Even though that video centers on intellectual property issues, Lessig talks about how his focus came to shift away from hoping Congress would pass rational policy. He remarks that the "economies of influence" that dictate congressional policy are fundamentally corrupt, as a system. That made me reflect that Sunlight’s mission is, [...]

(This is written in the style of a letter to the Senate… because hopefully it will turn into just that. Comments on its persuasiveness are welcome.)
Summary: The Senate’s current position on publishing voting records online is analogous to a reference library that has no copy machine. I explain below why the Senate website should publish [...]

One theme running through what we’re doing here, in my mind at least, is to blur the line between the explicit and the implicit, or, put differently, to make evident those things which were only implied. Effective data availability is certainly a case of this. Every time there is government information that is [...]

Josh’s recent post, and general attentiveness to newly introduced legislation, has me thinking about the different kinds of reform that might result in increased transparency.
It seems to me that it’s worth looking into how a lot of transparency reform and process reform tend to be favored perenially by the political minority. Any transparency reform [...]

Steve King, a Republican from Iowa, has introduced a new bill that has a clause specifically about Internet-based transparency. (We know King from his bill H.R. 170: Sunlight Act of 2007, parts of which I think were integrated into the passed ethics reform bill. One part that wasn’t integrated was a provision to have bills [...]

I happened to check on the list of cosponsors to H. Res. 231: Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to require all committees post record votes on their web sites within 48 hours of such votes — the number is growing. It now has 131 cosponsors, with 27 added in the last two [...]

One aspect of transparency that we didn’t touch on in our report was the ability of the public to contact Members of Congress. Yesterday the well-respected Congressional Management Foundation hosted a conference on Communicating with Congress, and some OHP regulars were in attendance (John Wonderlich, Rob Pierson, and Daniel Bennett were among the panelists — [...]

A few days ago, I wrote a post about the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution.
My basic point was that members of Congress have certain privileges granted by the Constitution, giving them freedom from legal action relating to their legislative duties. Congress members aren’t above the law, so only legislative acts qualify as [...]

I just stumbled on H. Res. 63, introduced back in January, whose main provision is:
no bill, joint resolution, conference report, or amendment between the Houses shall be voted on by the House unless the text of that measure has been available to all Members and their staffs in both printed and electronic format for at [...]

Here’s a great video of Carl Malamud speaking at a Google Talk about freeing government information through his unique combination of technological acumen and activist ambush: