Planet Open Government Open Source Hacking

Sunlight Foundation: 2Day in #OpenGov 2/8/2012

2012-02-08T16:21:12+00:00

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:

Government

Conference committees, meant to reconcile differences between House and Senate bills, have proved less and less useful in recent years. More often deals are being cut behind closed doors and away from public scrutiny. (Washington Times)
A new report found that, despite an earmark moratorium, a number of lawmakers directed tax dollars to a variety of programs that benefit their family members and areas near where they own property. (Washington Post)

Revolving Door

An amendment to the STOCK act will require political intelligence professionals to register under the lobbying disclosure law. But, they will not be subject to a cooling off period if they leave the Hill to work for a political intelligence firm. (National Journal)
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) hired Blue State Digital's client manager and senior communications strategist, Alex Kellner, to be her new digital director. (Tech President)

International

Mzalendo is a transparency website dedicated to monitoring the Parliament of Kenya. It has been around for several years, but recently undertook a major overhaul. (My Society)
Ghana's president, up for reelection this year, is facing a massive corruption scandal that has already led to the resignation of two cabinet ministers. (Sahara Reporters)

Relevant committee hearings scheduled for 2/8:

House:

Legislative Proposals to Promote Accountability and Transparency at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 10:00 am. 2128 RHOB. Committee of Financial Services Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit.
SBA Information Technology Mismanagement. 1:00 pm. 2360 RHOB. Committee on Small Business.
Union Worker Forced Political Contributions. 10:00 am. 2154 RHOB. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Interaction of Tax Policy and Financial Accounting Rules. 9:00 am. 1100 LHOB. Committee on Ways and Means.

Senate:

None.

Relevant bills introduced:

None.

Transparency events scheduled for 2/8:

Press conference on the STOCK Act. 12:30 pm. House Triangle, Capitol.

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

Open Secrets: Back to the Wall, Planned Parenthood Hangs Tough

Viveca Novak — 2012-02-08T16:03:17+00:00

Update, 2/8: The text below has been changed to reflect the fact that total lobbying expenses for Planned Parenthood should include those of Planned Parenthood of California. This brings the group's total 2011 lobbying expenditures up to $1.9 million, rather than $1.7 million as we originally wrote. The Center's website will be updated shortly to show the combined number.

Planned Parenthood fields a tough defense.

That was apparent last week in the dust-up over a breast cancer charity's decision to stop funding the group. Susan G. Komen for the Cure reversed itself, restoring Planned Parenthood's $680,000 per year grant, but not before Komen inadvertantly triggered millions in contributions to the women's health services provider from donors angry about the grant cutoff.

For another view of Planned Parenthood's ferocity in a fight, take a look at its tab for lobbying Capitol Hill and other parts of the federal government in 2011 -- the year that Republicans re-claimed the gavel in the House.

Planned Parenthood laid out $1.9 million for lobbying expenses last year, a record for the group and triple the $588,000 it spent in 2010. Pro-abortion rights groups collectively spent a total of $2.2 million making their case with the federal government, according to calculations by the Center for Responsive Politics, compared with $956,000 the year before.

Self-preservation was high on the list of issues Planned Parenthood lobbied on in 2011. According to its 2009-2010 annual report, the organization received $487.4 million that year in "government health services grants and reimbursements" -- close to half of its total revenue. But federal funding for the group would have been eliminated by a provision championed by Rep. Mike Pence, and Indiana Republican. Early last year, he pushed to get rid of all such money for Planned Parenthood -- which is used for cancer screenings, contraceptives and other purposes -- because the organization's clinics provide abortion services. It's already the case that no federal money can be used to pay for abortions.

The annual report says that Planned Parenthood spent 38 percent of its budget on testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, 33 percent on contraception and 14.5 percent on cancer screening and prevention. While it is the biggest provider of abortion services in the U.S., only 3 percent of its budget went for those purposes.

With the help of the White House, Planned Parenthood beat back Pence's initiative. But there were also attempts by the GOP House to restrict abortion by legislating that life begins at conception, to require pregnant women to listen to a fetus' heartbeat before ending a pregnancy and other proposals. In addition, conservatives tried to undo a portion of the health care overhaul law that will result in insurance coverage for most forms of contraception for working women.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion groups spent just $495,000 on lobbying last year -- their lowest total since 1998. However, that figure doesn't include money spent by conservative multi-issue groups such as the Family Research Council, which put a little more than $100,000 into lobbying.

Komen, the group that caused the ruckus last week, spent $710,000 lobbying at the federal level, mainly on provisions of the health care law having to do with breast health education and federal appropriations for cancer research.

Sunlight Foundation: 'Back to the Source': Colbert Super PAC Leads FEC Reporting, Gingrich Campaign and Others Follow

2012-02-08T14:47:19+00:00

Super PACs have been a hot topic in the news recently as reporters, advocacy groups, and the public try to follow the money flowing into the political system as the 2012 elections approach.

On January 31st MSNBC reported that Stephen Colbert's super PAC, Americans for A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, was the first to submit its end-of-year report to the Federal Election Commission. The deadline for these reports was January 31st.

Colbert included his super PAC's filing on his super PAC's website, ColbertSuperPac.com, but this is not required. This kind of information can generally be found on the FEC website under Campaign Finance Reports and Data, but you have to know exactly what you are looking for.

The FEC portal includes a variety of search tools, including a searchable database of disclosure reports, downloadable copies of electronic filings, images of all financial reports, and other campaign finance data. However, these search tools suffer from a lack of a user-friendly interface. Several organizations, including the Sunlight Foundation, ProPublica, and the New York Times, have taken FEC data and put it in more user-friendly formats while focusing on information most relevant to the upcoming presidential election.

A search for Colbert's super PAC using the FEC's Disclosure Database search tool returns 13 filings, including the Year-End report displayed on Colbert's super PAC website. This report indicates that the super PAC has raised $825,475.46 since July 2011 and spent $151,521.01 as of December 31, 2011.

TPM published an article as the FEC deadline approached as well that focused on Newt Gingrich's campaign filing. The article cited several specifics regarding Gingrich's campaign spending, all of which are publicly available using the same online FEC portal. A search for "Newt 2012," the official name of Gingrich's presidential election campaign, under the "View Images of All Financial Reports" tab returns a list of documents filed. Viewing the PDF of the Year-End report shows all the numbers used in the article mentioned above.

It is necessary to emphasize again that these tools can be extremely hard to use, and you have to be very precise in your search terms. For example, a search for "Gingrich" using either search tool will return many results for other organizations related to Gingrich, such as "Friends of Newt Gingrich," but it will not return other better options.

The TPM article stated that the campaign had $2.1 million at the end of 2011 and owed over a million dollars in debt. The top level summary on page two of the Year-End report shows the $2.1 million the campaign has in cash and the $1.2 million it currently owes.

The article specified that the campaign's debt includes $1,666.66 to Rick Tyler - a former Gingrich aide who currently manages a super PAC in support of his candidacy. A search for "Rick Tyler" shows the $1,666.66 the campaign owes this former Gingrich aide on page 5166.

The debt also includes $350,000 for private jet flights. A search for "Moby Dick Airways," the private jet company that it has been reported Newt Gingrich uses, shows that the campaign began the quarter owing $451,946, incurred an additional $33,008 in charges this quarter, then made a payment of $133,008 to conclude 2011 with an outstanding balance of $351,946.

Lastly, the article says that the campaign paid $47,005 to Gingrich to buy a mailing list. A search for "Newt Gingrich" shows the campaign's $47,005 disbursement to the candidate for the express purpose of "list purchase" on page 4954.

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey helped with the research for this post.

‘Back to the Source' takes a news article that makes good use of data and investigative techniques and tries to determine whether the underlying data that made the piece possible is publicly available. If you’d like to know where the data behind a particular piece can be found, please feel free to send us an email at mbuck@sunlightfoundation.com.

Open Congress: Anti-Web Censorship Bill Protest from Our Perspective at OC

Donny Shaw — 2012-02-08T13:45:00+00:00

Last month’s flurry of Stop-PIPA & Stop-SOPA online protests were an apex of activity for OpenCongress. Not only was January 18th, 2012 the single-highest day of traffic on OC since our launch in February 2007, but also the stop-PIPA action was in many ways the height of user engagement with active legislation in the U.S. Congress.

The huge “Internet blackout” event on January 18th was OC’s single largest day of traffic, with over 250,000 visits and more than half a million pageviews (and likely would have been much higher if we could afford more servers and cloud-scaling ability to handle the traffic rush).

