Planet oGosh! Open Government Open Source Hacking

• While summarizing the changes Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst hopes to implement with the Senate Select Committee on Open Government, Curt Olsen reminds, “Initiatives for 'open government' either improve access or hinder it." Olsen maintains that each change should be watched carefully, as, “ State lawmakers can pass laws that enhance openness and transparency or they can pass laws that cause mischief and erect a new hurdle for taxpayers to have access to government." The proposed changes include: “The use of new technologies and future technological advances as relates to the creation of public information” and “Study ways to define and address frivolous and/or overly-burdensome open records requests. “State lawmakers can pass laws that enhance openness and transparency or they can pass laws that cause mischief and erect a new hurdle for taxpayers to have access to government.” For the entire list and Olsen’s opinion, check out his post on Texas Budget Source.
• In her assessment of the state of Minnesota transparency, Mary Tracey maintains, “What matters to most citizens is the right to access to information by and about state, regional and local government information – state agencies, county boards, advisory committees and regulators, every entity from the Governor’s office to the local school board. In her post on Poking Around With Mary, she summarizes the open government portals available to Minnesotans: The twin pillars of access in Minnesota are the Data Practices Act and the Open Meeting Law.  Essential guides to each include these:  Open Meeting Law,Government Data Practices Act.  The Legislative Reference Libraryalso offers a comprehensive list of guides and information about parallel laws and regulations in other states." She urges citizens who are concerned with government transparency to “be aware of the agencies’ responsibilities to assure compliance with the spirit and the letter of the law.”

President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is refunding the donations of five registered federal lobbyists who gave to the committee last year, OpenSecrets Blog has learned. Some of these refunds were triggered after OpenSecrets Blog brought the contributions to the campaign's attention. 

The Obama campaign has pledged to refuse contributions from lobbyists, continuing a policy it set during the 2008 campaign.

Research by the Center for Responsive Politics indicates the Obama campaign accepted a total of $2,250 from five federally registered lobbyists between April and September. The campaign collected an additional $4,500 from three individuals who registered as federal lobbyists shortly after making contributions.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told OpenSecrets Blog that refunds would be issued to all individuals who were registered lobbyists.

"When we catch [a contribution] from a federal lobbyist that slips through the cracks, we immediately return the contribution," LaBolt said. "Unlike our opponents, our campaign does not accept contributions from Washington lobbyists."

Political observers say Obama's policy is designed to curb the sway of professional influence-seekers, and they acknowledge that any such protocol would likely have a few people slip through the cracks, especially when individual donors number in the millions -- as they do in the case of Obama's campaign.

But political science professor James Thurber said that while such a vow "a step in the right direction," it was also "somewhat insincere."

"He's narrowly defining a lobbyist," Thurber told OpenSecrets Blog,

Thurber, who is the founder and director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, in Washington, D.C., noted that in order to be required to register as a federal lobbyist one must be paid at least $3,000 per quarter, make at least two contacts with senior officials and spend at least 20 percent of his or her time on lobbying.

"Most people don't meet that," he continued.

About 12,600 people were registered lobbyists for at least a portion of 2011, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics. Thurber said it's more likely that 100,000 in Washington are involved in the advocacy and influence industry.

However, an Obama campaign aide pushed back against the notion that Obama was falling short of his promise to abstain from lobbyists' funds.

"We don’t create the definition of federal lobbyist -- Congress does," an Obama campaign aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told OpenSecrets Blog. "And we go far beyond the law by declining contributions from them."

Jason Hauter, who lobbies for the Gila River Indian Community's gaming and casino interests with the high-profile firm Akin, Gump, is one lobbyist whose $250 contribution was refunded by the Obama campaign.

"If he doesn't want my money, that's fine," Haute told OpenSecrets Blog. The attorney said his firm had a conservative definition of when registration as a lobbyist was necessary,

Sara Guderyahn, who is a former legislative assistant to Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), is another.

Guderyahn, whose lobbying expertise at the Sheridan Group includes child welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, education and public health, donated $250 to Obama in April at an event that she didn't realize was sponsored by Obama's campaign.

"It was my mistake," Guderyahn told OpenSecrets Blog.

The three other lobbyists who slipped through the cracks of the Obama campaign compliance system include:

• Hannibal Kemerer, who donated $1,000 to Obama on April 25, a time when he lobbied for K Street giant Patton Boggs on behalf of Wayne County, Mich., where Detroit is located.
• Riley K. Temple, a telecommunications lobbyist who represented Verizon and News Corp. last year, and who donated $500 to Obama on June 30.
• Don Lowery, the vice president of government and public affairs for Nielsen, who donated $250 to Obama on September 1 while actively lobbying on behalf of Nielsen Media Research. 

Kemerer declined to comment for this story, and Temple did not respond to a message left by OpenSecrets Blog. Lowery, meanwhile, told OpenSecrets Blog that his contribution was made for personal, not business, reasons.

"I am a registered lobbyist, but I've never had a meeting with the White House," he said. "[My donation] had nothing to do with my professional work."

But LaBolt, of the Obama campaign, declined to comment on the campaign's acceptance of money from people who subsequently registered as lobbyists.

According to the Center's research, the Obama campaign collected money from at least three individuals who were not registered federal lobbyists at the time of their donations, but who were active, registered lobbyists for a portion of 2011.

Those individuals were David McIntosh of electronic manufacturing company Siemens Corp., John Hawke from Arnold & Porter, and Dennis M. Barry, a lobbyist at King & Spalding.

McIntosh donated $2,000 to Obama on June 23, and his occupation was listed as "government affairs" on the campaign's second-quarter filing with the Federal Election Commission. McIntosh's name does not appear in any second-quarter lobbying filings with Congress, but it does appear in Siemens' third-quarter and fourth-quarter reports.

On August 25, nine days after donating $500 to Obama, Hawke became a registered lobbyist, and he continued to lobby Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission for the rest of the year on finance issues for his client Federated Investors.

Meanwhile, Barry was not a registered federal lobbyist at the time of his $2,000 donation to Obama on June 14. But he had previously lobbied on behalf of hospitals from 2002 until 2010, and he started lobbying again during the third quarter, which began July 1.

Neither Barry or McIntosh could immediately be reached for comment by OpenSecrets Blog, while Hawke maintained he was not really an "active federal lobbyist."

"We've got one on-going project that caused the need for me to register," he said. "I think [Obama's policy] was designed to address people who do substantial amounts of lobbying, which is not something I do."

Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the consumer advocate group Public Citizen, said it was not unreasonable for the Obama campaign to keep the contributions from donors who became lobbyists after they wrote their checks.

"The campaign has decided the line is at the time of being a registered lobbyist, rather than the week before, year before, or five years before," Holman told OpenSecrets Blog. "It is a reasonable line of demarcation. There is no indication that, or indeed even any suspicion of, lobbyists temporarily deregistering, just long enough to make a campaign contribution, and then re-registering. That would not be a sufficiently meaningful gesture, nor bring in sufficient campaign funds, to be part of the influence peddling game on Capitol Hill."

Obama rejected money from registered federal lobbyists and political action committees during his 2008 campaign, and continues to do so now. Under his leadership, the Democratic National Committee has also pledged to abstain from money from those sources -- although at least 10 lobbyists were issued contribution refunds in June after OpenSecrets Blog brought their donations to the DNC's attention.

Obama's vow has drawn scrutiny because it relies on the relatively narrow definition of lobbyist laid out in the 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act. That has allowed his re-election effort to collect millions of dollars from bundlers who, though not registered lobbyists, are active in the influence industry.

Still, the promise has seen frequent play in Obama campaign fundraising pitches.

"We've always relied on each other, not Washington lobbyists or corporate interests, to build our campaign," one recent message from the Obama campaign stated.

And it's certainly true that small-dollar donors have played an outsized role in Obama's fundraising.

Between April and the end of September, the date of the most recent campaign finance reports, Obama collected 47 percent of his more than $88 million raised from people who donated $200 or less.

Yet, people in the influence game have also played a role.

While Obama does not have any bundlers who are registered lobbyists raising money for his re-election efforts, five bundlers who work for lobby shops have collected a minimum of $1.05 million for Obama and the DNC through the end of September. (These bundlers are not themselves registered to lobby.) And employees of lobbying firms who are not registered lobbyists have donated more than $80,000 to the Obama campaign, according to the Center's research.

By contrast, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has no such prohibitions. He's collected $206,550 from lobbyists and employees of lobby shops, according to the Center's research. And eight registered lobbyists have bundled about $1 million for his campaign.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and professor at the University of California-Irvine, told OpenSecrets Blog that lobbyist-bundlers are more worrisome than a handful of donors who became registered lobbyists after they made contributions to Obama.

"I'd like to see lobbyists get out of the business of bundling, and a commitment to presidential candidates not to have them bundle," he wrote in an email to OpenSecrets Blog.

"The fact that candidate Obama took contributions last time from state lobbyists and law firm members whose partners were lobbyists didn't seem to hurt his reputation as a reformer -- nor did his opting out of the campaign finance system," Hasen added. "And of course, if his opponent is Governor Romney, well Romney is much more likely to take heat for not disclosing his bundlers -- as George W. Bush, John McCain and Obama did -- than Obama will for this."

Center for Responsive Politics researcher Sarah Bryner and reporting intern Seth Cline contributed to this report.

Today NPR's Planet Money team aired a story about disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s legal lobbying activities (as few of those as there may have been), highlighting how problematic even currently legal lobbying practices are. Also today, the New York Times pointed out some of the huge loopholes in current lobbying law -- Newt Gingrich, for example, isn’t actually a lobbyist, he just spends lots of his time talking to lawmakers about how policy should be made. Y’know, as a historian.

The powerful (and corrupting, as we saw with Abramoff) influence of special interest money in politics can be extremely hard to follow, but better lobbying laws could change that. Lobbying activity is the most tangible means to measure the money and effort that powerful interests are spending to influence lawmakers.

Closing the loopholes that let “historians” like Newt Gingrich act as stealth lobbyists and creating real-time, online disclosure about just who lobbyists are meeting with and what they’re talking about would be a powerful first step to shining a light on who’s actually influencing our lawmakers.

How do we fix it? A good first step, as Daniel wrote the other day, is the Lobbying Disclosure Enhancement Act, introduced by Rep. Quigley. The bill needs your help to get more support in Congress. You can write to your rep right from OpenCongress.org to ask them to co-sponsor the bill. You can also read more about Sunlight’s lobbying recommendations and sign up to get updates on lobbying reform here.

The following guest post is a guest post by John Cummings, Wikipedian and founder of the Monmouthpedia project.

Monmouthpedia is the first Wikipedia project to cover a whole town. The project aims to cover every single notable place, people, artefacts, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible. We will use QRpedia codes, a type of bar code a smartphone can read through its camera that takes you to a Wikipedia article in your language. QR codes are extremely useful, as physical signs have no way of displaying the same amount of information and in a potentially huge number of languages. We aim to have 1,000 QRpedia codes in Monmouth by April including in the museums. We are going to have a free wifi network throughout the town and tablets in the museums to lower the cost of access to the information.

So far contributors have created 54 new articles and improved 70 articles, we’ve had 6 articles on the Wikipedia English language main page in “Did you Know?”. Contributors are choosing to learn how to edit Wikipedia and to give their time for the combined knowledge of others, I think this demonstrates how much people value free information and it’s benefits. It’s been amazing to teach people simple tools to give a wider reach to the information they have.

I started Monmouthpedia because I wanted everyone to have free and easily available information about the place in which they live. I grew up in Monmouth, I knew enough about the area to make a start by myself and make a plan that other people could see what I was doing and join in and add to and change. Local groups and the councils (Monmouthshire County Council have recently adopted the Open Government License) have been wonderfully supportive and there is a well connected network of people who are willing to help. Wikimedia UK have been very helpful and have put a lot of time and effort into supporting me. I feel as though for the large part I have been pushing against open doors, I’ve had a steady stream of new people to teach Wikipedia editing to since I started.

The project is still very much a work in progress, we are starting to work with schools and other groups, there is such a wide range of opportunities for so many groups of people to be involved, it feels like we’re trying something new every day.

For more info on the project visit monmouthpedia.org, you can Tweet at it on @Monmouthpedia and to get in touch with John via email it’s john.cummings [at] monmouthpedia.org.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

Here is the week's last look at transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events.

News Roundup:

Government

• It is being reported that Federal Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra will announce his resignation today. Chopra has served as CTO since 2009. (Fed Scoop)
• The Senate is prepared to act on the STOCK act next week. The act, which President Obama indicated he would sign during his State of the Union Address, aims to ban insider trading by members of Congress. (Politico)

Relevant committee hearings scheduled for 1/27:

• None.

