Abracadabra! 300 pages out of thin air

It doesn't take a dedicated Congress watcher to realize this can only lead to bad things:

Today is the day that the House plans to vote on the cap and trade bill that has mysteriously changed this week. Last night, the bill changed again. We are now looking at an additional 300-pages that will be considered as amending H.R. 2998, the replacement bill of origins unknown.

This means that we are looking at 300 extra pages added to the bill overnight. Stay tuned for more and go to ReadTheBill.org to tell your congressman that we need time to read the bills. (Emphasis mine)

300 pages takes time to read and understand. It can be 30 pages, 300 pages, or 3,000 pages but the principle remains the same: not reading a bill before voting yes is a breach of the responsibility your constituents gave you.

What is your state's transparency rank?

Do you ever wonder how Nevada compares to other states in terms of transparency? Well, now you can find out.

The Center for Public Integrity has released its updated report that gauges how transparent each local government is. To come up with the rankings, they looked at "… state statutes, interviewed ethics officials and used a 43-question survey that measures public access to information on legislators’ employment, investments, personal finances, property holdings, or other actitivities outside the legislature."

If rankings aren't enough for you, check out this interactive map.

The biggest surprise: Louisiana.

After languishing at the 44^th spot in 2006 and at the 46^th spot in 1999, it has rocketed to the top, becoming the most transparent state in the nation. Anybody out there know what happened? Was there a "throw the bums out" wave of sentiment that got rid of the old-guard and brought in the reformers (Gov. Jindal being a good example) after Hurricane Katrina?

I was also surprised to see Vermont in dead last. You'd think that a tiny state in the Northeast with a healthy civic culture would do better than that.

Our own Silver State came out near the bottom at 42. Not terribly surprising but definitely disheartening.

There is little reason for almost half of the states to receive failing grades in these surveys. What needs to happen to change this? Do we need some sort of independent, non-partisan council to enforce/strengthen transparency laws? In many states allowing elected officials to police themselves is simply not working.

(Thanks Sunlight Foundation)

"A mixed review …"

That's the verdict on Recovery.gov from the Coalition for an Accountable Recovery. The Office of Management and Budget was supposed to use Recovery.gov to to report where all the funds from the stimulus bill went.

From the release:

“While we applaud the guidance for advancing transparency in a number of key respects, we remain deeply concerned about the fact that data from many recipients of Recovery Act funds will not be collected or disclosed,” said OMB Watch director and CAR co-chair Gary Bass. “If the Recovery
Act is to fulfill President Obama’s promise about taxpayers being able to go online and see how every dime is spent, then we need sub-recipients’ and sub-sub recipients’ data online, too. This not only includes how the money was spent but also who benefited.” (Emphasis mine)

In addition, the Sunlight Foundation notes that, unfortunately, the raw data sets of Recovery.gov do not have to be made public.

If it is to have any hope of being useful, Recovery.gov needs to change direction -- quickly.

Website shows power of crowdsourcing in transparency movement

The Guardian provides another example of how powerful a cadre of open government activists working in unison can be. In this case, hundreds of activists started working on a website the paper recently created, developed and launched that focused on uncovering the details of the MP expense scandal.

The Daily Telegraph may have had a team of 25 journalists working on the MPs' expenses - but within 10 minutes of the launch on Thursday afternoon of the Guardian's crowdsourcing application to examine them there were 323 people, almost all outside the Guardian, doing the same task.

The application itself was developed at breakneck speed: coding began on Thursday 11 June, and was complete - aside from ongoing bug fixing as people began using it - by 3.30pm Thursday 18 June.

Less than 30 minutes after the launch, activists reviewed over 2,000 expenses. You can view the website here.

The Guardian is also developing unique features such as a "Top Reviewer" list that notes who has done the most contributing to the site.

As an interesting technical note, the software used to create the website (a web framework called Django) is the same I used to create TransparentNevada.com.

Loophole allowed blocking visitor logs

Newsweek on what was behind last week's blocked visitor logs story:

After Obama's much-publicized Jan. 21 "transparency" memo, administration lawyers crafted a key directive implementing the new policy that contained a major loophole, according to FOIA experts.

