From the MySociety.org blog comes news that they’ve launched their groupsnearyou.com project, adding a new kind of player to the hyperlocal space.  The site allows for entering of new local email lists and online groups, so public spaces online are more visible and useful (they have even set up an API).  It seems as though [...]

The report from the 1993 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress makes for interesting reading. Does it now look dated, and did Congress succeed in undertaking these reforms?

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
To be effective, the legislative branch efficiently must process the enormous amounts of information it handles. Congress should take advantage of the technology available to improve [...]

Senator Lieberman, acting as Chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, has just put out a new press release, showing some progress on the Congressional Research Service report issue, and including a copy of his correspondence with Senator Feinstein:
“Unfortunately, Congress and CRS’ policies have severely limited the public’s ability to read these [...]

The Hill and Roll Call are both covering the political struggle to reform the ethics review process within the House. These articles cover very real concerns about how effective oversight can be negotiated for the most bottom-up of our three branches of government. Legislators are understandably reluctant to relinquish control over their own [...]

From the always-worthwhile Information Aesthetics blog, links to an amazingly detailed visualization of ideological distribution in the US Senate throughout history.  From the description offered there:
This visualization rewards careful inspection–there are stories to be found everywhere: follow the positions of the Presidents, relative to their own party members; note how party leaders are typically close [...]

I’ve been having a lot of fun putting together a large OPML file, and am excited to be able to share it online now through my netvibes universe.
If you aren’t familiar with OPML, a little background might be helpful.  OPML, or “Outlined Processor Markup Language” (wikipedia) is a data format that configures online RSS readers [...]

I’ll be moderating a panel soon (March 4th and 5th) at IPDI’s Politics Online Conference, along with several people familiar to/involved with the Open House Project.  The topic of our panel will be “Will Radical Transparency Transform Politics?”
I’m happy to have Greg Palmer, Derek Willis, and Peggy Garvin on our panel.  More details available here.

Via the MySociety.org blog, the UK non-profit developers have launched another brilliant project, this time creating a public facing interface for Freedom of Information requests (referred to as FOIA in the US).  You can FOIA almost all agencies, and also browse through pending and fulfilled requests.
This is a great parallel to our Real Time Investigations, [...]

Closely watching legislation progress through the House can be difficult, especially given the discretion the Speaker and the Rules Committee have in scheduling and controlling the floor.
The House Rules Committee is making legislation a little easier to follow online, by voluntarily posting updates of special rules, as they are approved, to their website in a [...]

Fun!