Referrals to OC pages on PIPA from Craiglist, Reddit, Mozilla, and many others dwarfed the usual primary source of site traffic – viz., search engine queries for bill numbers & campaign donation data.
This tops our previous record of most-visits per day by 67% – that was in late March 2010, 150k visits around the signing of the major health care reform bill.
Together, the bills were the least-popular legislation with our user community in the past year, with less than 1% approval rating.
SOPA: over 500 user comments; PIPA: over 150.
In total, visitors racked up more than 260,000 pageviews of SOPA/PIPA content during the January 18th SOPA-strike event alone. This includes all the data aggregated by OpenCongress: official government information, actions & votes, bill text, news & blog coverage, campaign contributions, issue group analysis, videos, public comment forums, and free & open-source tools for users to email their members of Congress.
Since Nov. 26, 2011 – American Censorship Day – pages with SOPA info on OC have received over 700,000 views and PIPA over 250,000 — totaling over a million pageviews combined.
Since its introduction on 10/25/11, SOPA info has received over 850,000 pageviews; PIPA info, since 5/11/11, approx. 350,000 pageviews; totaling 1.2m pageviews on OC.

Users sent more than 8,000 emails, overwhelmingly in opposition to PIPA & SOPA, to their members of Congress during the Jan. 18th strike via OC’s unique Contact-Congress feature.

In the past week, users sent over 15,000 emails on both bills; since American Censorship Day on Nov. 26, 2011, users have sent over 40,000 emails on the two bills. (link to letters index page)
In total, over 50,000 emails have been sent via OC on SOPA & PIPA alone.

The wiki community project to Whip Count on PIPA exceeded our wildest expectations: it was viewed 40,000 times, with about 4,000 people clicking through to our Contact Congress tool to write their members of Congress and nearly 5,000 clicking through to a sheet of tips on how to effectively call Washington.

An impressive 12% went to the tips on calling page, which were optimized to provide the most effective communication & more-positive user experience in calling a Congressional office with opposition to a bill & request for more info.
Built on open-source semantic MediaWiki, we seek to bring over a similar whip-count form & accompanying materials to every pending item of legislation on the site for Groups to organize around.
The drop-down form on the wiki whip-count included eight nuanced position options, e.g. “leaning no – verbal”, to express different strengths of statement.
Documented position statements included links to THOMAS.gov (offiical list of bill co-sponsors), state newspapers, press releases on official government websites, verified social media accounts, and occasionally on Contact-Congress permalink letters on OC.

The mobilization of a vast number of citizens contacting their members of Congress is only half of the story of how the Great SOPA Showdown of 2012 shows that the Internet is changing politics. To be sure, the calls deluging congressional offices were the decisive factor in the bills’ defeat, but the use of free & open-source Web tools for online activism marked this as the first substantial case of the conversation between citizens and elected officials to happen in full public view. At OpenCongress, we built two tools that helped make this possible.

Grassroots campaigns to influence Congress have typically picked an upcoming vote or bill and asked citizens nationwide to call or email both their senators and/or their representative. The more sophisticated versions might only target citizens who live in the district of the members of the particular committee hearing a bill or pre-fill a letter in a webform that people can amend (or not) and send with a click. Constituents may receive a call or email back, but that usually concludes the conversation.

What made SOPA different was that the exchange between constituents and officials was being posted online, thus merging many private one-to-one conversations into a massive one-to-many conversation. And the back-and-forths between different citizens and the same senator thus changed from iterations of the same query-and-response into a continuing discussion between that senator and the public at large.

It might have ended there, but citizens started using social media to track the conversations and coordinate responses. Some top-voted threads on Reddit posted the defections from the bill and senators took to their Facebook pages to announce their opposition to the bill, which were promptly commented on, liked and shared on the personal pages of constituents at volumes many times the average post.

What transformed these public conversations from an effective way for people in any state to influence their senators into a way for the people to influence the senate as a body was the adoption of a common lobbyists’ tool: the whip sheet.

Whip sheets are simple lists of every member of the House or Senate with their current position on a bill. Well-funded lobby shops will chop up the list and send delegates to buttonhole each member and then target and re-target the members opposite their position until the get the necessary number of votes to win. They are even used by congressional leaders to make sure they have the votes to forward their party’s agenda.

SOPA Opera was the first effort to put a people’s whip sheet online. It used congressmen’s sponsorship of SOPA/PIPA or votes on previous, similar bills to make a rough prediction of where the current vote stood, which staff then augmented as more of them made public positions on the bills. Then OpenCongress posted the Protect IP Act Senate Whip Count, a user-editable form with every senator’s phone numbers, email contact forms, last known position on PIPA and a call log for users to record the date, time and content of their communications with Congress.

Using the Whip Count, citizens were able to pin down the position of each and every Senator (though for 23 of them, that position was “undeclared”). The call log shows that users contacted those senators more who were undeclared or supported PIPA, exactly as a lobbyist would pressure those senators on her whip sheet who had noncommittal or undesired positions. The Whip Count exceeded our wildest expectations: it was viewed 40,000 times, with about 4,000 people clicking through to our Contact Congress tool to write their members of Congress and nearly 5,000 clicking through to a sheet of tips on how to effectively call Washington.

Open Congress visitors used a number of other tools, including our money-in-politics analysis, supporter and opposition list, bill version tracking and user-marked-up text of the bills. In total, visitors racked up more than 260,000 pageviews of SOPA/PIPA content during the January 18th strike event.

Our Contact Congress tool was also a special point of pride for us. Visitors used it to send more than 8,000 emails to Congress. Contact Congress bypasses the clunky webforms on individual congressional webpages, letting users send emails to their representative and senators from one place and to include information like campaign contributions they received from industries involved in the legislation.

Part of what makes Contact Congress particularly useful from a social perspective are its fidelity and sharing features. Users have the ability to make a letter as publicly viewable, which enables them to share not only their letter but also the response from their senator or representative. Because the letter is routed through OpenCongress’ system, others can trust that the response has not been altered and it now becomes a public, verifiable source for a congressperson’s position on a bill. Because this was largely a one-day campaign, our users didn’t have time to receive many responses to post, but here’s a great example from one senator.

SOPA and PIPA showed that citizens can overwhelm Washington with public sentiment, at least when prompted to by the highest-traffic websites in the world. Short of such likely rare events, however, it is the adaptation and adoption of traditional lobbyist tools like vote counting – through whip sheets – and coordination of communications – through social media and tools like Contact Congress – that will help level the playing field between the body politic and the lobby.

Looking forward, we at OpenCongress are seeking to improve features like Contact Congress and to adapt the whip count tool so it is available to any group of citizens concerned with any bill. However, we don’t take any corporate or government funding, so we depend on public contributions to make that happen.

This post was co-written with OC Executive Director David Moore and OC Wiki Editor Conor Kenny.

Open Knowledge Foundation Blog: Announcing the School of Data

2012-02-08T13:13:04+00:00

The following post is by Rufus Pollock, Director and Co-Founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation, and Philip Schmidt, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Peer 2 Peer University.

Today, we’re announcing plans for a School of Data. The School will be a joint venture between the Open Knowledge Foundation and Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU). We also welcome other organizations who would like to participate — see below for more on this.

Why?

Data (open or otherwise) needs to be used, and to use data effectively requires certain skills.¹

The explosive growth in data, especially open data, in recent years has meant that the demand for data skills — for data “wranglers”² or “scientists” — has been growing rapidly. Moreover, these skills aren’t just important for banks, supermarkets or the next silicon valley start-up, they are also going to be cruicial in reserach, in journalism, and in civil society organizations (CSOs).

However, there is currently a significant shortfall of data “wranglers” to satisfy this growing demand, especially in civil society organisations — McKinsey expects a skills shortage in data expertise to reach 50-60% by 2018 in the US alone.³

Most formal training for data skills still takes place as part of formal statistics or mathematics programmes. It will be years before data specialist degree paths become broadly available and accepted, and even then, time-intensive degree courses may not be the right option for journalists, activists, or computer programmers who just need to add data skills to their existing expertise.

What is needed are flexible, on-demand, shorter learning options for people who are actively working in areas that benefit from data skills, particularly those who may have already left formal education programmes.

What?

To address this growing demand, the Open Knowledge Foundation and P2PU are collaborating to create the School of Data.

The School of Data will adopt the successful peer-to-peer learning model established by P2PU and Mozilla in their ‘School of Webcraft’ partnership. Learners will progress by taking part in ‘learning challenges’ – series of structured, achievable tasks, designed to promote collaborative and project-based learning.

As learners gain skills, their achievements will be rewarded through assessments which lead to badges. Community support and on-demand mentoring will also be available for those who need it.

So What Next?