Relevant bills introduced:

• None.

Do you want to track transparency news? You can add our feed to your Google Reader, or view it on our Netvibes page.

The following guest post is by Denise Recheis from reegle, the clean energy info portal.

Offering multiple explanations for a concept increases understanding and using LOD allows both humans and machines to semantically connect related content. This is a huge advantage in our increasingly complex world!

Especially in the field of clean energy, the increasing availability of LOD is really beneficial. To make sense of the often complex factors contributing to climate change and the highly technical solutions thereof, as well as rapid development in national and international policy regarding these factors, access to high quality and timely information is crucial.

The clean energy info portal www.reegle.info and the energy info wiki www.openEI.org see themselves as gateways to a wealth of information regarding renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate change issues. They are hosted by REEEP (Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership – where I work) and NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) respectively. Both organizations have a strong commitment to the idea of Linked Open Data (LOD) and have been integrating the core principles of LOD into their online portals.

In an effort to increase awareness about the possibilities associated with publishing and consuming LOD, we organized a well-attended workshop in Abu Dhabi in January 2012. Alongside the event, we brought out a publication explaining the basics of LOD, as well as the first steps for any organization considering joining the LOD cloud. “Linked Open Data: The Essentials” (published by Semantic Web Company and REEEP) is available as a downloadable PDF, as well as a booklet which can be ordered.

“Linked Open Data: The Essentials” also highlights some best practice examples, two of them being reegle and OpenEI. Reegle’s country energy profiles are a prime example of mashed up open data. These dossiers present the reader with statistics, maps, general facts and policy and regulatory details in a pleasant design. The information is provided by LOD providers such as DBpedia (Wikipedia), the UN and the World Bank, OpenEI and other highly trusted sources. Reegle has also developed an extensive thesaurus covering clean energy and climate compatible development with full liked data capabilities, which is available for free to re-use as a widget or word press plugin, and which is currently used as the basis for a brand-new API. Of course reegle provides all its datasets as Linked Open Data free for re-use and provides datasets in RDF (Resource Description Framework) format and via a SPARQL endpoint on our data portal.

OpenEI (Open Energy Information) has always seen sharing as one of its key missions. The data is available in RESTful API, RDF and SPARQL, for integration into external websites. But even when browsing the site, users benefit from a variety of LOD sources which enhance and increase the information presented. For example, several definitions offered in the glossary are collected from different LOD sources and OpenEI’s country pages feature information from a variety of sources, including reegle’s country energy profiles. This is easily possible when organizations rely on LOD, because when several websites describe the same things they can all be connected and give users a more rounded picture of sometimes difficult subjects.

Our expected end-users include the educational sector, helping students across the world study laws and regulation, efficient engineering, and the latest ideas in clean energy from many different authoritative sources in a single gateway. Specialists and project developers can quickly gather valuable information about specific regions and areas focusing on energy-relevant issues.

Integrating the principles of LOD has had a pleasant side-effect which has been highlighted in the recent workshop in Abu Dhabi: sharing data is often a starting point for fruitful collaborations between organizations with a similar agenda. Sharing data very often also means sharing the work burden. Each organization can then focus on their specific areas of expertise, while freeing up resources from areas that can be taken over by other organizations. Sharing the results of such targeted efforts generates high-quality content, and makes it available to all stakeholders in renewable energy, energy efficiency and climate adaptation/mitigation.

We are committed to increasing the share of information available as LOD, and will continue to actively support other organizations thinking of joining the LOD cloud.

The following guest post is by Lori Byrd Phillips 2012 US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation. She was the second person to become a Wikipedian in Residence, and has served in that role at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis for the past year and a half, where she is now also part time staff. It is cross-posted from openglam.org.

It was just under two years ago when Liam Wyatt proposed a concept that seemed so bold, it required the British Museum to run a risk assessment before they’d agree to it. Liam suggested that he serve as the “Wikipedian in Residence,” a role that would allow him to put into practice the idea that cultural institutions should share their knowledge with Wikipedia. Thankfully, the British Museum agreed. That basic premise has turned into a global movement known as GLAM-WIKI (Galleries,

Libraries, Archives, and Museums). Today, the GLAM-WIKI community is made up of Wikimedians from around the world who work to establish models and best practices that help cultural institutions share their resources with Wikimedia.

Prior to Liam’s residency in June 2010, cultural institutions had donated images to Wikimedia Commons, but there had not yet been an institution that committed to establishing a relationship with the Wikimedia community. The concept of building a mutually beneficial cooperation is at the heart of the Wikipedian in Residence scheme. The main role of a resident is to serve as a liaison between the museum and Wikipedia. Projects still include image donations, but now more often focus on staff workshops, outreach events (such as “Backstage Passes”) to connect with local Wikipedians, and on-site events (such as “Edit-a-Thons”) that help get cultural content out of the filing cabinets and into Wikipedia.

Following the British Museum, the Wikipedian in Residence trend began to spread. My residency at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis began in August 2010, followed in early 2011 with the Château de Versailles, Derby Museum and Art Gallery, and the Museu Picasso. By May 2011, two more major institutions joined in: the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In July 2011, Daniel Mietchen became the Wikimedian in Residence on Open Science. Working with the Open Knowledge Foundation, this was the first residency to adapt the GLAM model to open science — an exciting advancement of the Wikipedian in Residence concept! Even more residencies began in late 2011, including the Israel Museum, and many are in the works for 2012 and beyond.

I’ve enjoyed watching the evolution of the Wikipedian in Residence concept as it has been implemented in different institutions. Each residency has shown its own strength. At the Derby Museum, Roger Bamkin followed through on an idea to improve the multilingual capabilities of QR codes in exhibits. What resulted was QRpedia, a QR code-generating website that detects the language of the user’s phone and links to the Wikipedia article in that language. QRpedia has now been implemented in museums in the US and Europe and has been nominated for a Smart UK award.

Dominic McDevitt-Parks, the Wikipedian in Residence at the NARA, has broken new ground in facilitating the digitization and transcription of primary source materials through Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons. NARA’s cooperation with Wikipedia has been strongly incorporated into their broad strategy of increasing digital accessibility to their holdings and has proven to be a point of pride for the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero.