But in a little-noticed passage, the Holder memo also said the new standard applies "if practicable" for cases involving "pending litigation." Dan Metcalfe, the former longtime chief of FOIA policy at Justice, says the passage and other "lawyerly hedges" means the Holder memo is now "astonishingly weaker" than the [former Attorney General Janet] Reno policy. (The visitor-log request falls in this category because of a pending Bush-era lawsuit for such records.) (Emphasis mine)

Question: if the pending Bush-era lawsuits were dropped, would the current administration stop their stonewalling and release the visitor logs?

Administration officials say the policy is under review. At this point, when I see some positive results I'll feel a bit more hopeful.

Five months in and the Obama Presidency has left plenty to be desired.

White House moves to post bills online earlier

So far, Obama's record on this campaign pledge has been glaringly awful.

"When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so that you know what your government’s doing."

There are new promises, however, that this pledge may finally be getting implemented:

Now, in a tacit acknowledgment that the campaign pledge was easier to make than to fulfill, the White House is changing its terms. Instead of starting the five-day clock when Congress passes a bill, administration officials say they intend to start it earlier and post the bills sooner.

“In order to continue providing the American people more transparency in government, once it is clear that a bill will be coming to the president’s desk, the White House will post the bill online,” said Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman. “This will give the American people a greater ability to review the bill, often many more than five days before the president signs it into law.”

I'm not going to hold my breath, but at least the White House realizes that even their defenders are unhappy with their record on transparency so far. We'll be keeping an eye out and report substantive changes if/when they occur.

LVRJ Publisher: Newspapers need a role in printing property tax records

I have previously supported posting county tax records online instead of printing them in newspapers. Newspapers, understandably, are not keen on the idea of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad revenue. Assembly Bill 307 -- which would have had county websites display tax records on their websites instead of having newspapers print them -- died after the Governor's veto.

Yet that hasn't stopped Las Vegas Review-Journal publisher Sherman Frederick from highlighting what can go wrong if we depend on county websites to provide public information. Discussing a story published in the Sun about building violations and CityCenter:

"The correction notices and notices of violation (for construction of CityCenter) were, until recently, available on a county Web site, as well as on a computer terminal at the county building. The county recently removed all notices from the Web-accessible database — leaving the county computer terminal as the public’s only option for viewing them."

If this happens with CityCenter violations, Frederick contends, it could happen again with tax records.

But is that the whole story? Below Frederick's story is a comment by Clark County Public Communications Officer Dan Kulin refuting Frederick's take on the issue. According to Kulin, Frederick missed this quote from the Sun story:

"[T]he notices were removed from the Internet after the county received a complaint that a particular document — unrelated to CityCenter — contained information that shouldn’t be public."

"After the complaint, the county asked the district attorney to review the accessibility of the documents, (Ron) Lynn said. The DA cleared the practice of placing the notices on the Internet and the county plans to soon put the documents back online, he said."

The transition from newspaper-printed to online tax records won't be perfect and might inconvenience a few, but the benefits greatly outweigh the drawbacks. Using newspapers made sense a generation ago, but today county taxpayers could save $500,000 a year if officials posted the records online. Of course, steps do need to be taken to ensure no single "point-of-failure" exists -- that the tax records remain available to the public at more than one location.

Public officials should also make the raw data of the tax records available in an easy-to-use format (XML, CSV, spreadsheets, etc.). This would allow many parties to take the data and create their own presentations of it.

With properly written guidelines, accessibility concerns can be resolved and transparency can increase.

Tory leader wants more transparency

Encouraging:

Tory leader David Cameron has said MPs' expenses should be published in an "uncensored form", including addresses.

Speaking at an EU summit in Brussels, Mr Brown said: "The redacted expenses were part of the old system; that cannot be the new system.

"The old system is being swept aside by the changes that we are making and a new, far more transparent system, is being introduced.

"While ensuring that security issues are addressed, as they have to be, our first principle must be maximum transparency."

US elected officials should adopt the same attitute.

Interesting Supreme Court visualization

A few weeks ago I mentioned how cool it would be to use technology to examine the history of the Supreme Court. Well, SCOTUSScores.com has done just that by compiling "the relative location of each U.S. Supreme Court justice on an ideological continuum" as determined by two political science professors. The data set runs from 1937 until today.