In order to get the School of Data up and running, the next challenges are:

To create a series of learning challenges for a Data Wrangling 101 course. Developing Data wranglers will learn to find, retrieve, clean, manipulate, analyze, and represent different types of data.
To recruit community leaders to act as ‘mentors’, providing community support and on-demand mentoring for those who need it.
To curate, update and extend the existing manuals and reference materials, e.g. the Open Data Handbook and the Data Patterns Handbook etc.
To design and implement assessments which evaluate achievements. Badges can then be issued which recognize the relevant skills and competencies.
To openly license all education content (challenges, manuals, references and materials) so that anyone can use, modify and re-use it, including instructors and learners in formal education.
Get the word out! Promote Data Wrangling 101 to potential participants.

Get Involved!

At this stage, we are seeking volunteers to help us develop the project. Whether you would like to design educational materials, construct learning challenges, donate money or mentor on the course, we’d love to hear from you! Equally, if you are part of an organisation which would like to join with the Open Knowledge Foundation and P2PU to collaborate on the School of Data, please do get in touch.

You can register your interest using the form below:

Loading…

For more on this topic, see these earlier posts: http://blog.okfn.org/2011/10/31/scaling-the-open-data-ecosystem/ and http://blog.okfn.org/2011/09/15/open-data-a-means-to-an-end-not-an-end-in-itself/ ↩
Because this field is so new, terminology is still evolving. A ‘data wrangler’ is to ‘data’ what a ‘coder’ is to ‘code’. It is someone with the ability to find, retrieve, clean, manipulate, analyze, and represent different data. See http://blog.okfn.org/2011/02/11/as-coder-is-for-code-x-is-for-data/ for more on this topic. ↩
McKinsey Global Institute, 2011. Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, p.11. ↩

Computational Legal Studies: Legal Ethics Forum (LEF) Symposium on Legal Education’s Response to the Economic Realities Facing the Profession

2012-02-07T23:03:05+00:00

Sunlight Foundation: Ellen Miller responds

2012-02-07T22:58:23+00:00

Sunlight Executive Director Ellen Miller responds to this guest post by Mike Godwin:

There is little in Mike Godwin's response that we disagree with. As he writes, the debate over SOPA and PIPA was changed not by "politics as usual" or a late infusion of interest group lobbying cash, "but the participation of the online community, including Wikipedia, Reddit, and others, to let policymakers know about their unhappiness with the direction and process of the legislation." Amen to that. Our blogger, Lee Drutman, did not argue that this was not grassroots or that it was solely organized by Google or other tech lobbies. What he did write was, "Facebook, Google, Wikipedia and tens of thousands of others changed the scope of conflict in a flash. Harnessing the unique megaphone they had built as content providers, the online companies generated as many as 3 million e-mails to Congress, 7 million signatures and 3.9 million tweets. It was enough to cause many in Congress to wonder whether they had unwittingly kicked a hive. [Emphasis added]

And Drutman took care to note that something indeed had changed in the wake of the SOPA/PIPA fight: internet content providers on their own had managed to mobilize public attention. Drutman wrote:

It used to be the case that for this to happen, the mainstream media had to be involved in calling attention to the travesty. Those days are disappearing, and this is generally a good thing. By lowering the barriers to entry, the Internet has the potential to make political activism more democratic than ever before, and the SOPA turnaround is proof that it can work politically to engage a broad crowd in short order.

Where perhaps there is some disagreement between us and Godwin, whose work with EFF and Wikimedia we greatly respect, is on which sy-LA-byll to put the em-PHA-sis. Godwin argues that the campaign contributions and lobbying spending by tech companies was a minor or unimportant factor in the contours of the SOPA/PIPA fight; Drutman wrote that it could not be ignored and that the reality of the dynamics of power in Washington hadn't changed quite as much as some would hope. Indeed, consider this counterfactual: last year, when Google cut its deal with Verizon and the FCC over "net neutrality," there was also a howl of online protest, but that time nothing changed. The big money players were aligned instead of being divided, and grassroots opposition alone was not enough to prevent the deal from happening.

That said, we agree with Godwin that something else is also going on here that ought to cheer all fans of small-d democracy, of which we count ourselves. Because of the open, two-way nature of the Internet, as well as its large non-commercial sector, the SOPA/PIPA fight may mark the emergence of the networked public sphere as its own interest group. While some big tech companies joined the fight against the bills on their own, internet users rallied themselves too, and then pushed the bigger companies to join in, or risk losing their users' allegiance and business. In that case the story is not the traditional clash of narrow private interests, but the rise of a networked public sphere that has its own "lobby" that isn't just a business interest but more of a real public interest.

Sunlight Foundation: Guest blogger: Sunlight got it wrong

2012-02-07T22:57:51+00:00

A Sunlight analysis of the fight on Capitol Hill over SOPA is generating some pushback in the online community from activists who think we overstated the role of money and corporate lobbying in the debate. In the interest of broadening and deepening the conversation, we asked one of our critics, Mike Godwin, a former counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Wikimedia, for permission to print his counterpoint:

I believe that Sunlight (and one of its primary sources, OpenSecrets.org) missed the story. Just as I would not write an Occupy movement story grounded in how much money was spent for food, medical care, and tents, I wouldn't write about a "net-roots" popular movement focusing on the convenient fact that money was spent inside the Beltway during the time that the popular movement seems, temporarily, to have given some tech companies some traction on one issue.

It's well-established that Google's estimable DC presence -- their many dollars and their top-notch personnel -- had little effect on the ETAs of the SOPA and PIPA legislation before the holiday break. What changed the debate was not "politics as usual" or an infusion of cash, but the participation of the online community, including Wikipedia, Reddit, and others, to let policymakers know about their unhappiness with the direction and process of the legislation. This response was not organized by Google or any tech money at all (except perhaps the meager salaries that tech-policy writers tend to receive).

Response: Sunlight Executive Director Ellen Miller replies.

One thing I did notice as a close observer of the blackout and abrupt opposition to SOPA and PIPA was how quickly the Motion Picture Association of America and other content-company spokespersons adopted and propagated the narrative that the net-roots opposition was of Google's making. "Google owns the platform," I heard more than once from people who may be unclear on what "own" and "platform" might mean in the Internet context. It disappointments me greatly to see how smoothly Sunlight adopted and promoted a version of the narrative that this is just one set of industrial interests competing with another.

I spent more than a decade in Washington dealing both with content-company lobbies and with tech company lobbies, and a proper comparison needs allocation breakdowns, not rough totals (and not even broad totals over time). The range and substance of issues on which MPAA maintains a lobbying presence are not the same as the ones that tech companies invest in. They are not even the same as the ones that Google invests in.

To give you a comparison: the pharmaceutical lobby, the American Medical Association, the American Library Association, and the agricultural lobby may speak from time to time on the same issue, but we would be cautious before saying that the raw numbers they spend tell us anything about about comparative influence, or whether the outcome of a policy dispute is a function of investment of dollars (or, as we are perhaps too fond of saying, "politics as usual").

Now, nothing here should be taken as opposing discussion or criticisms of how money is spent in Washington -- quite the contrary. I believe citizens are actually capable of more finely tuned, granular analysis of where the money and influence is applied. I do not see that granularity or skepticism in Sunlight's article. I want breakdowns, names of lobbyists, how many visits took place, who visited whom, what was discussed, and so on. (From my own DC days, I know that most if not all of this is documentable.)

Now, once the the blackouts and other responses were being prepared and were implemented, certainly this enabled well-moneyed and well-established interests to say to policymakers, "Hey, this non-controversial stuff you've fast-tracked may not be so uncontroversial after all." And the fast and furious backtracking by supporters underscored what the policymakers were hearing. So you should not read me as saying that Google et al. simply got out of the way of the disgruntled public. There was synergy there, as there generally is in multifactorial human political events. The public protest enabled tech companies to say that the issue was a real one for individuals.

But the reductive treatment of the money issue by Sunlight obscures this. The blackouts would have occurred regardless of what checks the tech companies were writing and in what amounts. It is hugely important, because we believe (as we suppose Sunlight does) in the potential for democratic activism, and that it does us no service to reduce this policy disagreement to a question of who employed more lawyers. (Besides, as a lawyer who practiced both on Capitol Hill and at the Federal Communications Commission before moving West, I can assure you I know who sends these places more lawyer-lobbyists per week on media-related or copyright-related matters, and it's not Google or Microsoft or Apple or Intel or Cisco.)

And I can assure that the final outcome of this fight has yet to be determined. We may reasonably expect versions of SOPA and PIPA to return, only more felicitously named, and less transparently, once we're past this political year.

Open Secrets: Billionaire Harold Simmons Gave Big to Several GOP Super PACs in Fourth Quarter

Viveca Novak — 2012-02-07T22:56:00+00:00

(Correction 2/1: An earlier version of this story understated the contributions of Simmons and Contran Corp. in the second paragraph only. The actual figure is reflected below.)

Harold Simmons, long one of the GOP's most prolific donors, cemented his place on the speed-dial of fundraisers for conservative causes on Tuesday as several super PACs reported huge hauls from the Texas billionaire in their 2011 year-end campaign finance reports.