The concept of the Wikipedian in Residence has come a long way since the British Museum’s big gamble. Now, those who have served as Wikipedians in Residence travel the world presenting projects to increasingly enthusiastic cultural professionals. In April, four residents will come together from three countries to present at the American Association of Museums, the largest and most significant museum conference in the US. I can’t wait to see what incredible residencies and cooperations are around the next corner.

For additional information about Wikipedians in Residence, see the information page on GLAM Outreach or the GLAM Infographic.

Recent calls for technologists to hire lobbyists to educate Washington on internet issues miss a significant part of the big picture. Congress makes bad technology decisions because it has dismantled its ability to evaluate policy issues. While public mobilization and lobbying efforts can affect decision-making through political pressure, lobbying to educate congress on technology issues is like trying to teach a fish to sing.

The congressional technology lobotomy arose from two fateful decisions. First, Congress closed down its specialized office of nonpartisan technology experts in 1995, which provided a comprehensive view of technology issues. Second, it systematically undermined its remaining staff by spreading them too thin, eroding Congress’s ability to dive deeply into an issue.

The Office of Technology Assessment was created in 1972 to equip Congress with “new and effective means for securing competent, unbiased information concerning the physical, biological, economic, social, and political effects” of technology. OTA “was intended to facilitate congressional access to expertise and permit legislators to consider objectively information presented by the executive branch, interest groups, and other stakeholders to controversial policy questions,” in the words of a CRS report. It was a runaway success.

OTA’s small staff of experts (around 140 at its maximum) generated hundreds of reports at the relatively modest cost of $20 million annually. Unfortunately, it was defunded in 1995 as part of a broader effort to make the Congress appear more efficient. Despite repeated calls for OTA’s reinstatement, nothing has filled the void, and policymaking has suffered.

OTA’s defunded left staffers for committees and individual members of Congress to shoulder the increasingly complicated burden of evaluating technology issues. They are ill-equipped for the challenge. Over the last 25 years, congressional staff salaries have remained flat, with staff spread thin over a wide range of issues. With an average House staffer in a policy-role earning between $40-60,000, attracting and retaining top talent is virtually impossible. With a 10.4% cut in Congress' budget over a two year period that's taking place now, prompting layoffs and pay freezes, the lifeblood of smart decision-making is being drained away.

Increasing lobbying on technology issues is an easy, but ultimately insufficient, response to this problem. $92 million was spent for lobbyists representing for tv/movie/music issues in 2011, which is the same amount spent by telecom services and equipment companies. This monetary arms race may level the playing field for the well-to-do, but it hasn’t created good results. And both sides have good reason to manipulate the law to keep out the next wave of entrepreneurs.

Getting citizens involved will make Congress pay attention, but not every issue is a SOPA, where the internet shuts down in protest. Most issues fly below the radar. Only an empowered, capable Congress can make decisions on the many issues that will never lead to a Google doodle or Wikipedia shut-down.

A smarter Congress requires an investment in its staff, which will save us grief in the long term. Funding for Congress, with all of its supporting agencies, will amount to 1/10 of 1% of federal spending projected for 2012. Current spending on Congress is also roughly the same order of magnitude of what will be spent on all lobbying efforts this year. While lobbyists are necessary for industries like technology and telecommunications to express their views, if we want good policymaking, we need to empower Congress to be able to make good decisions. Restoring funding to OTA and reexamining congressional staff pay is the most effective place to start.

Update: A just released analysis from the Center for Responsive Politics looking at SOPA and PIPA-related lobbying efforts in the 4th quarter. "Companies that lobbied on the two bills spent at least $104.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, more than double the $49.3 million they laid out in the previous quarter." The number of lobbyists doubled from 462 to 956.

How much money was directly connected to SOPA and PIPA? CRP says "It's impossible to say...  since the reporting forms don't require that level of detail." Overall, businesses identified as computers/internet spent $125 million on lobbying for 2011, compared to $122 million for tv/movies/internet.

The Google Analytics URL Builder is a simple tool that helps you track traffic statistics for specific campaign related links.  The tool works by adding parameters to a link from a page on your site that you then track using Google Analytics.  When running an advertising or social media campaign, this is incredibly handy for tracking your ROI.

I'll walk you through how I used the URL builder for this past Tuesday's Sunlight Live coverage of the State of the Union address.

Below is a screenshot of the URL builder.  In the first field, you enter the main URL you want to track. In this case, I'm watching http://sunlightlive.com. The next few fields determine the "Campaign Source" or the traffic referrer you'd like to watch, the "Campaign Medium," the way in which the traffic referrer is driving to your site, and the "Campaign Name." For Sunlight Live, the source was Facebook, the medium was through an advertisement and the name of the campaign was SOTU-2012.

After entering in this information, click the "Generate URL" button, which will add those parameters to your original link:

http://sunlightlive.com/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Ads&utm_campaign=SOTU-2012

..Which we then used to direct Facebook ad traffic to the Sunlight Live site. Check out the full entry process below:

To track every medium you use, whether it's Facebook, Reddit, Google+, Delicious or some other site, you'll need to create a unique URL for each.

Once the campaign is over, open your site profile on Google Analytics to access your link statistics.  On the left side navigation, head over to Traffic Sources, then Sources, then Campaigns:

To set the date for the life of the campaign, look in the top right corner. Google Analytics will show you the campaigns for that time period, you'll need to sort them by Source so you can differentiate the sites. Above this list click on Source then Traffic Sources then Source:

Below you'll see the statistics by Source for the Sunlight Live State of the Union campaign over the course of two days. You can see that our Facebook Ads brought in the most traffic by far. (You may also notice I wasn't consistent with my naming conventions for Source -- I need to work on that.) For reference, our Facebook drivers are the Facebook link posted above (top driver) and our fan page (second driver):

Remember, this is only traffic to our Sunlight Live page through tracked links we pushed through social media and advertising. The screenshot below captures all traffic to the page, including both links we promoted and organic links from followers of Sunlight.  The first two links are ads we ran for the campaign, though the Google ads weren't captured in the campaign view (I'm unsure of the reason for that):

While Google Analytics provides plenty of information and site data, using the URL builder makes it much simpler to track the ROI on your campaigns and on your efforts to promote them.  What are your experiences with tracking campaigns? Have any of you used the URL builder tool in the past?

 

SOPA and PIPA appear to have been very, very good for K Street.