Some interesting things I noticed:

Despite the "progressive" rulings of Roe, Brown, and Miranda the average and median score of the Court never dipped into real liberal territory.

Rehnquist was considerably more conservative during his time as Associate Justice than Chief Justice. Maybe the "prestige" of being the first among equals was the cause?

William Douglas was the longest serving Justice in Supreme Court history at 36 years and by the end was a committed liberal.

The Court's "liberal wing" started out less liberal than the "conservative wing" did conservative.

Probably the biggest ideological change occurred between Marshall and Thomas.

Anyway, take a look through the spreadsheet and reach your own conclusions.

Glenn Greenwald reviews Obama transparency record

Conservative critiques of the Obama administration are plentiful, but critiques from the other side of the aisle, like this one from Lawyer and Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald, are harder to find.

Greenwald has compiled 14 instances of the Obama administration breaking its promises on ushering in an era of transparency. The issues mostly revolve around national security/executive power transparency pledges that have not translated from a campaign pledge to Executive policy.

Greenwald does concede limited successes in the fight for transparency (release of the "torture memos", FOIA protocols) but overall Obama's record has been far from encouraging.

Eyebrows raised at lobbyist contract renewal

You don't see this everyday:

A routine renewal of a longtime lobbyist's contracts turned into a heated discussion among Clark County commissioners about how those who are paid handsomely to promote the county are seldom scrutinized.

Taking his job seriously, County commissioner Steve Sisolak argued that it was irresponsible to fork over $2 million to "lobbying, public relations, marketing and community outreach" organizations without a competitive bidding process in place.

Especially at a time when the County is cutting back on other spending, the amount spent on lobbying can be seen as extravagant.

Even though the lobbyist in question, Marcus Faust, was ultimately rehired for the job, Sisolak's criticisms of the overall system found sympathy with other commissioners.

Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani said that although lobbyists are necessary, they must answer to the public.

"How do we properly make sure taxpayers' dollars are accounted for?" Giunchigliani asked.

She recommended that lobbyists be required to write reports on what they accomplished as part of their re-hirement process.

Commissioner Lawrence Weekly praised Faust but said that it "raises eyebrows when you hear of this conglomeration of contracts that add up to a large amount of money."

Commissioner Larry Brown said the first step to getting a handle on the problem is making a list of all the lobbyists and the terms of their contracts. No county agency should ever stonewall a commissioner, he said.

"I do find it unacceptable that Mr. Sisolak ran into obstacles getting information," Brown said. "I find it offensive."

I'm glad the commissioners at least recognize potential problems with the current lobbying system and Steve Sisolak spoke up raised objections like he did. Hopefully, the Council starts holding lobbyists accountable.

White House blocks visitor logs

The Obama administration has disappointed transparency activists yet again by announcing that the visitor logs of the White House "are presidential and not agency records, thus not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)."

The Obama administration blocked the requests of MSNBC.com and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for the White House visitor logs and continues the Bush administration policy of fighting the release of White House visitor logs.

Knowing who visits the White House helps citizens understand who holds influence on policy matters. Now the White House does say the policy is "under review" but that's most likely spin for "please think we're considering changing this policy, while we have no intention to do so."

Or as the Sunlight Foundation puts it: "Hopefully, when the administration says that the policy is 'under review' they actually mean it and this isn’t like the Supreme Leader of Iran saying that he will investigate election fraud."

Promise Broken: No lobbyists in White House

You may have heard Obama promise that...

"No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration."

It got a well-deserved promise broken from the "Obameter" project via PolitiFact.com.

But what brought this story back on our radar is that Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has asked Robert Cusick, director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, "to require the Obama administration to release all waivers and recusals as they are issued and post the documentation to the Internet."

While it remains a broken promise, this development could shed some light on the power lobbyists have inside Obama's administration.

Recovery.gov to get face-lift

At least that's the word on the street.

Specifically, the work will include updates and changes to the site’s user interface, information architecture and design engineering. According to GSA’s pre-solicitation, the contractor needs expertise in project management, and the ability to "deliver a website with interactive data-visualization, and web-application level functionality."

