and it enumerates issues in need of attention. From the report:

The study identifies characteristics of the information that is found in web 2.0 formats and how those characteristics affect the value of the information. It also provides a basis for determining whether Federal records created using web 2.0 tools should be retained for a temporary period of time or are permanent and ultimately transferred to the National Archives.

This study does not describe or dictate how to schedule or manage web 2.0 records. It does not focus on specific technological issues, identify permanent web 2.0 records, or assess any specific NARA or agency policy or guidance. This study does note key management issues that participating agencies addressed through the course of the study.

Bill Would Place Agency Reports to Congress Online

2010-09-01T22:04:34+00:00

Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-OH) recently introduced legislation that would make it a lot easier for the public to access thousands of congressionally mandated reports. These reports are created when Congress requires agencies to give an accounting of their actions or plans for addressing a particular issue. Once received by Congress, the reports become House or Senate documents, and often provide valuable insight into what the federal government is (or should be) doing.

House documents, according to the Clerk of the House, originate from congressional committees and including annual reports of executive departments, investigative reports made to congress, presidential messages, and other similar publications. (House or Senate documents should not to be confused with House or Senate reports, which are prepared by congressional committees on proposed legislation and issues under investigation.) Rep. Dreihaus’ bill applies to congressionally mandated reports only.

Not all congressionally mandated reports are available online. Electronic access would put more eyes on each document, thereby enhancing their usefulness as oversight documents. My colleague John Wonderlich earlier wrote about how these reports can inform committee oversight plans. Rep. Dreihaus’ spokesman Tim Mulvey explains that “The reason Congress passes laws mandating these reports is so the American people can understand how their government works, and where it may not be working so well.” Driehaus, who sits on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, believes this bill could play a vital role in educating the public on what the government does.

At the beginning of each Congress, the Clerk of the House generates (pursuant to House Rule II) a report entitled “Reports to be Made to Congress,” which lists all congressionally mandated reports. It cites the law or resolution in which the requirement may be contained and placing under the name of each officer the list of reports required to be made by such officer.

While the report itself is available through GPO (here’s the 235-page report submitted in the 111th Congress: [PDF]) all of the reports it identifies are not. The GPO makes an effort to make these documents available online, but they don’t get everything. In addition, even when the documents are online, they are often difficult to find. For a closer look, check out the GPO’s index of congressional documents and search engine.

The Access to Congressional Mandated Reports Act, or H.R. 6026, would resolve several problems. The bill requires the director of the Office of Management and Budget to create a central website that will let the public access congressionally mandated reports. The legislation would mandate improved search functionality so that people can find the documents, allow people to be notified when a particular document becomes available, and require public access to the report within 30 days. In addition, OMB would be required to issue regulations to the agencies on how they should submit reports, which must be in electronic format.

Rep. Dreihaus has the right idea. Reps. Towns and Clay agree, as they’ve co-sponsored the legislation. Congressionally mandated reports (with few exceptions) should be available online, and I would add that congressionally documents should be published online as a general rule. Creating deadlines for the reports to be available, requiring electronic formats, and improving access to the public are all excellent ideas.

I do have a few minor quibbles. OMB has experience issuing regulations to make this kind of effort succeed, but it would be unconventional for their regulations to apply to independent agencies or the legislative or judicial branches. Similarly, it is more common for the Clerk or the Library of Congress or some other entity under congressional control to house congressional documents, instead of OMB, which is an arm of the President. Nevertheless, this legislation is a smart move in the right direction toward making government more open, transparent, and accountable.

Eric Naing contributed significantly to the writing and researching of this article.

CA salary transparency bill stalls in senate

2010-09-01T20:35:37+00:00

Almost every politician in California was ready to jump on the “Let’s bash Bell” bandwagon, but now that legislation calling for salary transparency is in the senate, political officials are balking. The latest legislation would require that both municipal employees post their salaries online and state level employees as well.

The California senators are considering addressing the issue with an internal rule, which would be more flexible and easily changed.

If the California legislature was so eager to expose municipal salaries, then they should also be comfortable placing the same transparency standards on themselves. The legislature should worry less about how it’ll reflect on their campaigns, and more about what is right for Californian constituents.

Welcome Nathan Yang, guest blogger for September and thanks Emily Keller!

2010-09-01T17:00:23+00:00

August just flew by didn't it? And that means it's time to introduce our next blogger of the month. So welcome to the FGI podium Nathan Yang. Nathan is a Ph.D candidate in Economics at the University of Toronto. Although his thesis is about industry dynamics and social learning, he has recently done some research on why politicians adopt Twitter. Take it away Nathan.

And thanks also to Emily Keller, our August blogger from the University of Washington!!

Introducing the Open State Project API

2010-09-01T16:41:17+00:00

Over a year ago we announced our intention to build scrapers that would collect and sanitize legislative information from all fifty states, an initiative that is now known as the Open State Project. (formerly the Fifty State Project)

Since we put out the proposal we've had more than 25 developers contribute code, and we now have scrapers in various states of completion for approximately 30 states. Soon after beginning the project we learned that collecting the data isn't enough, we have found that after the scrapers run there is still work to be done: name standardization, adapting for different naming conventions across states, and attempting to match legislators to their IDs on websites such as FollowTheMoney.org and Project Vote Smart.

