If knowledge is power, ignorance is impotence. Citizens, consumers, investors, and patients all need trustworthy information when we vote, making purchasing decisions, buy stocks or other assets, or choose a surgeon, medical device, nursing home, or dialysis center. That’s why … Continue reading
Did YOU know the USA has a Federal Data Strategy? Or that it’s part of National US Plan for Open Government? This President and White House should have told you, instead of failing to engage Americans. I participated in another … Continue reading
Yesterday, the United States Freedom of Information Act Advisory Committee met at the National Archives in Washington and approved a series of recommendations that would, if implemented, dramatically improve public access to public information. And in May, it will consider … Continue reading
Congress has quietly made an open, license-free identifier for the recipients of federal grants the default option for agencies in the United States. While truly open grant data is not mandatory, every agency must now decide whether to use non-proprietary … Continue reading
Government secrecy, as measured by censorship or non-responsiveness under the Freedom of Information Act, is at an all-time high during the Trump administration. The Freedom of Information Act is getting worse under Trump for a variety of reasons. Continued secrecy … Continue reading
Like Google, Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat now has an online political ad library. That’s good news: every technology company that accept money to run issues and campaign ads should have a political ad file – particularly one that has aspirations … Continue reading
Today in Washington, DC, the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Data Coalition are hosting a public forum for feedback on the draft action plan for the new federal data strategy. Remote access is available for those … Continue reading
For a decade, I’ve tracked the contours of open data, digital journalism, open source software and open government, publishing research on the art and science of data journalism that explored and tied together those threads.
This week, I’m proud to announce that a new book chapter on open data, journalists, and the media that I co-authored with data journalism advisor Eva Constantaras has been published online as part of “The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons!”
We joined 43 other authors in a 18-month project that reflected on “10 years of community action and review the capacity of open data to address social and economic challenges across a variety of sectors, regions, and communities.”
The publication and the printed review copy I now possess is the end of a long road.
Back in January 2018, I asked a global community of data journalists, open government advocates, watchdogs and the public for help documenting the “State of Open Data” and journalism for a new project for Open Data for Development. While I was at the Sunlight Foundation, I seeded the initial network scan on journalists, media and open data.
Over the past year, people and organizations from around the world weighed in – & Eva Constantaras joined me as co-editor & lead author, creating a “network scan” of the space. The writing project traveled with me, after I left Sunlight, and over this winter we edited and synthesized the scan into a polished chapter.
The book was originally going to be introduced at the 5th International Open Government Data Conference in Buenos Aires, in the fall of 2018, but will instead be officially launched at the Open Government Partnership’s global summit in Ottawa, Canada at the end of May 2019.
The book, which was funded by the International Research Centre and supported by the Open Data for Development (OD4D) Network. As a result of that support, “The State of Open Data” was also published in print by African Minds, from whom it may also be purchased. (While I was paid to edit and contribute, I don’t receive any residuals.)
Last night, I joined Tim Davies and other authors at the OpenGov Hub in DC to talk about the book & our chapters. Video of Davies, who managed to cover a tremendous amount of ground in ten minutes, is embedded below.
Thank you to everyone who contributed, commented and collaborated in this project, which will inform the public, press and governments around the world.
On May 10, the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress in the United States House of Representatives held a hearing on “opening up the process,” at which 4 different experts talked with Congress about making legislative information more transparent,” from ongoing efforts to proposed reforms to the effect of sunshine laws passed decades ago.
If you’re not up to speed on this committee, it was established on January 4, 2019 the House voted in favor of establishing the Select Committee by an overwhelming margin (418-12) by adopting of Title II of H.Res.6, the Rules of the House of Representatives for the One Hundred Sixteenth Congress, with a sole authority of investigating, studying, holding public hearings, making finding, and developing recommendations to modernize Congress – but no legislative jurisdiction nor ability to take legislative action. The committee has has been fairly described by IssueOne as “the best opportunity in decades” for Congress to improve itself, by looking inward.
The two hours of discussion on May 10 mostly added up to good news for good government, with useful summaries of progress opening up Congress to date from the deputy clerk of the House, proposed recommendations and reforms from GovTrack founder Josh Tauberer and DemandProgress policy director Daniel Schuman that would build on that progress, and some skepticism of sunshine in the legislative process from University of Maryland professor Frances Lee.
I attended the hearing and tweeted from it, as has been my practice for nearly a decade in DC:
The thread of tweets above, however is not meant to be comprehensive, nor could it be fully contextualized in the moment. For that, watch the hearing on YouTube, in the video embedded below:
…and read a summary of the hearing from the Congressional Institute, reporting from Federal Computer Week on “transparency through technology” and Roll Call on ongoing development of an “artificial intelligence engine” (applying machine-learning to structured legislative data), and the latest edition of Demand Progress’ First Branch Forecast, in which Schuman summarizes his testimony and aspects of the hearing.
He and Tauberer recommended from appointing a legislative branch Chief Data Officer, releasing structured data that would feed into the clerk’s tool to show how proposed amendments would change bills, and enact a mandate and open standards for a unique identifier for lobbyists across the U.S. government. Whether those ideas make it into the committee’s recommendations remains to be seen, but they’re worth weighing – along with further studying of the value or risk of increasing or decreasing public access to various aspects of the deliberative processes that constitute legislative and oversight activities.