[The Recovery and Accountability Board] is putting an emphasis on meeting the reporting requirements specified by the stimulus bill, but notes that "guidance from [the Office of Management and Budget] on reporting and transparency will continue to evolve." So far preliminary guidance on reporting requirements has been given to agencies and contractors, although the specific procedures for providing the required data to the government remains unclear.

While this Administration's transparency efforts are larger than just one website, Recovery.gov will have a large impact on their "transparency report card". Hopefully they get it right.

NV legislature gets good marks for opening up state gov't

from Nevada Press Association executive director Barry Smith.

The good:

Passing AB496 which "gets rid of a law that said you couldn't tell anyone if you filed a complaint with the Judicial Discipline Commission against a judge."

Passing SB267 (discussed previously) which places workshops and public hearings under Nevada's open meeting laws.

The Legislature also kept government open by not passing SB32 which would of made personnel evaluations of city managers by city councils and county commissioners private. While we part ways on this, Smith also holds that the defeat of AB307 (also previously discussed) ultimately was good for open government.

The bad:

One was AB50, introduced by the State Contractors Board, which would have allowed the public to see complaints filed against contractors. It died in committee.

A second opportunity was a bill by Assemblyman Joe Hogan, D-Las Vegas, to make campaign finance reports more timely and easier to read. It was a good idea and, unfortunately, went nowhere.

The ugly:

The other chance for the Legislature was to hold more of its discussions of controversial tax plans in public. Although there were formal opportunities for debate and public comment, we know that much of the wheeling and dealing among legislators went on behind closed doors.

The public should be especially upset that legislative leaders chose to negotiate the biggest tax hike in Nevada's history behind closed doors. Whether you opposed the tax hike or thought it should have been larger, the discussion should have been public.

Government transparency around the world

By now you probably know about the US Government's online efforts at data.gov and recovery.gov. But how well do you know about efforts by other countries around the world?

New Zealand has a Policing Act wiki which allows the public unprecedented ability to comment and influence the content of the Act.

People previously unengaged in politics are now making their voices heard and government officials have benefited from the increased engagement:

Rather than relying on a small set of experts and expensive and time-consuming physical consultations, governments are able to quickly, simply and cheaply get feedback and input on proposals online.

Out of the UK is the supremely cool-sounding Lords of the Blog. The upper house of the UK Parliament has a stuffy, out-of-touch, and generally unexciting reputation. However, their blog isn't. Their commentary is sharp, their blog is up-to-date, and their blog "has been credited with reinvigorating public interest in the democratic process."

And rounding out our transparency world trip are the online portals of the Canadian Government. The site features dozens of YouTube channels, podcasts, RSS feeds, Facebook accounts, Twitter pages, and wikis.

Transparency is a principle that applies to governments around the world. With the rise of the internet there no reason for governments across the world to proactively reveal their activities.

"... as much shadow as sunlight"

Just once I'd like to write the headline "Congress members comprehensively disclose information in an accessible manner." But it won't be today.

Despite loud proclamations of tough ethics reform, our elected representatives still routinely skirt the spirit of disclosure laws. Congressmen and their staffs carefully prepare personal finance reports, often the key to uncovering conflicts of interest or outright corruption, to reveal as little damaging information as possible.

Home mortgages, the purchase of big-ticket items such as expensive paintings and the value of stock and other investments are among the pieces of their personal financial picture they're allowed to keep to themselves. Good-government advocates say it makes corruption harder to root out.

Part of the problem is the extremely lax rules that govern these disclosures:

Members of Congress can spend freely on art, jewelry, antiques, private planes, speedboats and other valuables but they don't need to disclose them if they consider the possessions held for personal enjoyment rather than investments.

I wonder if former Rep. William Jefferson ever thought about claiming that the $90,000 in his freezer was "held for personal enjoyment" because it made his ice cream taste better.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, says it best with:

"With the citizen muckrakers and bloggers digging into government data of all kinds and with the momentum for electronic filing and transparency, the commitment to transparency by this administration, this should be the natural hour for these reports to be improved," Krumholz said.

Kundra on data.gov

Continuing the transparency discussion, the White House blog posted a piece on Monday by federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra that describes the suggestions his office received to make the information at data.gov more robust, reliable and open.