Companies that lobbied on the two bills spent at least $104.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, more than double the $49.3 million they laid out in the previous quarter, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Likewise, the number of clients represented by lobbyists who worked on the issues of intellectual property enforcement and online piracy -- the ones central to the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House (H.R.3261) and its Senate companion, the Protect Intellectual Property Act (S.968) -- increased by more than 100 percent, to 154, the Center found. The third-quarter figure was 72.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

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

News Roundup:

Presidential Candidates

• New Gingrich and Mitt Romney successfully maneuvered each other into disclosing potentially embarrassing documents. This doesn't necessarily mean that either candidate is committed to transparency in their campaigns or the government. (Fox News)
• Tensions between Hollywood and opponents of SOPA and PIPA in Washington don't seem to have hurt President Obama's ability to raise money from Tinseltown. The Obama Victory Fund is hosting several fundraisers to benefit the President's reelection campaign and the Democratic party in the coming weeks. (The Hill)

Relevant committee hearings scheduled for 1/26:

• None.

Relevant bills introduced:

• None.

Do you want to track transparency news? You can add our feed to your Google Reader, or view it on our Netvibes page.

The House of Representatives has released an agenda for its all-day Legislative Data Conference, set for February 2nd. If you are interested in attending, you can RSVP here.

 

 House Legislative Data and Transparency Conference Agenda

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Viveca Novak, 202-354-0111
               Michael Beckel, 202-354-0108             
              or press@crp.org

The nation’s economy may be slowly rebounding, but during 2011, the economic engine of K Street sputtered. Overall expenditures on lobbying were down for the first time in more than a decade, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

More than $3.27 billion was spent on lobbying in 2011, according to the Center's preliminary analysis of lobbying reports filed with Congress last week. (An estimated 90 percent of the reports due had been filed by the deadline Friday, so this figure is likely to increase slightly as the remaining fourth-quarter reports are processed.)

Notably, 2011 ranked as the first year since 1999 that lobbying expenditures have dropped, according to the Center's research. During 2010, when health care and stepped-up regulation of the financial sector were the subjects of fierce struggles on Capitol Hill, outlays for lobbying totaled $3.51 billion.

"The political gridlock in the 112th Congress has slowed the flow of money to K Street's hired guns," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. "Nevertheless, special interest groups, from the tech industry to public sector unions, continue to hire lobbyists to give them a megaphone in Washington, as well as first-class access and connections."

Still, despite a congressional session marked as much by what didn't get accomplished as what did in the areas of jobs, trade, abortion policy, online piracy, copyright, government spending and the national debt, a handful of interest groups posted banner years.

Internet giant Google more than doubled its spending on lobbying in 2011, posting a record $11.4 million, including $4.2 million during the fourth quarter. The National Association of Realtors, which spent more than $22 million on lobbying, also had a record year -- as did energy behemoth ConocoPhillips, which paid out more than $20.5 million for lobbying services.

Additionally, the TV, music and movie industry stood out among the biggest spenders on lobbying in 2011, posting figures that were up at least 10 percent above spending in 2010 -- and up at least 12 percent from 2009. These groups spent at least $122 million on lobbying in 2011.

Furthermore, commercial banks, telecomm services providers, the mining industry, public sector unions and advocates of reproductive rights were among those increasing their lobbying expenses.

But despite Google’s hefty increase in lobbying, the total for the tech industry was up only slightly in 2011. Last year, these interests spent at least $125.1 million, compared with $122.4 million in 2010.

The top-spending industries in 2011 were the pharmaceutical/health products industry (at least $236 million), the insurance industry ($158 million), the oil and gas industry ($146 million) and electric utilities ($144 million).

Within these four industries, lobbying expenditures were largely comparable to what they were during 2010, although the pharmaceutical industry and oil and gas industry were both down significantly from 2009, when health care and cap-and-trade energy proposals dominated the legislative agenda of the 111th Congress.

Similarly, spending by the high-profile securities and investment industry was nearly on par with such expenditures in 2010.

Last year, the securities and investment industry invested more than $98 million on lobbying as it sought to thwart the new regulations called for by the Wall Street overhaul championed by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). That was a shade less than the year before, when the industry spent about $101.4 million.

Investment firm Goldman Sachs alone spent $4.35 million on lobbying in 2011 (down from $4.61 million in 2010), while Morgan Stanley spent $2.37 million (down from $2.75 million in 2010).

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce once again ranked as the biggest spender on lobbying in 2011.

Last year, the Chamber and its subsidiaries spent $66.37 million, although, like ConocoPhillips, the National Association of Realtors and some other organizations, the Chamber's numbers include federal, state and grassroots lobbying expenses. (Most organizations include only federal-level lobbying expenses in their reports to Congress.)

Notably, the number of active, federally registered lobbyists continued to decline, with 2011 seeing only about 12,600 lobbyists' names appear in federal filings, according to the Center's research.

That's down from a high of nearly 14,900 in 2007, the year before new regulations and restrictions on lobbyists were implemented in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. Those policies, as well as new rules pushed by President Barack Obama, have increased the potential drawbacks of being a registered lobbyist.

OpenSecrets.org's searchable lobbying database is accessible here.


ABOUT THE CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS

The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation's premier research group tracking and reporting on money in federal politics and its effect on elections and public policy. The nonpartisan, nonprofit Center aims to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government. The Center's award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, is the most comprehensive resource for campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. The Center relies on support from a combination of foundation grants, individual contributions and custom data work, and it accepts no contributions from businesses, labor unions or trade associations.

This piece was prepared in collaboration with Ethan Phelps-Goodman.

In the last two decades, finance, insurance, and real estate have made many individuals quite rich, propelling them to stratospheric levels of wealth.

It’s also propelled these individuals into stratospheric levels of political giving. More than any other industry, individuals from the finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector, particularly those in securities and investments, are the key drivers of the overall growth of elite donors, or The Political One Percent of the One Percent.

An analysis of campaign contribution records by the Sunlight Foundation reveals that the number of donors in the FIRE sector giving at least $10,000 (in 2010 dollars) per cycle to political candidates, parties, and independent expenditure groups has increased from 1,091 in 1990 to 5,510 in 2010 (a 405% increase). These elite FIRE sector donors’ combined contributions have increased even more dramatically, growing by $162.8 million (a 700% increase, controlling for inflation) to $178.2 million in 2010.

As we detailed last month, individuals spending more than $10,000 on elections now contribute one quarter of all individual campaign contributions – even though they are less than one percent of one percent of the U.S. population. We dubbed these elite donors Political One Percent of the One Percent.