Simmons and his holding company, Contran Corp., gave $8.5 million to three super PACs, two of which support candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, in the last quarter of the year, according to research by the Center for Responsive Politics.

For starters, Contran made two $500,000 donations to the super PAC that was championing Texas Gov. Rick Perry's White House ambitions, Make Us Great Again. One of those came in late September and one in late October. Those gifts made Contran, and thus Simmons, the single greatest donor to Make Us Great Again, providing the group with 18 percent of its funds.

Perry dropped out of the race Jan. 19, but Simmons didn't wait 'til then to switch horses. On Dec. 15, he personally contributed $500,000 to Winning Our Future, the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC.

In January, Winning Our Future was instrumental in helping to keep the former House speaker's presidential bid from stalling by running slashing attack ads against frontrunner Mitt Romney at a time when the Gingrich campaign was short on funds.

Still, Simmons made his biggest donations by far to a super PAC that hasn't gone to bat for a presidential candidate -- yet. Between late October and late November, Simmons gave $5 million to American Crossroads, started with help from GOP uber-operative Karl Rove, and Contran gave another $2 million.

That's a staggering 60 percent of the $11.7 million raised by American Crossroads in the last three months of 2011, according to the Center's research. American Crossroads raised nearly $18 million overall in 2011, after raising $28 million during its inaugural year in 2010.

Simmons couldn't have used Contran's corporate treasury to fund groups running ads that expressly support or oppose a candidate, nor could he have given six-figure sums of money to such organizations, before the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision laid the groundwork for what are now known as super PACs.

That Simmons would divide his money among more than one candidate is no surprise. In 2007, he gave the maximum individual contribution of $2,300 to Republican presidential candidates Romney, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani -- all within a month. Simmons has been a Gingrich supporter in the past, as well, supplying the Georgian's GOPAC organization with major support, so it's not surprising that Winning Our Future would find a way to his checkbook.

Simmons has also never been shy to lend a hand to controversial political forays. During the 2004 election cycle, his Contran Corp. turned over $3 million to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that attacked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's Vietnam war record.

But Simmons has a lot more to give away, if he so chooses.

Forbes described him in December as "The U.S. Billionaire Whose Stock Increased the Most in 2011." The publication said the octogenarian's net worth "hit the $9.6 billion range" last year largely due to a surge in the value of Valhi, a specialty chemicals company Simmons controls through Contran.

Philanthropic giving, though, will likely consume more of the assets of Simmons and his wife, Annette, than political activity: Last March, they pledged to donate half their fortune to charity, a la Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.

Center for Responsive Politics senior fellow Bob Biersack contributed to this report.

Free Government Information (FGI): Sunlight Foundation Reports from Budget Hearings

2012-02-07T22:11:27+00:00

Daniel Schuman went to the hearing today on budgets for GPO, LoC, GAO, and CBO. On the Sunlight Foundation blog, he reports on the tiny room, the lack of space for the public, and he posts documents that were handed out:

An almost live look at today's H. Leg Branch Approps hearing, by Daniel Schuman, Sunlight Foundation, (Feb. 7, 2012).

The new acting Public Printer, Davita Vance-Cooks, gives her opening remarks.

Sunlight Foundation: 2Day in #OpenGov 2/7/2012

2012-02-07T22:03:58+00:00

Policy Fellow Matt Rumsey wrote this post.

Here is Tuesday's take on transparency-related news items, congressional committee hearings, transparency-related bills introduced in Congress, and transparency-related events.

News Roundup:

Campaign Finance

More than a third of advertising related to the presidential race has come from nonprofit groups that can keep their donors secret. (Washington Post)
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, regularly raises money from the defense industry. This year the industry found another member of his family to court, donating more than $19,000 to his wife Patricia, who is running for a seat in the California Legislature. (Republic Report)
Former Senator Russ Feingold (D-Minn) a longtime advocate of campaign finance reform, came out strongly against President Obama's decision to promote the super PAC supporting him. (Politico)

Government

The Department of Energy recently launched a new web portal. They have run into some problems with data access and are still migrating some of their information. Additionally, the DOE has large amounts of information that they do not release to the public. (POGO)
Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra covered a wide range of topics, including SOPA and open government, in his first major interview since announcing that he will step down. Wednesday is his last day as CTO. (The Atlantic)

International

Russia is in the process of becoming a full party to the OECD's Anti-Bribery Convention. Bribery has been a problem in Russia for some time. (Transparency International)

Relevant committee hearings scheduled for 2/7:

House:

Budget Hearing- Library of Congress, U.S. Government Accountability Office, U.S. Government Printing Office, Congressional Budget Office. 9:30 am. HT-2 Capitol. Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Appropriations.
Solutions needed: Improper Payments Total $115 Billion in Federal Misspending. 2318 RHOB. Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Organization, Efficiency, and Financial Management.

Senate:

Accessible Technology's Role in Educating the Disabled. Tues. 2/7. G-50 DSOB. 2:30 pm. Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Relevant bills introduced:

None.

Transparency events scheduled for 2/7:

The Global Internet and the Free Flow of Information. MAP Forum. 9:30 am- 12:15 pm. South America Room, Pew Conference Center, 901 E Street, NW Washington, DC 20004.
Open Source Higher Education. CAP. 10:00-11:30 am. Center for American Progress, 1333 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20005.

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

Sunlight Foundation: An almost live look at today's H. Leg Branch Approps hearing

2012-02-07T21:41:26+00:00

Civic.io: Code for America Brigade

2012-02-07T21:13:34+00:00

In late February and early March, a series of civic hacking events will take place as part of the new Code for America Brigade program. More than a dozen events will take place from Honolulu to Philadelphia and places in between. One of the primary goals of this new program from Code for America is [...]

Sunlight Labs: Introducing Lapidus, an Analytics Dashboard

2012-02-07T19:51:13+00:00

Lapidus is an Analytics Dashboard we developed in response to our desire to track metrics for all of our projects, whether they are web sites, APIs, mobile apps, etc. Sunlight has multiple projects that target different audiences and have different uses, but it is important for us to understand how all of these projects are used. Beyond that, we wanted to improve how we compared metrics across our projects -- while keeping in mind that not every possible comparison makes sense. With Lapidus we can view metrics across all of our projects in a single view, and when viewing aggregates across date ranges, Lapidus automatically color-codes certain metrics based on whether they increased or decreased from the previous period. Lapidus does not replace Google Analytics -- in fact it relies on GA for web metrics data -- but it does extend our ability to record and view additional metrics of our choosing.

This project was started by Jeremy Carbaugh (who named the project after a character from 'Lost'), who laid out the initial models for the metrics app with an eye toward flexibility. Ali Felski provided the design which also inspired some of the better features of the site (color-coding, sorting, etc.).

Capabilities

Lapidus is a Django project that consists of three fairly self-explanatory apps: metrics, loading, and dashboard (plus third-party apps and packages). The metrics app as you might expect stores the metrics data and metadata, and also contains the code for the API (using TastyPie). Lapidus's API gives projects the ability to push data into the system, so projects can actively contribute their own information. A Metric is defined by a combination of a Project and a Unit. The Unit carries some metadata about the metric: the category of metric ('web' and 'api' being the most common for Sunlight), the period (daily being the most common) and an observation_type, which determines what subclass of Observation gets recorded and provides clues to how the observation should be rendered.

The metrics app currently defines classes for CountObservation, ObjectObservation, and RatioObservation. The CountObservation is the basic workhorse for recording integer counts or various types. RatioObservation objects actually define a ratio between two existing observations, so we can record things like "bounce rates" and various averages and percentages. The ObjectObservation is potentially the most abstract, as it essentially stores JSON data. This is set to validate against a schema, currently a ranked list that contains a numeric value and possible a text label. This allows us to capture lists like "top pages" or anything of that sort. Since the underlying storage is JSON and the validation of the JSON occurs pre-save (using our own valedictory library), this class could be extended to validate and store other complex data types if the need arises.

The loading app consists of the management commands for loading data from various sources that we need to pull data from. Currently there are commands for Google Analytics, Facebook (shares), and custom endpoints. The loadendpoints and loadga commands rely on JSON configuration files to map what projects and metrics to load. The loadfacebook command simply looks at all projects that have a url defined on the model and submits a FQL request for link statistics. There is also a makeratios command for those times when you want to create an observation that is a ratio of two separate metrics. For example, to calculate "Average time on site per visit", we gather "time on site" and "visits" from Google Analytics (using loadga), and then run makeratios to create the desired "Average time on site per visit" observation. If a new source of metrics is to be added, doing so can be as simple as writing a new management command or configuring a project to push to Lapidus via the API.