The Brainstorm phase of our open government outreach yielded a number of suggestions about how to improve access to data and metadata. Some general themes included:

• Set clear agency targets for bringing agency data online;
• Maintain a transparency dashboard to show progress towards releasing data;
• Find new, standardized ways to inventory and prioritize agency data for publication in open, downloadable formats;
• Collaborate with the third parties to continually improve Data.gov;
• Make Data.gov as comprehensive as possible for non-classified information; and
• Adopt data dictionaries to ensure that terms have the same meaning across agencies.

We also received some more technical suggestions, such as:

• Adopt the latest innovative technologies for disseminating data, including RSS data feeds;
• Create permalinks on the paragraph level to make documents easier to cite;
• Standardize discovery and method calls to data sets;
• Adopt better software for comparing relevance and meaning of documents to make government information more searchable;
• Allow citizens to build their own applications on top of government online services; for example, using a "Services Oriented Architecture" approach;
• Convert Depository Libraries around the country into Regional Data Centers;
• Make the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) the off-site electronic backup data center for all agency e-record systems;
• Make contributed data subject to a waiver of copyright and database rights using the "CCO" scheme from Creative Commons; and
• Digitize all government research reports and make them available free via the National Technical Information Service (NTIS).

We applaud Mr. Kundra for engaging the public on these important transparency issues. Only by acting on the suggestions received will data.gov be successful.

UK expense account scandal leads to more transparency

What good can come from the expense account scandal in the UK that has led to numerous resignations and left Gordon Brown's Labour Party on the ropes? Increased transparency, of course.

The Guardian has launched a website with a collection of freely downloadable spreadsheets that contain all kinds of data on the MP expense accounts and more. It has already encouraged transparency minded citizens to create new and exciting ways to visualize the data and its connections.

And there's more.

Today TechPresident reported that the British government is considering its own version of Data.gov. While a good amount of data is already made available by the British government, it comes in a variety of awkward formats (sound familiar)? Making these data available in easily downloadable form in one place would be a huge step forward.

Let's hope this scandal has made the UK's politicians aware of the importance of transparency. Knowing that their expense reports would be available to the public may have prevented the UK's current mess. Well, better late than never.

The importance of union transparency

This is why union transparency is so important:

Teachers in the Hoosier State recently learned that the Indiana State Teachers Association’s (ISTA’s) Insurance Trust has effectively gone bankrupt. Regulators revealed that the trust, which pays benefits for disabled teachers, owes $86 million in liabilities and has only $19 million in assets. The FBI has begun investigating.

Much of the portfolio’s value apparently vanished in high-risk investments. The investment broker managing the trust made 4,000 trades over a nine-month period, perhaps motivated by the 50 percent hike in commissions on trades that ISTA’s executive director, Warren Williams, authorized. (Emphasis mine)

At the heart of union transparency is the ability for union members to know how their dues are being spent.

Unfortunately, the enforcement of union disclosure and transparency rules has been lax. In the 50 years since the passing of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act officials in charge of monitoring unions have allowed the "list[ing of] multimillion-dollar line items for 'other' and 'miscellaneous' expenses with no further details."

Despite former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao's serious progress in making unions more open, those gains are about to be wiped out under the Obama administration. The Obama administration is scrapping comprehensive union transparency (such as the new, more detailed LM-30 forms) at the behest of national labor unions.

Those represented by unions should take note of what can happen when their representatives are secretive and dishonest about their operations.

Regulations.gov redesigns the right way

It is always encouraging when a government website "gets it." Consider the little-known Regulations.gov.

The site, which launched in 2003, was intended to engage the public in policymaking by allowing citizens to submit comments on proposed rules published in the Federal Register. But many users find the site confusing. So, Regulations.gov on May 21 debuted a video of a proposed upgrade aimed at simplifying navigation and making interaction easier, and has taken the extra step of allowing the public to post online reviews of the new features for the next two months.

What are some of the things Regulations.gov is doing right? One is that the upgrades to the site are small and concrete instead of free flowing and direction-less:

"They're doing it the right way. Design-by-democracy doesn't work nearly as well as giving people one or two or three straw men that they can react to."

