Federal Computer Week Launches Government Transparency Coverage

The surge in public discourse, if not public policy, surrounding transparency is not lost on those providing reportage to the government and government contractor community. In May, Federal Computer Week (FCW) launched a landing page and associated stories called "Transparent Government Solutions."

In introducing the new coverage, Jeff Erlichman wrote:

Tracking where the money is going is only one element of transparency. Full disclosure of government rule making and how government programs are operating are two others, but there are many, many more – and many, many more waiting to be discovered.

The low-hanging fruit is about so-called Government 2.0 and Vivek Kundra, the new administration's relatively inexperienced federal CIO. As FCW notes, there's much more to it. For starters, FCW indicates they'll be tracking the work of Greg Elin (Sunlight Foundation), Jerry Brito (GMU), and Teresa Nasif (Office of Citizen Services at GSA).

The FCW story points to these emerging issues:

• Tradeoffs between data security, accuracy and privacy
• Social networking and other citizen engagement
  
• Federal / state / local government inter-agency transparency
  
• More than chasing the money
  

The Federal Computer Week report was produced by Custom Media Group, referred to as an "independent editorial arm of 1105 Government Information Group." A PDF of the current version of the report was also provided.

"OpenCongress.org" Opens for Business

Today NPR/WNYC's "On the Media" covered the launch of OpenCongress.org. The new web site is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. The Foundation's technology advisor Micah Sifry, interviewed for the radio story, said that much of the information presented on the new site is "hidden in plain sight" or available only on print form not widely disseminated. Sifry suggested that legislators and their staffs will be able to examine Blogosphere buzz more readily, which might not have been readily available previously.

The site features include:

• An examination of Sen. Schumer's voting record, for example, allows comparison with other Senators with most-similar and least-similar voting records.
• Links to blog sites appear to be automated, which can result in spam-filled, poorly spelled and even more poorly reasoned commentaries along with the good
• Data from OpenSecrets.org details sources of campaign contributions, though the groupings can be odd, e.g., "Lawyers and Lobbyists"
  
• PRI's "Marketplace" has been featuring lobbyist-subsidized travel by legislators. That information is also available at OpenSecrets.org.
• Most-viewed Bills. E.g., today's most-viewed bill is H.R. 73, "Citizens' Self-Defense Act of 2007." Not surprisingly, the bills are not always covered well in the general press. (Nor should they, necessarily -- this would depend upon the particular bill, though the presence of buzz is a curiosity that is itself news).
• RSS feeds are available for Most-Viewed Bills, Most-Viewed Senators, Most-Viewed Representatives, Most-Viewed Committees, Most-Viewed Issues, specific committees (e.g., House Armed Services Committee)
  

OpenCongress.org is a model that would work well for state and local governments, but funding is required to make this possible. A lot of work goes into OpenCongress.org and OpenSecrets.org that is less easily funded for smaller constituent groups.