The last app in Lapidus is the dashboard, the tool for determining how and when to display various metrics. The dashboard app, along with the templates, controls how the metrics are displayed. Given that various metrics are more than simple numbers ("time on site" is a count of time in seconds, for example), or that some metrics are not periodic but cumulative (Facebook shares), the dashboard had to handle different metrics depending on the various metadata. Of all the apps in Lapidus, this one probably took more time and consideration, and certainly is the first place to look for future development. There are a few models in dashboard that provide rudimentary assistance in controlling what gets displayed in the browser by allowing users to generate lists of projects and metrics. The dashboard gets the job done for all of the uses I was able to test, but there is certainly more that can be done to provide mechanisms for customizing and controlling the look of the data.

Technical Challenges

Metadata for Observations

While many metrics are counts for count's sake (Count Von Count would be proud), others may have a unit of measure such as time. Some metrics are ordered lists (top pages, top searches, etc.). Others are ratios that should be represented as decimals (pageview per visit) or percentages (bounce rate). There are certainly other types of metrics that weren't considered while writing this app. If you had a project oriented around sharing large datasets or media files, you might want to create a metric that records quantity of data downloaded per user, for example. Essentially, recording a numeric value is not always enough. Metrics require metadata to describe what the metric is. The CountObservation can handle metrics that can be represented as integers, which can handle many measurements, along with a little metadata. Google Analytics measures "time on site" in whole seconds (which python-googleanalytics returns as a float), so that fits in a CountObservation and the Metric object's Unit.observation_unit indicates that the number is a measure in seconds.

There are certainly additional descriptors that could be attached as metadata. The dashboard will color-code aggregate values for a date range based on whether they went up or down compared to the previous period. Really, the template will assign a class of .increased (green/good) or .decreased (red/bad), but currently the app assumes increases are good all of the time, which is not the case for certain metrics, like "bounce rate".

Lies, Damned Lies, and Analytics

If you've spent enough time working with Google Analytics data, you know that the numbers you see on Google Analytics can be a bit… slippery. Various explanations can be found on the forums, that all of the various servers gathering analytics don't always report back on time is one of the more reasonable-sounding explanations. Scott Stadum, our resident analytics analyzer, has seen different numbers from the front end versus the API as well as when checking the same observation on a different day. A search on the forums will turn up others who have seen the same issue. There are surely legitimate reasons to revise data, particularly when seeking the most accurate measures. However, not knowing when or how often these changes are made (and if there is a point when the number becomes canonical) makes it difficult to know when a tool like Lapidus should go back and revise it's recorded numbers. Moving forward, this is something that may cause new headaches, but at least the numbers can be reimported with a simple management command.

Tweets per site

There were a few other metrics we wanted to capture, amongst them the number of tweets about a site. There are analytics tools that capture and calculate this, and Google Analytics has recently started tracking tweets and displaying them in their front-end. However, their calculations are not currently available via their API. The Twitter API has an unofficial endpoint where you can uncover the the 'tweet count' for a particular URL, but they (to my knowledge) do not calculate a value for an entire domain. To calculate this intelligently, Lapidus would need to generate a site map (filtering out non-tweetable pages like API URLs) for a project's domain and then query Twitter for each URL. Google is already doing this heavy lifting (after acquiring a few social analytics companies in 2011), they simply have not yet exposed this social data as part of their API. There is a feature request ticket on their issue tracker, and the social engagement features are relatively new to Google Analytics, so it seems likely that this will become available in the near future.

Room for improvement

There are already some features we know we would like to add or update, amongst them:

Update to Google Analytics' new Core Reporting API. On December 5, Google announced an update (and name change) to their Data Export API. Version 3.0 of the newly minted Core Reporting API returns JSON rather than XML, and requires that applications be registered and use OAuth 2.0 for requests. This announcement was made fairly late in the process for developing Lapidus, but updating to Core Reporting API v3.0 is a priority moving forward.
Test new metrics. So far every metric used to test this app has been a daily-recorded value or a cumulative value with no period, so the daily time period is the one supported in the dashboard. Some of this is simply writing new (or updated) views, but there are also considerations to make about how different periods will display. When does it make sense to display hourly measurements next to daily? or weekly? At some point this will become an issue that needs to be addressed.
More metadata. Beyond the numbers and lists we record, it would be great to provide ways to define more qualitative analyses. What is a good or bad number when talking about bounce rate or number of downloads or any other metric?
Build admin tools for configuration and customization. In order to support more customization options, it makes sense to build out an admin that allows the customization of views and observation metadata in the admin web interface. Currently some of the customization is in the admin (creating Project, Unit, and Metric objects), while some pieces are in JSON files (connecting Project's to Google Analytics, for example). A truly flexible dashboard will allow site administrator's to handle configuration, define additional metadata (used to provide additional options used in rendering templates), and control view output via the admin interface. It will be important to find the right balance between flexibility and simplicity.

Moving forward

Lapidus seeks to address some of Sunlight's analytics reporting needs while remaining flexibility enough for others to adapt to their metrics needs. We've put our code on Github; we hope those with similar needs will find it useful.

Sunlight Foundation: Senators Take a Pass on Electronic Filing. Again.

2012-02-07T19:29:54+00:00

By an overwhelming majority, Senators passed the STOCK Act, a bill Majority Leader Reid described as, “a critical step toward restoring Americans’ faith in Congress” but failed—in fact actively prevented—to allow a vote on an amendment that would have required Senators and Senate candidates to electronically file their campaign finance reports.

Sunlight wrote a letter to Senate Leaders as well as the managers of the STOCK Act (Senators Lieberman and Collins) asking how they could have allowed at least 18 amendments to be voted on or agreed to, but somehow fail to include an amendment offered by Senators Tester and Cochran that would have ensured that Senators and Senate candidates file their campaign finance disclosure reports in the same manner that House and Presidential candidates do—electronically with the FEC. We hope one of them provides us with an answer that passes the smell test.

The answer can’t be that the electronic filing amendment fell outside the jurisdiction of the bill—the goal of which was to improve the actual and perceived ethical behavior of members of Congress. Electronic filing will speed public access to information about who is funding candidates’ campaigns. Delaying disclosure of that information makes it look like Senate candidates have something to hide. Moreover, plenty of amendments were voted on that fell outside the strict scope of the bill. Votes were allowed to prohibit bonuses to executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to prevent the creation of overlapping Federal programs, and to extend the bill’s requirements to executive branch agencies. So why not an amendment that will shine a bright and immediate light on campaign contributions to Senate candidates?

Likewise the answer can’t be that the amendment would have taken up too much floor time. No Senator has ever publicly opposed the measure, therefore no extended debate would likely have been necessary. A simple up or down vote on a three line amendment would have taken minimal time and allowed for all of the other votes to the STOCK Act to continue as scheduled.

We are left assuming the answer is the same as it always is--Senator Mitch McConnell. For reasons beyond our comprehension, the Republican leader has blocked electronic filing again and again and again and again and again.

We can only guess that he insisted the amendment be pulled, and, using whatever threats or powers of persuasion he could muster, convinced Leader Reid as well as Senators Lieberman and Collins that the STOCK Act would be doomed or delayed if the e-filing amendment were included. The others, not caring enough about this transparency measure to fight for it, simply acquiesced.

If we are right, it’s particularly ironic given what Senator McConnell said in a press release about requiring the same provisions in the STOCK Act to apply to the executive branch. “I think it’s pretty clear at this point that there’s broad bipartisan support for legislation that provides greater transparency in the Congress. The more important question at this point is whether the Executive Branch is willing to play by the same rules.”

We think the “more important question at this point” is whether Senator McConnell supports greater transparency for Congress and whether the Senate is willing to play by the same rules that provide greater transparency in the House and White House.

We hope any one of the Senate leaders who managed successful passage of the STOCK Act is willing to stand up and provide an answer to that question. And we hope each commits to bringing the Senate electronic filing measure to the floor for a straight up or down vote, where we are certain it would pass overwhelmingly, finally bringing Senate campaign finance reporting in the Senate into the 21st Century.

Letter to Leaders and Managers on Efiling Amendment

Open Secrets: OpenSecrets Blog PolitiQuizz: The NFL's Influence in the Hoosier State

Dan Hartranft — 2012-02-07T19:08:38+00:00

Now that the New York Giants have won Super Bowl XLVI, the NFL season is over until August. However, the political arm of the NFL will no doubt continue working to grab the attention of politicians in Washington, D.C.

As OpenSecrets Blog reported ov er the weekend, both the Giants and the New England Patriots have heavily favored the Democrats with their campaign contributions. The National Football League, on the other hand, has used its political action committee to distribute money more evenly between the two parties.

Today's question focuses on the NFL's relationship with lawmakers from Indiana, the state that hosted the Super Bowl. Since 2008, the NFL's Gridiron PAC has given $12,500 to Indiana's federal politicians. Many of those campaign dollars went directly to several who are up for reelection this year.
Which brings us to our question. We want to know:

"What federal politician from Indiana has received the most money from the NFL's PAC since 2008?"