Scott Burns, who is the chief executive officer and co-founder of GovDelivery, also noticed how site moderators are taking an active role in the group discussion.

"You can tell the Regulations.gov people are reading the site and taking feedback right away," instead of waiting until the deadline, Burns said.

We congratulate and thank Regulations.gov for doing their website redesign right. They seem to know what is needed to successfully implement a site-wide redesign and are working towards it. Once the redesign is complete, we'll visit them again and let you know how they did.

PDFs & Transparency

After Friday's moderately encouraging news that Speaker Pelosi was publishing lawmakers' expense accounts online, we have some some discouraging news. The first batch of expense reports will be published in the PDF format instead of more open and searchable formats such as XML, spreadsheets or CSV.

It is a shame that the expense reports, which currently exist only as books printed quarterly, will now only be marginally more transparent. The House is making a mistake if it thinks that a "computer version" of the existing paper-bound books is enough. Transparency activists need the data in a workable format, not just the presentation of it.

Those responsible for publishing the expense account information should collaborate with the Sunlight Foundation and produce full, transparent, and accountable records of House expense reports. If Speaker Pelosi is truthful about her dedication to transparency (a subject still up for debate) than she should follow the advice of open government activists.

Read the Sotomayor questionnaire online

Prior to being confirmed by the Senate, all judicial nominees must fill out a lengthy questionnaire that Senators use to learn about a prospective federal judge. The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has just released the questionnaire filled out by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Questions include previous employment, previous schooling, bar association memberships, events attended, and others. It also includes speeches she has given and press clippings about her.

According to the Sunlight Foundation this is only the second time the Senate has posted the entire questionnaire online.

House expense accounts become more open

Some exciting transparency news today out of Washington, DC. Speaker Pelosi has asked that the "Statement of Disbursements" be made available to the public via the internet as soon as possible. Included inside is the "Statements of Expenditures," which record how House members spend their expense accounts. The information was previously only available in bound paper volumes.

From her letter to the Chief Administrative Officer:

I am directing that the Chief Administrative Officer’s office begin to publish the quarterly Statement of Disbursements for the House of Representatives in an online format at the earliest date. The House is making every effort to operate in a transparent manner and online publication of these reports will expand accountability to taxpayers and the press.

Though one can't be sure, this move probably had something to do with the recent scandal in the UK over expense account abuse that eventually took down several government officials including the Speaker of the House of Commons.

Regardless of the motivation, our thanks to Speaker Pelosi. With the Senate moving towards more accountability reason this is another reason to be hopeful for the future of transparency in Congress.

(Thanks Sunlight Foundation)

Transparency disappointment

To transparency activists, the chance to participate in a web discussion on how to open up government is a dream come true. Among the 1.9 million federal employees whose ideas were actually solicited, the response was slightly more tepid. After it was all said and done only 91 comments were offered on what they would do to open up government.

Why such a limited response? Gary Bass of OMB Watch thinks it was due to a lack of publicity and a fear some had of "speaking out" on the issue without their boss' consent.

Although the number of suggestions was low, some were quite good:

Many government workers pointed out legal and regulatory obstacles that make it hard for the federal government to take full advantage of new technologies. The simple practice of linking to or embedding YouTube videos often violates federal site rules unless the video is transcribed for the blind or visually impaired. Others noted that almost any federal Web page which asks users to input information is supposed to be approved in advance by the Office of Management and Budget in accordance with the little-known Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980.

"We can't even run a purely voluntary suggestion box or unobtrusive survey without getting approval that can take months. The result is that we often don't go to the trouble," one comment said.

The more open "brainstorming" phase, which sought suggestions from the public, also had its fair share of issues, including the validity of Barack Obama's birth certificate and (a perennial favorite of online discussions) the legalization of marijuana. House Minority Leader John Boehner's suggestion requiring Congress to post spending bills online for 72 hours prior to voting was highly regarded but dismissed as outside the White House's purview.

What should be made of all this? Washington has an institutionalized aversion to transparency. You can introduce new technology (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, blogs) all you want but without the accompanying changes in the culture of Washington none of it will significantly matter. Let's hope that as younger generations take the place of older workers in Washington the resistance to transparency-enhancing technology will be diminished.