On a meta note, the process on display at this forum was notable for comity between witnesses and members, openness to the public and press, and engagement online.
The medium is still the message, when it comes showing (not telling) how open a given institution is.
While paying attention to the digital component has become downright mundane in 2019, the Committee demonstrated admirable competence, streaming the hearing online at YouTube, publicized it on social media prior to the event, engaged with the public during the hearing, and published testimony on its website afterwards. (Unfortunately, there’s no text transcription of the hearing on the hearing page. Given the committee’s acknowledgement of the importance of accessibility, it should make sure to get transcripts online.)
As at the most recent “Congressional hackathons,” Members of Congress were able to show good government, ethics and transparency, far away from partisan rancor over white hot political issues or Congressional attempts to conduct constitutional oversight of a corrupt administration.
If you’re interested in following the activities of the committee or providing feedback, visit Modernizecongress.House.gov and scrub in: the People’s House will only be as open, accessible, accountable, and effective as we make it – or demand it to be. There’s no one else coming to help.
Sunshine Week 2019 may officially begin on March 10, but it’s unofficially kicking off tomorrow with the National Freedom of Information Day Conference at the Newseum in DC.
For those unfamiliar with this annual celebration of open government around the United States, Sunshine Week was founded over a decade ago by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, who now support it with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
Sunshine Week always falls around President James Madison’s birthday on March 16. Madison is generally regarded as the forefather of open government in the United States, as evidenced by this memorable letter in 1822:
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives,” he wrote.
In 2018, the “information darkness” of the Trump administration led to ignominy, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation’ “Foilies” to the Society for Professional Journalists’ Black Hole Award to the National Security Archives’ Rosemary Awards.
In 2019, transparency and accountability have taken on additional context during the Trump administration, which has continued to be allergic to transparency, rife with conflicts of interest, and hostile to the essential role journalism plays in a democracy. When the President of the United States repeatedly calls journalists “the enemy of the people,” a disinformation virus is weakening our body politic.
Despite the enactment of a historic open government data bill, the state of open government (data) remains divided, at risk, and underfunded in the United States.
After years of delays and democratic regression, the US government released a weak open government plan for the Open Government Partnership that was not responsive to the demands of this moment. The Open Government Partnership’s researchers found backsliding in the USA, confirming what watchdogs have been highlighting daily about this administration since January 2017.
Every Sunshine Week is an opportunity to take stock of how federal, state and local governments are complying with public records, public meetings laws, and ethics statutes with disclosure requirements, from city halls to legislatures. As the National Security Archive highlighted, the state of the Freedom of Information Act is cloudy:
Representative Elijah Cummings, D-Md, and Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, recently sent a stern letter to the Interior Department reprimanding the agency for its efforts to weaken its FOIA regulations and urging it to reconsider the rule change. The proposed rule changes which garnered more than 65,000 comments – include allowing the DOI to preemptively reject what it defines as “unreasonably burdensome” requests, the possibility of imposing a monthly limit to the number of either pages or requests from a single requester the agency will process, and a host of other changes that may make it more difficult to obtain fee waivers and expedited processing.
The bipartisan group of lawmakers, all seasoned FOIA champions, told the Interior Department, “We write to express significant concern with the rule recently proposed by the Department of the Interior (DOI) concerning its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) procedures. The proposed rule appears to restrict public access to DOI’s records and delay the processing of FOIA requests in violation of the letter and spirit of FOIA. The American people have the right to access information from DOI, and the proposed rule needlessly encroaches on that right.”
The context for oversight of open government at the national level for this year, however, is different. 2018 midterm elections delivered a 116th Congress that brought with it a commitment to oversight that was sorely lacking in the last session. A core element of that oversight has been public hearings that hold public officials and corporate executives accountable for their service or services.
That will continue next week, when, as has been the tradition in past years, the U.S. House Oversight Committee will be holding a hearing during Sunshine Week in 2019, considering the Freedom of Information Act and transparency under the Trump administration.
There will be many other Sunshine Week events around DC as well. The Department of Justice’s awards for FOIA officers. The National Archives celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Office of Government Information Services (aka the federal FOIA ombudman) during the day on March 11. That night, there will be a panel discussion on how to obtain and improve coverage of climate data at the National Press Club hosted by its Journalism Institute and Freedom of the Press Committee.
There will be a DC Open Government Summit and a forum on science in the Trump era put on by the Government Accountability Project, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Sunlight Foundation’s Web Integrity Project on the evening of March 12.
Despite the threats to American democracy at the federal level and ongoing challenges to open government in the states and cities, there’s still much to celebrate in 2019.
The free press, independent judiciary, and watchdog organizations have continued to provide transparency when elected officials and civil servants have tried to make decisions in secrecy, shedding light on corruption, fraud, waste, abuse and incompetence.
Their combined efforts to bring in sunshine in government across American civil society have been a bulwark against tyranny and corruption in the United States and around the world. Thank you to everyone who continues to support, defend and extend the public’s right to know in the 21st century.
E Pluribus Unum 