The first person to provide the correct answer in the comments section of this blog entry will be awarded a free copy of The Blue Pages: Second Edition, the money-in-politics book for which the Center for Responsive Politics provided data and analysis.

As always, the answer can be found somewhere in the annals of OpenSecrets.org.

Now to settle last week's question. We wanted you to identify a growing tech lobbying giant. We asked:

For the first time ever, I reigned as the top spending client in the computers and Internet industry at the end of 2011. Firms that I retained in 2011 include the Franklin Square Group and the Gephardt Group. Who am I?

The answer, which could be found in the Ranked Sectors section of the Lobbying database on OpenSecrets.org, was Google Inc.

User 'Jim Feeley' was the first person to provide the correct answer.

Congratulations to Jim. Please send us an email at press@crp.org with a preferred mailing address and we'll send you your prize.

To everyone else: Good luck on this week's PolitiQuizz question!

Free Government Information (FGI): GPO Appropriations Request For Fiscal Year 2013

2012-02-07T17:50:11+00:00

GPO Press Release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 7, 2012 No. 12-10

ACTING PUBLIC PRINTER PRESENTS APPROPRIATIONS REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013

WASHINGTON-Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks presented the FY 2013 appropriations request for the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) today before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Legislative Branch Appropriations. GPO is requesting no increase over the level of funding the agency is receiving for FY 2012 due to savings garnered from cost-cutting activities last year as well as projected workload changes for FY 2013. GPO's budget request also includes a significant shift in funding away from conventional printing and distribution toward digital systems. The current level of $126.2 million is a 6.6% reduction from FY 2011 and about a 15% reduction from FY 2010. GPO's funding level for FY 2013 is provided through three separate accounts in the annual Legislative Branch Appropriations bill:

. The Congressional Printing and Binding Appropriation covers the cost of information products in digital and print formats that GPO produces for Congress. About 70% of this cost is for preparing the electronic files used for both digital access and printing. For FY 2013, GPO is requesting $83.6 million, a decrease of about $7 million.

. The Salaries and Expenses Appropriation of the Superintendent of Documents primarily covers the cost of the Federal Depository Library Program, which works in partnership with 1,220 libraries nationwide to provide public access to Federal Government information. For FY 2013, GPO is requesting $34.7 million, a decrease of about $300,000.

. The GPO Revolving Fund receives appropriated funds for specific technology investment and facility improvements. For FY 2013, GPO is requesting $7.8 million. The request includes funding for the continued development of GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) to support increased online access to congressional and Federal agency information as well as other digital information technology improvements.

GPO achieved significant savings in FY 2011 by reducing unnecessary overhead expenses and conducting a buyout that helped reduce staffing by about 15%. As a result, GPO achieved positive net income of $5.6 million for the year. The agency, whose information production and dissemination operations have transitioned to digital technologies, is currently operating with its smallest workforce in more than a century.

"GPO is doing more with less in meeting the digital information needs of Congress, Federal agencies, and the public," said Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks. "GPO's plan of reducing costs while continuing to expand services to our customers is working and showing real and measurable benefits."

OMBWatch: Freedom of Information Act Portal Would Boost Responsiveness, Improve Efficiency

2012-02-07T16:56:23+00:00

An interagency project underway could revolutionize implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and significantly improve transparency and efficiency. The project to develop a government-wide portal for FOIA requests, a goal long supported by the open government community, could deliver as soon as this fall.

Background

Under FOIA, federal agencies respond to public requests for their records. Each agency requires different procedures for submitting a request and tracking its progress, which can be confusing to members of the public. Innovative technologies, already in use at some agencies, could increase proactive disclosure, improve responsiveness, and reduce backlogs. But not all agencies have taken advantage of these opportunities. Many agencies do not have web forms to submit requests, automatic tracking of request status, electronic communication with requestors, or proactive disclosure of request logs or the documents released.

To improve the situation, OMB Watch and other open government groups recommended in 2008 that the government invest in better technology for FOIA, including a centralized system where the public could file FOIA requests with every agency. An OMB Watch assessment in March 2011 showed that, while there had been no progress toward a centralized system, agencies had made some progress in using technology to streamline their FOIA systems. For instance, the Treasury Department launched an online request form in April 2011. However, most agencies have implemented only a few of these modern practices or none at all, despite being recommended as best practice by the Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), the government's FOIA ombudsman.

The Project

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken the lead on the development of a multi-agency FOIA system that would include the best practices from across the government. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Commerce Department formed a partnership with EPA in September 2011 to work on the project. They expect the portal to launch in October 2012. Details on the project were presented to the public at a December 2011 conference and in a Jan. 9 OGIS blog post.

The portal would provide a single interface through which the public could submit requests to any participating agency, eliminating the need to find the contact information for multiple agencies. The system would automatically assign tracking numbers to requests, which the requester could use to automatically view the status of the request, obviating the need to wait for manual replies from agencies. Agencies could also generate e-mails to requesters through the system to seek clarifying information or send invoices for fees, reducing mail delays and postage costs.

When an agency identifies records responsive to a request, it could add them to the system. Consultations and referrals to other agencies could occur within the system, reducing the need to send documents around. Because the current consultation and referral process is a frequent source of delays and dead-ends for FOIA requests, improvements in timeliness here would be very welcome.

Released documents would be uploaded to a public website, and the requester would be notified of their availability. This critical feature would improve transparency by making released documents fully available to the general public, rather than delivered only to the requester.

The system would also allow requesters to submit appeals electronically. Withheld documents would remain in the system without public access but would be quickly available for agency review in the event of an appeal.

The project partners estimate the cost to build the system at about $1.3 million dollars, with annual operating costs of $500,000 to $750,000. The project will keep costs down by leveraging the existing infrastructure of Regulations.gov, in which all agencies already participate. With full participation across the government, the agencies estimate the FOIA system would save a whopping $200 million over five years from improved efficiencies. Although the project partners have not released the assumptions and calculations behind their cost estimates, the likelihood of considerable cost savings, as well as significant benefits to government transparency, make the project a worthwhile investment.

The project is being developed under a fee-for-service model, in which participating agencies would contribute from their budgets to fund the portal's costs. The partners are exploring expanding the project to include other agencies.

Concerns

Although the benefits are likely to be considerable, agencies may hesitate to join the project without a clear directive from Congress or the Obama administration. In a time of budget contraction, the fee-for-service model may give pause to some agencies, despite the fact that the expected costs would likely be only a fraction of what agencies currently pay to respond to FOIA requests on their own. Agencies may not want to abandon their current FOIA processing systems because of attendant "switching costs" like training staff to use a new system or even contractual obligations to current vendors supplying the agency's FOIA system. It would be unfortunate if these concerns blocked broader adoption of the new system, because the portal will be markedly less useful to the public if only a few agencies participate.

Importantly, the portal must maintain high standards of usability for the public. If the system is difficult to use or unreliable, then the public could be deterred from using it. Open government advocates have criticized Regulations.gov, whose infrastructure will underpin the FOIA system, as being confusing and user-unfriendly. It remains to be seen if the FOIA portal can do better. But even if the initial release is clunky, agencies could iterate the system to improve usability once the infrastructure is in place.

Recommendations

Agencies, the administration, and Congress should support this important effort to improve transparency and efficiency. Additional agencies should join the project as soon as possible. The administration should speed this process by directing agencies to utilize the multi-agency portal, as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) did in 2004 in a memo directing agencies to use Regulations.gov. Congress should also ensure that agency budgets can support any up-front costs for this innovative project that should result in significant savings in the future.

For Updated News and Information:

OMBWatch: Super (Loud) PACs and Soft-spoken Issue Advocates

2012-02-07T16:44:32+00:00

Outside groups are spending nearly 1,300 percent more on broadcast advertising for the 2012 election than they did in 2008, according to an analysis released on Jan. 30. This is the clearest demonstration yet that Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has fundamentally rewritten the rules for political spending.

The Jan. 31 disclosure reports filed by independent expenditure-only political action committees – typically referred to as “super PACs” – contained few surprises: super PACs have been raising, and spending, dizzying amounts of money in an attempt to influence the 2012 elections. In fact, these more than 300 "independent" (that is, "not coordinated" with a candidate or political party) groups have accounted for more than 40 percent of all the broadcast ads aired during the Republican presidential primaries, as compared to only three percent of the 2008 ads.

While candidates are vying to attract the support of a broad swath of voters, the super PACs endorsing them are funded almost entirely by very few, very wealthy donors. For example, more than 80 percent of the $17.9 million dollars collected by the super PAC supporting (but not connected to or coordinated with) Mitt Romney's campaign came via six-figure contributions. Five other super PACs supporting Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Jon Huntsman showed a similar pattern. Winning Our Future, a pro-Gingrich super PAC, received $10 million from just one couple.