As of today we're proud to announce a new milestone for the project, version 1 of the Open State Project API. You can start using our API today to get access to information on more than 37,000 bills and 1,600 legislators from the most recent sessions of 10 state legislatures.

About the API

Our API makes it possible to get at all of the data that we currently collect. For most states this means legislators, committees, and bills including their actions, votes, and links to full text versions. We've spent time building a flexible infrastructure that allows us to collect extra data where it is available and pass it on, while still providing a common subset across all states we provide.

If you visit our API status page you'll see that we are launching with five states that we consider "ready" (shown in green). These five states: Maryland, Texas, Wisconsin, Louisiana, and California are our trial five states and while there's no such thing as perfect data we have made a commitment to keeping these five as up to date as possible and will give the highest priority to any data quality issues we encounter in them.

We are also making data for five additional states available in an experimental state (shown in orange). We believe that the data for these states (Vermont, North Carolina, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Nevada) is of high quality and ready for public use but haven't had the time to vet it quite as thoroughly as data from states deemed "ready". If you decide to use data from these states don't be surprised if you notice a few more rusty edges in the data for these experimental states.

If you're ready to get started with the API all you'll need is a Sunlight API Key (if you already have a key for our Congress API, Transparency Data, or Drumbone you can use that).

After that you may find the following links to be helpful:

Finally, we'd like to acknowledge that given the size of this undertaking and this project wouldn't be possible without all of the volunteers that have helped by contributing code. A special thank you to contributors Michael Stephens, Mark Olson, 2010 Summer of Code student Gabriel Joel Pérez, and former Sunlight Labs intern Dan Schneiderman as well as everyone else in the AUTHORS file.

If you'd like to help us get the next 40 states ready join the Open State Project Google Group and introduce yourself, we're always looking for help and will be happy to help you find a place your skills will benefit the project.

In Defeat, Lisa Murkowski Violates Most Every Money-in-Politics Convention

2010-09-01T16:03:11+00:00

For every diamond-clad money-in-politics rule, there's an exception.

And this morning, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is a big, grizzly exception in the most remarkable of ways: A member of the state's most notable political family is conceding defeat to a hitherto all-but-unknown challenger -- lawyer Joe Miller -- in a partisan primary.

Stuff like this just doesn't happen much, folks. An "amazing feat," as Miller himself described it, and few would disagree. So consider:

Rule: Since 1982, U.S. Senate incumbents have enjoyed re-election rates of between 75 percent and 96 percent during every two-year every election cycle, the Center for Responsive Politics calculates. Murkowski exception: Not only did she lose re-election, but she never even fought for a minute in the general election, losing in her own party's primary -- a rare feat of defeat.

Rule: Incumbents often raise 10 times (or more) the money their challengers muster, and incumbents who do are all but guaranteed victory. Murkowski exception: As of Aug. 4, the most recent dates for which campaign finance information is comprehensively available, Murkowski has raised more than 12 times what Miller has raised, spent more than 10 times what he had spent and enjoyed a greater than 22-to-1 cash-on-hand advantage, the Center's research shows. And Miller edged her anyway.

Rule: If you're a Senate candidate who finds himself being moose whipped in voter polls, no amount of last-minute outside help will ultimately help you -- so start preparing your concession speech. Murkowski exception: The Tea Party Express. This group, which operates the political action committee Our Country Deserves Better PAC, dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race on behalf of Miller during the campaign's final days, as OpenSecrets Blog recently reported. It blanketed the airwaves like snow blankets Fairbanks and deputized the former first couple of Alaska -- a certain Sarah and Todd -- to record robo-calls on behalf of Miller and otherwise stump for him.

Rule: Well-known candidates with massive support from big industries, labor unions or trade associations are effectively intractable. Murkowski exception: She lost despite people and political action committees associated with ExxonMobil, Target, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Patton Boggs, Southern Co., Constellation Energy, Duke Energy, Raytheon, Home Depot, the Nuclear Energy Institute, Occidental Petroleum and a host of others each giving her at least $10,000. Miller's top contribution through Aug. 4? A cool $5,000 from SarahPAC, the political action committee of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who endorsed Miller. SarahPAC also donated $5,000 to Murkowski, negating its Miller donation. Miller, who through early August spent more than $104,000 of his own money on the race, received much of his additional (and meager) funding from Tea Party activists' modest donations, most of which numbered in the double digits or low triple digits.

Rule: Political endorsements don't typically matter all that much, no matter who they're from, short of, say, the spirits of John F. Kennedy or Ronald Regan, back from a trip to the afterlife. Murkowski exception: If you're running to represent Alaska in Washington, D.C., and you find yourself crosswise with the political phenomenon that is Palin, be prepared to instead take a long look at Russia from the comfort of your house.

Miller, who wins the race by the most narrow of margins, goes on to face Democrat Scott McAdams, the mayor of Sitka, Alaska.