What the Supreme Court website should look like

The always interesting Sunlight Foundation recently published a series of mock-ups of what the Supreme Court could do to update its web presence.

While no one would claim the government is on the cutting-edge of web technology, the Supreme Court website is noticeably dated -- the simple list of links, the blocky image of the Court steps, the use of archaic images as buttons. Even the websites of the White House and Congress appear comfortably ahead of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's wouldn't be bad if it was a kid's school assignment, but it is not up to par for a site that receives 18 million hits a month and is the official web home of the highest court in the land.

The central theme of the new mock-ups is the idea that all relevant info should be easily accessible. In addition, the Sunlight Foundation realizes that the website is a place for people of all sorts of backgrounds. School kids, legal researchers, as well as interested citizens all visit the site. This is why the new site would feature easy to grasp background information about the Court, links to current and past decisions, as well as a news feed to keep interested parties up to speed.

The Sunlight Foundation briefly mentions a machine-readable record of every Supreme Court decision ever made. This would be fascinating. Say you wanted to read every decision that mentioned the Commerce Clause that was decided between 1850 and 1900 when the Chief Justice was appointed by a Republican. Or see every decision in which Anthony Kennedy joined Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a 5-4 decision. With such a machine-readable record what used to take months of research could be determined in seconds.

The Supreme Court should realize the need for keeping up with web technology (and by all accounts they do) and consider the suggestions made by the Sunlight Foundation.

Recovery data trickles into USASpending.gov

Despite the significant delay in stimulus bill disclosure, there is some encouraging news for transparency activists.

USASpending.gov, the website created to track federal grants and contracts and originally proposed by Sens. Barack Obama and Tom Coburn, has begun including some relevant data on "federal awards" that have been given out to contractors.

Anything interesting from this limited release of data? You bet.

Of the top five Recovery Act contractors on USAspending.gov, which collectively account for 98 percent of the contracts awarded thus far, three are listed in POGO’s Contractor Misconduct Database for recent violations. Two of them, CH2M Hill Companies, Ltd and Ut-Battelle, have entries from the past year for the very same work at the very same place where they were just awarded new Recovery Act contracts. (The third company was URS Corporation.)

Ut-Battelle, in particular, was cited by the Department of Energy’s Inspector General for incurring “unreasonable” costs at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2008, and yet it received a $73 million contract under the Recovery Act for continued operations at Oak Ridge. The three companies, despite their track records, received $1.3 billion of the $1.8 billion in Recovery Act contracts, or about 75 percent of all the Recovery Act contracts which have been awarded to date. (Emphasis original)

Unsurprisingly, these companies spent generously on campaign donations and lobbying expenses.

While nothing described above is illegal, it is far from excusable. And it's good that voters now have easy access to this data.

OMB Watch nails it:

These limited examples reinforce why transparency and access to good spending information is so crucial. While it is wonderful that USAspending.gov has added a feature to allow subdividing Recovery Act spending, there is no reason this information should not also be available on Recovery.gov right now. There is also no reason federal spending and performance data should not inform future contract and grant decisions.

Boehner's suggestion gains support

When the White House launched a website seeking suggestions from the public on how to run a more open government they probably didn't expect House Minority Leader John Boehner's suggestion to become one of the highest rated. But, as it turns out, that is exactly what happened.

Boehner's suggestion, support for a 72-hour mandatory minimum public review period on all major spending bills brought before Congress, sits at #3 on the list with 836 votes.

In effort to help eliminate billions of dollars in wasteful spending, I recently announced my support for a 72-hour mandatory minimum public review period on all major spending bills brought before Congress. This 72-hour review proposal, which would help to prevent taxpayer-funded outrages such as the empty “Airport for No One” in the congressional district of Democratic Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and huge bonuses for AIG executives, is a reform proposal that been advocated by nonpartisan organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a coalition of reform-minded state legislators, and the pro-transparency Sunlight Foundation.

If the Administration chose to support such a review, and follow through on its own promise to allow for five days of public comment on all bills before signing, it would represent a good first step toward greater transparency and accountability in government spending.

Boehner's idea is good on its merits. It'd just be a bonus if he can also use it to pressure Obama into living up to his oft-broken promise of waiting five days before signing legislation. We won't hold our breath though.