While super PACs must remain independent from candidates and political parties, new federal election rules have allowed many of them to coordinate with traditional political action committees (so long as the two keep separate bank accounts). So far, corporations and labor unions cannot manage these hybrid PACs; however, a case now pending before the Federal Election Commission (FEC) could change that by late winter. Hybrids retain the ability to make independent expenditures out of their super PAC account and campaign contributions out of their traditional PAC account. Dan Backer, the attorney handing the cases, told Politico that hybrid PACs are "the best demonstration yet of flexibility and power and the ability get results for your dollar."

Though the FEC is making it easier for corporations and wealthy individuals to "speak" by pouring cash into the political process, the rules for some nonprofit advocacy groups are not moving as quickly. The penalties for violating the restrictions on nonprofit organizations' interaction with political campaigns can include excise taxes or even revocation of nonprofit status, but issue advocates often don't know whether or not they are engaging in a risky activity: the determination of what speech is permitted hinges on a vague determination of all the "facts and circumstances" surrounding the comments.

Writing for the majority in Citizens United, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy opined that the First Amendment "prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech." It is difficult to reconcile the ongoing loosening of the restrictions on corporations' political spending with the continued restriction on issue advocates' political speech.

For Updated News and Information:

OMBWatch: The House's Fake Budget Process Changes

2012-02-07T16:33:09+00:00

During the week of Jan. 30, the House began debating a slew of budget reform measures, part of a package of 10 bills proposed by the House Budget Committee that affect everything from budget resolutions to the president’s veto power. Of the 10 pieces of legislation, two have passed the House so far.

The two bills that passed the House last week involved changing how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), an independent analyst of the cost of legislation, does its work. The CBO scores legislation for its budgetary impact and provides long-term budgetary guidance for members of Congress. The office’s reports are highly regarded, and CBO’s independence from the political fray is its strongest asset. But these two bills would change that.

The first bill, the Baseline Reform Act of 2012, would require the CBO to remove inflation from its discretionary budget baseline, which it produces every year. This baseline predicts what the budget will be in the future if Congress keeps current laws in place. Currently, the baseline calculation is adjusted for inflation.

This adjustment is designed to give Congress a true estimate of ongoing operating costs for programs: if inflation goes up, the cost of operating a program will rise as well, even without any changes in staff or services. Forcing CBO to exclude inflation and show expenditures in nominal dollars builds in a bias toward slowly reducing the real costs of all government programs over time.

The second bill, the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act of 2012, would require the CBO to include in its cost estimates the macroeconomic effects of legislation, specifically the "revenue feedback" a bill would generate. Such estimates are called "dynamic analyses," although the bill does not use this term. For any bill that would impact the economy by more than 0.25 percent, the CBO would be required to report on "major economic variables, including real gross domestic product, business investment, the capital stock, employment, and labor supply" and "the potential fiscal effects of the bill or resolution, including any estimates of revenue increases or decreases resulting from changes in gross domestic product."

The proponents of this method claim that lower taxes spur economic growth, which, in turn, results in increased tax receipts. If certain extreme assumptions are built into dynamic models, tax cuts appear to pay for themselves. Of course, this logic is what led to the large deficits that the George W. Bush administration left the Obama administration. And no serious analysis has ever determined that tax cuts pay for themselves.

The other eight bills in the House Budget Committee package are similarly ideological. (A list of all the House Budget Committee bills under consideration can be found here.) One bill would move Congress onto a biennial budget cycle, where Congress produces two-year budgets, instead of the current annual process, making it harder for the government to respond to crises. Two other bills seek to limit the size of government by instituting strict spending caps or limits on the size of the budget relative to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Another would require that every federal program “sunset” after a period of time. Yet another proposed bill would give the president a line-item veto power, making it easier to cut certain programs.

The theme of these bills is clear: they are designed to bias the process toward cutting spending. But budget expert Stan Collender notes that Congress already has plenty of tools to cut spending – if the House and Senate can agree on what to cut.

It’s unfortunate that real budget process reform is not on the table. The current process has too many choke points, making it difficult for Congress to budget responsibly and pass all its yearly spending bills on time. Instead, the budget is typically rushed through Congress in the span of a few short weeks, with twelve spending bills often smashed into one, with little transparency or real debate on spending priorities.

In fact, Congress is already designed to make it hard to spend money, with a split between authorizing committees, which approve programs, and appropriating committees, which approve funding. And yet a third committee – the budget committee – oversees the process between the two.

To be approved and funded, a program must first pass through this legislative gauntlet. In all, a spending bill must be signed-off on by at least one authorization committee and one of its subcommittees, an appropriations committee and one of its subcommittees, and the Rules committees (twice) and the floor (twice), and it must do this in both houses. That's 16 decision points at which a program could face cuts or outright elimination.

At each step of the way are myriad opportunities to hold up the legislation. For instance, on the Senate floor, any member can stop almost any legislation using a filibuster, requiring a supermajority of his or her colleagues to break it.

All of these choke points make it easy to hold up spending. The Senate Budget Committee finds itself unable to report out a budget resolution because the Democrats on the committee cannot agree on the appropriate spending levels. The House Appropriations subcommittees load their bills full of poison-pill policy riders, holding the budget hostage to their ideological agendas.

To improve fiscal policy outcomes – i.e., to ensure outcomes that better reflect national priorities – the budget process needs an easier path, one with fewer obstacles and more opportunities for public participation. Simplifying the budget process should be something both parties can agree on, but they are currently too busy manipulating the process for their own political advantage.

For Updated News and Information:

OMBWatch: Revenue Proposals in FY 2013 Budget Anything but a Surprise

2012-02-07T16:31:33+00:00

One doesn’t need an inside source at the White House or an advance copy of this year’s budget to know what the bulk of the proposed tax provisions in the Obama administration’s 2013 budget proposal are likely to be. The debt ceiling deal, recent rhetoric at campaign stops, and the president's State of the Union speech have painted a good portrait of what we can expect to see on Feb. 13.

The biggest question is how the president intends to stay under the discretionary spending caps put in place by last year’s Budget Control Act. Analysts will be looking for more specifics on the president’s call for multinational companies to pay the equivalent of an alternative minimum tax and waiting for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to estimate the revenue this provision might bring in.

Other revenue proposals will call for tax reforms to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share and to close unnecessary business tax loopholes.

The president has been able to persuade Congress to pass some of his more important tax cut proposals for families and individuals, but other cuts either have or will expire shortly. The refundable Making Work Pay Tax Credit, which was part of the Recovery Act, expired in 2011. The Payroll Tax Holiday, part of the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts the president signed into law at the end of 2010, reduced each worker’s federal payroll tax deductions by two percent. But the payroll tax holiday is set to expire at the end of February, so the president’s budget is likely to call for an extension of the tax cut through the remainder of 2012.

The American Opportunity Tax Credit, also part of the Recovery Act and continued through the Bush tax cut extension, is set to expire at the end of the year. The opportunity tax credit, known as the Hope Credit, reimburses students or their families for college tuition and related higher education expenses. Look for the president to call for an extension of the Hope Credit as he has in his last two budgets.

Obama's budget is also likely to call for the expiration of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2013, but surely nothing will happen until the lame duck congressional session after the November elections. The president previewed his argument during his recent State of the Union Address, asking, "Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else – like education and medical research; a strong military and care for our veterans?" Emphasizing the choice, Obama noted, "We can’t do both."

We can also expect proposals to raise the exceptionally low estate tax back to its 2009 levels and to raise the capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to at least 20 percent.

The FY 2013 budget proposal will also call for enactment of the so-called "Buffett Rule." Obama first formally introduced the idea in September 2011, saying, "No household making over $1 million annually should pay a smaller share of its income in taxes than middle-class families pay."

The president presented a tweaked version of the Buffet Rule at the State of Union, combining closure of the carried interest loophole with a ratcheting-up of the alternative minimum tax for individuals making $1 million a year or more, to 30 percent. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has already introduced this iteration of the Buffett Rule as legislation.

In addition to proposed changes in the tax code related to individual income, the administration is likely to call for closing a number of corporate tax loopholes. The White House has continually advocated for ending tax preferences for oil companies and the so-called Last-In-First-Out method of accounting for businesses; expect that advocacy to continue.

The president has also called for financial institutions to pay a financial crisis responsibility fee since he entered office. In his State of the Union address, President Obama reiterated that call but claimed his administration would now be billing the proposal as a way to help pay for mortgage relief, rather than covering the cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), as it was original devised.

With so many items left on the president’s to-do list, it’s hard to take seriously Republican revisionist arguments that Congress gave President Obama everything he wanted during his first two years in office. Had this actually happened, our national fiscal situation would have been quite a bit rosier.