Nowhere, however, has the growth in elite spending been more dramatic than in the finance, insurance, and real estate  sector.

In 1990, 1,091 elite donors in the FIRE sector contributed $15.4 million to campaigns – a substantial sum at the time. But that’s nothing compared to what they contribute today. In 2010, 5,510 elite donors from the sector contributed $178.2 million, more than 10 times the amount they contributed in 1990.

The outsized expansion of the finance sector as a source of major contributions makes some sense, given the increasing wealth of an already wealthy sector.

The financial sector is now 8.4% of the domestic economy, a percentage that has been steadily growing for decades, and is up from about 6% in 1990. But even faster than has been the growth in compensation in the industry. In 1990, industry employees took home $244 billion, according to the U.S. Commerce Department; Compensation in the industry is now almost double the average U.S. compensation, and at one point in the 2000s, the industry accounted for almost 40% of U.S. business profits.

Figures 1 and 2 below detail the changes in absolute dollar contributions since 1990, charting presidential and mid-term election years separately (since presidential years generally have twice the giving, the time trends are easier to see this way). What jumps out in the figures is how dramatically the FIRE sector is leaving everyone else behind. Figures 3 and 4 detail the growth in the number of donors from the FIRE sector as compared to other sectors. Again, we can see them pulling away.

As we can see, the finance sector was always a leading source of campaign funding. But over time, the gap between finance and other industries has grown into a chasm.

In 1990, the next most generous sector, lawyers and law firms, was home to 472 donors contributing $5.7 million (as compared to 1,091 elite donors from the finance sector contributing $15.4 million). By 2010, there were 2,211 elite lawyer donors contributing $59.6 million (as compared to 5,510 elite FIRE donors contributing $178 million)

Put another way, what began as an edge of 619 donors and $9.7 million for finance over law in 1990 grew into an edge of 3,299 donors and $118.4 million by 2010.

None of this is to minimize the increasing contributions by other leading sectors. Lawyers have likewise stepped up in impressive ways, also increasingly distancing themselves from the rest of the pack as key sources of big money. The Communications and Electronics sector has also shown impressive absolute growth in this area, driven largely by high-tech and Hollywood money. But the finance sector towers over everyone else.

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Figure 4.

Digging a little deeper into the financial sector reveals that the growth in finance is mostly in the securities and investment part of the sector, followed by real estate. In 1990, 412 of the 1,091 elite donors from the finance industry came from the securities and investment industry, followed by 328 from real estate; by 2010, it was 2,178 from securities and investments, followed by 1,468 from real estate. In 1990, elite donors from securities and investments contributed $6.1 million and elite donors from real estate contributed $4.6 million. In 2010 elite donors from securities and investments contributed $84.0 million, while real estate donors contributed $44.5 million.

Looking at the historical distribution of finance money, it has consistently been bipartisan, going to candidates and committees from both parties, though slightly favoring Republicans in most years. In 2010, the industry gave 54% of its candidate/party money to Republicans. In 2008, 51% of the money went to Democrats.

Figure 5.

Party committees have been the biggest recipients of this money (53% of total contributions in 2010, 76% in 2008), then individual candidates (37% of total contribution in 2010, 21% in 2008) then independent expenditure groups (10% of total contributions  in 2010, 3% in 2008).

Individuals can now give up to $5,000 per candidate ($2,500 in both the primary and the general), to $30,800 to a party committee, and unlimited money to independent expenditure groups such as SuperPACs. Though these big-ticket donors have historically given less to independent groups, there is plenty of room for them to grow their contributions. In 2010, FIRE donors gave a historical high of 10% of their contributions to these independent groups, indicating that they are starting to catch on to their potential.

Cycle	Candidates	Parties	IE Groups
1990	39%	55%	6%
1992	27%	71%	2%
1994	33%	62%	5%
1996	14%	84%	2%
1998	19%	74%	7%
2000	16%	81%	3%
2002	19%	75%	6%
2004	27%	69%	4%
2006	32%	59%	8%
2008	21%	76%	3%
2010	37%	53%	10%

CONCLUSIONS

Less than one percent of one percent of all Americans account for one quarter of all individual campaign donations. These elite donors all contribute at least $10,000 per election cycle, giving money to multiple candidates, party committees, and sometimes independent expenditure groups.

Within this select community of elite donors, individuals who work in the finance industry play a particularly special role. Of the $774 million in individual contributions given by this class of elite donors in 2010, $178 million (23%) came from elite donors in the finance, insurance and real estate sector. Perhaps more importantly, the ranks and total contributions from these donors have grown more dramatically and substantially than any other sector.

Though it’s very difficult to directly measure the influence that finance and other elite donors are having, it seems fair to say that, to the extent that candidates and parties are eager to court these donors, they will want to keep them relatively happy, since they know that without the support of these donors, raising the money needed to compete electorally is more difficult. At the very least, candidates and party leaders will be spending more time with these financial sector donors than anybody else, hearing them out sympathetically on regulation, taxation, and other issues of concern, again and again. At the aggregate level, it's hard to imagine this not having some impact.

Great article in TechPresident today about San Francisco’s efforts to start a civic accelerator with Code for America, and what other cities are doing to implement the same idea in their own way. Government 2.0 geeks will no doubt find the news exciting and look to San Francisco as a beacon illuminating the way forward [...]

Who's been funding the presidential super PACs since last June is largely a mystery, and will remain so until next week. But how the groups have been spending their money is a different story, thanks to legal requirements that expenditures over a certain threshhold be disclosed quickly.

And the super PACs, just like the candidates they support or oppose, have shown deep differences in how they're allocating their money to get their messages across, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis of the expenditures.

The pro-Mitt Romney committee Restore Our Future, for example, reported that the vast majority of its $11.4 million in total spending through Jan. 24 -- 85 percent, in fact, or $9.65 million -- went to production of television and radio ads and buying the air time to run them. The rest mostly was split between direct mail and phone banks.

Almost all of Restore Our Future's ads have attacked other Republicans in the field, chiefly Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

Endorse Liberty, the super PAC that backs Ron Paul, has an entirely different bent. Roughly 92 percent of the $3.11 million it reported laying out in the same time frame was spent on Internet advertising -- the vast majority ($2.36 million) for Google ads, the rest mainly for ads on Facebook and StumbleUpon.