Government Printing Office: President Obama’s FY 2012 Budget Summary Tables

Government Printing Office: President Obama’s FY 2011 Budget Summary Tables

Government Printing Office: President Obama’s FY 2010 Budget Summary Tables

For Updated News and Information:

Open Secrets: Male Donors Fuel Ron Paul's Campaign, Barack Obama Sees Most Gender Parity

Michael Beckel — 2012-02-07T14:30:38+00:00

Is Ron Paul the candidate with the most machismo? There's certainly something about him that appeals to others of the male persuasion.

According to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics, approximately 83 percent of the money Paul has raised from donors who gave more than $200 has come from men. That's more than any other major presidential candidate.

Republican-turned-Libertarian Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, ranks behind Paul as the candidate most popular with men, financially speaking. They account for an estimated 78 percent of what he's brought in.

At the other end of the spectrum, President Barack Obama comes the closest to gender parity in terms of campaign cash: 44 percent of his money has come from women, 56 percent from men, according to the Center's estimates.

Campaigns must disclose the name, address, employer and occupation of only those donors who give more than $200. Those itemized records are the basis for the Center's estimates, although not every donation can be classified by gender.

Overall, men account for about 72 percent of all money raised by federal-level candidates since January 2011, according to the Center's calculations.

That means that, among the current crop of GOP candidates still in the race, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have both collected above-average amounts of money from women. Romney has relied on women for about 30 percent of his itemized contributions, while Santorum has raised about 32 percent of his itemized contributions from women.

Meanwhile, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, like Paul, has seen above average support from men. About 77 percent of the money Gingrich has raised from people giving in excess of $200 has come from men.

Here is a table detailing the estimated percentage of campaign cash each presidential campaign has raised from men and women.

table.tableizer-table {border: 1px solid #CCC; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px;} .tableizer-table td {padding: 4px; margin: 3px; border: 1px solid #ccc;} .tableizer-table th {background-color: #104E8B; color: #FFF; font-weight: bold; padding: 4px;text-align:center;}

Candidate	% Female	% Male
Paul, Ron	17%	83%
Johnson, Gary	22%	78%
Gingrich, Newt	23%	77%
Bachmann, Michele	25%	75%
Cain, Herman	25%	75%
Huntsman, Jon	27%	73%
Romney, Mitt	30%	70%
Pawlenty, Tim	31%	69%
Santorum, Rick	32%	68%
Perry, Rick	33%	67%
Obama, Barack	44%	56%

Notably, Paul, Obama and Gingrich have all raised about half of their money from small-dollar donors who contributed $200 or less, as OpenSecrets Blog previously reported. Santorum has raised about one-third of his money from such donors, while Romney has collected only about 9 percent of his money from small-dollar donors. It's impossible to know the gender breakdown of those contributions based on public records.

Center for Responsive Politics senior researcher Douglas Weber contributed to this report.

Open Congress: Senate Passes FAA Bill With Anti-Union Language

Donny Shaw — 2012-02-07T14:25:00+00:00

By a vote of 75-20, the Senate has given final passage to a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill that would make it tougher for transportation workers to unionize. Under the bill, the National Mediation Board — the agency that manages labor issues for the railroad and airline industries — would not be allowed to call for an union election unless at least 50 percent of the employees of a company sign authorization cards requesting an election.

The new rules would make it more difficult for workers in the transportation industry to hold a union election than in just about any other industry. Under the current, National Mediation Board rules, once more than 35 percent of employees sign authorization cards the agency can deem that to be an adequate showing of interest and call for an up-or-down secret ballot vote on forming a union. And under the rules of the agency that deals with union issues for just about all non-transportation industries, the National Labor Relations Board, only 30 percent of employees are needed for an adequate showing of interest.

The new union-formation language was added to the bill during the conference committee process and has not been given complete legislative delibration. In a letter to Congress, union officials called out the process:

A rewrite of long standing labor law deserves proper and due consideration through the normal deliberative process. Acting otherwise directly conflicts with the non-partisan recommendations of the 1994 Report of the Dunlop Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations. This is particularly true of this law which was uniquely created through labor and management negotiations. Unilaterally changing that law without labor’s input and without due deliberation threatens to unravel its carefully balanced goals of labor stability and uninterrupted commerce. Rewarding the House Republican Leadership’s desire to rewrite decades of long standing labor law in a flash by inserting an unrelated and controversial labor provision in a much needed aviation safety and security bill, without notice, hearing, or debate, sets an extremely dangerous precedent.

The bill has already been passed by the Republican-led House. It now goes to President Obama to be signed into law.

Sunlight Foundation: Obama Super PAC Thoughts

2012-02-07T14:24:54+00:00

Last night's announcement came as no surprise -- that the President would formally align himself with super PAC run by former White House staffers. The corrupting influence of money in politics, according to the President's public persona, is a threat wielded by rank-and-file lobbyists and insider trading. It's been about a year since the post Citizens United President Obama, who railed against the threat of dark money in the face of campaign finance regulation.

Messina's announcement did make one helpful clarification -- that the President still supports having a better disclosure law for outside spending. If that's true, he sure has a funny way of showing it. A State of the Union that doesn't even acknowledge that the floodgates have been opened, and continues to paint lobbyists as the problem (while continuing to accept bundled checks from their bosses.)

Now we know why disclosure and reform were absent -- they've been jettisoned, relegated to an awkward reassuring line in the announcement that the biggest checks are now welcome, despite the President's persistent warnings throughout 2010 that we should make no mistake in remembering how unlimited, often secret donations affect public service. Descriptive rhetoric was apparently insufficient, and thanks to Republican obstruction in the Senate (and absolute apathy towards the issue on their own) we'll get to live through the dark money arms race, rather than imagining it.

The announcement suggests that the President negotiated with the super PAC, and that his involvement is predicated on disclosure that meets the standard set by the law. That's a pretty low standard, since it's the law, and since it's the same law that Obama says he's committed to (silently) changing.

We will do so only in the knowledge and with the expectation that all of its donations will be fully disclosed as required by law to the Federal Election Commission.

"As required by law" may as well be written "quarterly, unreliably, and in a way that still permits anonymity". The technically legal presented as rigorously ethical. "We'll follow the law I railed against as ineffective" might be a better paraphrase.

The partisan lines around campaign finance disclosure are about to get rearranged, and it's unlikely that they'll become a more productive force for reliable disclosure, especially if Obama continues to use disclosure as a rhetorical shield (through the visitor logs) and especially if the partisan logic of unilateral disarmament continues to obscure the thousand other choices about transparency and accountability that are involved in creating a Presidential dark money machine.

Open Knowledge Foundation Blog: OGDCamp + OKCon = Open Knowledge Festival 2012 in Helsinki, Finland!

2012-02-07T10:15:51+00:00

The following post is by Kat Braybrooke, London-based Community Coordinator of the Open Knowledge Foundation (Regional Chapters and Groups) and a core organiser of OKFest.

On September 17-22 this year, global communities will be descending on the shores of Helsinki for a week-long celebration called the Open Knowledge Festival – and you’re the first to be invited!

For this festival – the first of its kind in the world – we are bringing Open Government Data Camp (OGDCamp) and Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) to the same place to provide new opportunities for collaboration. We’ll start the week by supporting practitioners working in the fields of open government and municipal data, and end it by exploring the diversity of open knowledge initiatives from a global perspective. The organising team, a talented gathering of Finns and leaders from around the world, are already hard at work planning a busy week of seminars, workshops, lectures, hackathons, keynotes, coding jams and interactive media sessions that will bring together participants from a wide variety of backgrounds in new ways.

Another important element of OKFest is its Nordic location. The host city of Helsinki is in the midst of an urban Finnish renaissance built on inclusive communities. It is home to one of our first incubating Local Chapters, and as the next World Design Capital for 2012, the city will also be hosting an inspiring cohort of open data practitioners who combine design, art, academia and technology to support innovation in new and interesting ways. Helsinki locals organised the city’s first Open Knowledge Meetup this October and have just opened the first FABlab in Finland at the Aalto University Media Factory. We look forward to highlighting even more Finnish projects in the field of open knowledge, and hope to see the participation of many representatives of Nordic nations.

Most importantly of all, we want your ideas to be highlighted at OKFest. We are currently looking for proposals regarding sessions, satellite events, research streams, hackathons, lecture topics and other forms of collaboration. Have a great project or idea that you want to share with the global community? This is the place to do it. Join our public discussion list and say hello here and start finding collaborators on Twitter using the hashtag #okfest.

We hope to see you in Helsinki, Finland this September for a week of new friends, open knowledge and global inspiration with a Nordic twist!

Photo from OGDCamp 2011 thanks to Volker Agüeras Gäng on Flickr.