The different approaches reflect different target audiences. Romney "is sort of a mainstream Republican, and I think you reach his followers best by television," said Tobe Berkovitz, an expert on political advertising and communications at Boston University. "Ron Paul has an energized base of younger followers. They live on the net, they live on their phones, so you want to get them where they are."

"It's also much more cost-efficient" to go the Internet route, Berkovitz told OpenSecrets Blog.

The candidates' own campaign committees are becoming relatively sophisticated about their e-advertising -- Romney was at the front of the line when Twitter began running political ads last fall, for instance, and mobile advertising that appears on voters' phones depending on where they are geographically, has been used by Romney, Michele Bachmann and probably others.

It's not apparent, though, that such methods have been a priority for most super PACs. Winning Our Future was the only other one to even break $30,000 in e-advertising. The pro-Gingrich group spent between $490,373 and $987,452 on "email and internet advertising" and the like, although it didn't specify exactly where those dollars went, unlike Endorse Liberty. Those amounts range from 12 to 24 percent of the $4.17 million the PAC had reported spending as of Jan. 24. (We calculated the number as a range because some of Winning Our Future's expenditures are listed as "radio and email advertising" and there is no way to tell how much went for each purpose).

But the Federal Election Commission is considering whether to allow super PACs to skip reporting their pre-election spending on Internet advertising and simply allow them to include the amounts in their regular quarterly or monthly disclosures. Current law requires independent expenditures of $10,000 or more to be reported to the FEC within 48 hours; when there are 20 days or fewer before an election, expenditures of $1,000 or more must be reported within 24 hours.

An outfit called Western Representation PAC has asked the FEC for an advisory opinion to relieve them of the burden, saying that the reports that are now required create a "significant legal encumbrance upon WRPAC's First Amendment rights." The group, which is run by Bryan Shroyer, a former official of the Tea Party Express, maintains that the numbers are difficult to calculate because of the way that Facebook's advertising algorithm functions.

Western Representation is one of a new hybrid breed of PAC that maintains two accounts: one that can give as much as $5,000 per election to a candidate, as other PACs do, and another that operates as a super PAC, accepting unlimited contributions and using them to fund independent expenditures.

The draft response from the FEC's general counsel refused to grant the PAC's request. But at its public meeting on Jan. 19, when it was scheduled to take the matter up, the commission deferred action.

CRP Senior Fellow Bob Biersack contributed to this story.

The following guest post is from Regards Citoyens, a French organisation that promotes open data.

As part of  The Law Factory  project we are running an international conference for hacktivists and academics working on parliamentary monitoring and legislative studies. The conference will take place on the the 6th and 7th of July in Paris.

The conference will be held in English to ensure maximum participation from communities all over the world. At the event, a team from the project we have been working on with SciencesPo will unveil the first prototype of our legislative evolution monitoring tool.

Participants are welcome to give a 15 minute presentation or 5 minute lightning talk. Submissions should be made online before 1^st April.

More details online on The Law Factory’s website!

The Open Knowledge Foundation are delighted to announce the launch of the Panton Fellowships!

Funded by Open Society Foundations, Panton Fellowships will be awarded to scientists who actively promote open data in science.

• Visit the Panton Fellowships home page for more information including details of how to apply

Further Details

We firmly believe that “open data means better science”. Panton Fellowships have been created in order to support scientists – particularly graduate students and early-stage career scientists – to explore this idea, and to tackle those barriers which currently prevent science data from being made open.

Dr Cameron Neylon, of the Panton Fellowships Advisory Board, commented on the ‘real potential’ of the Fellowships to influence practice surrounding open data in the scientific community. ‘Panton Fellowships will allow those who are still deeply involved in research to think closely about the policy and technical issues surrounding open data’, observed Dr Neylon. By allowing scientists the scope both to explore the ‘big picture’ – gathering evidence to promote discussion throughout the community – and also to work on specific technical solutions to individual problems, the Panton Fellowship scheme has the potential to make a real impact upon the practice of open data in science.

Panton Fellows will have the freedom to undertake a range of activities, and prospective applicants are encouraged to formulate their own work plan. As Fellows will continue to be employed and/or study at their current institution, activities undertaken for the Panton Fellowship should ideally complement and enhance their existing work.

Fellowships will be held for one year, and will have a value of £8k p.a. For more details and information on how to apply, please visit http://pantonprinciples.org/panton-fellowships/.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

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

News Roundup:

Lobbying

• A former Lawyer for Newt Gingrich, who advised the politician on how to engage in advocacy without becoming a "lobbyist", is now the director of government affairs at the American Bar Association, which is trying to expand lobbying disclosure rules. (Roll Call $)
• The Justice department is losing two lawyers through the revolving door. Justin Shur, former deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, joined MoloLamken as a partner. Meanwhile, Warren Rosborough, a former trial attorney with the Antitrust Division is joining McDermott Will & Emery as a partner. (The Hill)
• Watchdog group Public Campaign praised President Obama's proposal to ban lobbyists from bundling campaign donations, but noted that it does not go far enough. (National Journal)

Relevant committee hearings scheduled for 1/25:

House:

• Markup of H.R. 3581, Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2011 (and other legislation). Budget. 10:00 am. 210 CHOB. Full Committee Markup.
• Solutions Needed: Improper payments total $115 billion in federal misspending. Oversight and Government Reform. 10:00 am. 2247 RHOB. Subcommittee on Government Organization, Efficiency, and Financial Management.

Relevant bills introduced:

• None.

Do you want to track transparency news? You can add our feed to your Google Reader, or view it on our Netvibes page.

Yesterday evening, John reacted to President Obama's SOTU speech in which the President proposed a ban on lobbyists acting as bundlers. He criticized the proposal as "unlikely to pass Congress, and unlikely to pass muster with the courts." It's true that Congress is unlikely to do much of anything for the remainder of this session, although my bet is that the courts would uphold a bundling ban if it were structured properly. Regardless, focusing on banning lobbyist bundlers is to ignore the elephant in the room: we need to fix who is required to register as a lobbyist in the first place .

Were Congress to act in 2012, the best thing it could do is to tighten the requirement of who must register as a lobbyist so that the Newt Gingriches, Tom Daschles, and other hidden influencers will be brought into the sunlight. There's no doubt that they both have lobbied, at least under the common-sense definition of  "influenc[ing] politicians or public officials on a particular issue." The legal definition says essentially the same thing, but it allows lobbyists to evade registration so long as they avoid either spending 20% of their time lobbying or directly contacting more than 1 covered official. This is incredibly easy to do, and creates loopholes that just about everyone agrees should be closed.

So if we're going to talk about lobbying reform -- and a Pew Charitable Trust survey released Monday says 40% of Americans believe that addressing lobbyist influence is a top priority for 2012 -- the best place to start is with fixing the lobbyist registration and disclosure requirements. President Obama has addressed lobbying reform in the past, most visibly in his 2010 State of the Union speech, and his administration's actions have shown sensitivity to the importance of this issue. But he seems to have gotten sidetracked.

A good place to start is with the Lobbying Disclosure Enhancement Act, introduced by Rep. Quigley, which directly takes on the lobbying disclosure loopholes, as well as Sunlight's recommendations on this issue and the ABA Lobbying Task Force's report. For a primer, watch the Advisory Committee on Transparency's event "Washington's Lobbying Fix," which discusses all of these proposals.

As a communication medium, I think e-mail is making a comeback. Don’t call it a comeback; I’ve been here for years. - Ladies Love Cool James I realize this seem patently ridiculous to anyone working furiously towards a state of inbox zero, or that struggles to maintain a reasonable number of unread e-mails in their [...]

In 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama proposed legislation that would have required all presidential candidates to disclose information about supporters who raised at least $50,000 for their campaigns during the two-year period prior to Election Day. That legislation was never adopted, but as a presidential candidate Obama voluntarily released certain information about his top fundraisers.

Obama has continued that practice as he revs the financial engine of his re-election campaign. Between April and the end of September, the Obama campaign released the names of 357 bundlers who had collected at least $50,000 to benefit him and the Democratic National Committee. Together, these elite moneymen (and women) raised at least $55.9 million -- or about $8 out of every $25 added to Obama's account during that time.

Bundlers often receive special treatment because of their ability to raise big money. Obama, in fact, elevated some two dozen bundlers to serve as ambassadors during his first year in office. 

• Fertitta Entertainment: $29,500
• Station Casinos: $29,000
• Ultimate Fighting Championship: $29,000
• Crow Holdings: $25,000
• Fresenius Medical Care: $17,400

It’s Congress Links for Jan. 25th, featuring responses to President Obama’s State of the Union address last night (at right, House Maj. Leader Boehner [R-OH], previous coverage on OC Blog): 

• The Hill: “President Obama used his election-year State of the Union address to issue a loud call for economic equality based on ‘responsibility from everybody,’ a theme prefacing his 2012 campaign message.”

• Ezra Klein, Wonkblog: “But what viewers of the State of the Union learned was that Obama has an agenda. An ambitious one, even. Whether they approve of it, and whether they approve of congressional Republican obstructing it, remains to be seen.” 

• Matthew Yglesias, Moneybox: “Almost everything the president touched on briefly sounded about right to me… The energy section initially bugged me, but I thought they landed it in a smart way. Infrastructure: Check. Deficit reduction must be balanced and long-term: Check. Tax progressivity: Check.”

• John Wonderlich, Sunlight Foundation: “It’s good to have a President willing to raise transparency and money in politics in the State of the Union. But when insider trading and an ill-fated lunge at bundlers are all the vision he has to offer, we have to wonder whether Obama sees his old transparency platform as a political liability, rather than a vision to be perfected and implemented.”

• Reihan Salam, National Review: “My Economics 21 colleague James Capretta argues that President Obama failed to make a compelling case for the connection between steep increases in taxes on capital income, increased public spending, and wage growth for the middle class…”

• Jamie Dupree, WSBRadio: in-person bullet-point round-up. 

• Congress Matters: “The House returns to work, but only briefly, to finish up the fifth suspension bill from yesterday, take up a Gabby Giffords-sponsored bill under suspension before she leaves the House, and consider a motion to go to conference on yet another FAA bill.” 

• United Republic: “Money in Politics Groups Mixed on Obama’s Speech”, feat. quotes from our non-profit partners Sunlight & CRP, and our allies in electoral reform Public Campaign & Common Cause. 

• Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC: open-phone call-in. 

I’ll add – if you watched, the Congress you saw assembled before you was not the federal legislature that the contemporary U.S. public deserves, with our efficient technology for a more transparent & accountable government. The Congress there was riddled with systemic corruption, closed-off back-room deals for campaign contributions (e.g. PIPA / SOPA), and gridlocked hyper-partisanship. The first step towards comprehensive reform is full public financing of federal elections – fair elections now. Several subsequent steps are necessary for a more delibertive democratic process – later this year, PPF plans to expand on this reform agenda to include planks for independent media (e.g. policies touted by our allies Free Press), net neutrality (e.g. Save The Internet), radical transparency (e.g. our allies LittleSis), and other core attributes of any legitimately representative democracy. 

To surf along with what we’re tracking, we recommend the lists feature on a popular micropublishing service: 

• Congress-Watchers on @opencongress
• #OpenGov on @ppolitics
• ‘Pol-Sci’ on @ppolitics

… what was your takeaway from the SoTU? Email us: david at opencongress. Always glad to hear from OC visitors & our terrific user community. 

… don’t miss John Wonderlich’s remarks on the micropublishing service last night about flipping the script on this arcane political monologue: “The State of the Union would be better described if every Member of Congress delivered their description to the President, instead.” Massive co-sign – as I put it on the same commercial service, “Free, libre & open-source technology (e.g, open API for constituent communication) can build a more representative & deliberative democracy.” Let’s build it together. 

The following is a post by Sam Leon, Community Co-ordinator for The Public Domain Review and other Open Knowledge Foundation projects. It is cross-posted from the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Public Domain Working Group Blog.

At The Public Domain Review we’re always scouring the internet for public domain gems. It’s simply incredible how much of our shared cultural heritage is now available for free online. But with so much content out there and with so many different digital collections to choose from it can often be difficult to know where to start looking for interesting and curious works. On top of this, it can often be difficult to understand what you’re allowed to do with a given work and what the license that is applied to it actually means.

It was because of these difficulties that we decided to write a Guide to Finding Interesting Public Domain Works Online. In the guide you’ll find information on how to collect leads, an overview of the main online public domain collections (e.g. Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive & Wikisource) as well as some basic legal information about licensing and the public domain.

Happy exploring! If you come across something that you think could be featured on The Public Domain Review give me a shout at sam.leon [at] publicdomainreview [dot] org.