After launching Sunshine Week with yesterday's successful Advisory Committee on Transparency event, it's a good time to reflect on positive transparency developments around the country (as opposed to yesterday's disheartening news).
Among the inspiring stories that we came across recently, Sunlight was particularly struck by the work of a software engineering class at Virginia Tech. As the Washington Post reported, a professor picked up on the students' desire to find their coursework relevant and dedicated a semester to build a mobile app for the university bus system. After a slew of prototypes and some extra funding, the impressive VT Bus Tracker debuted. It's important to note that this application was only possible with a willing and proactive partnership with the bus system operators.
In light of budget shortfalls around the country, many states have yielded to public pressure to open their books and are putting their financial information online. In the past few months both Indiana and New Hampshire launched 'Transparency Portals' that centralize state spending data. These websites have plenty of room for improvement, but the Sunlight Foundation is excited to see the states dip their toe into the growing community of public officials who recognize public information should be online.
Last week we were interested to watch developments in lobbying disclosure at the state level in Georgia. According to an article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission is hoping to vastly expand the definition of a lobbyist and allow e-filing across the board -- both principles the Sunlight Foundation includes in our Real Time Online Lobbying Transparency Act. While the proposals in Georgia are hardly perfect, any serious deliberation of lobbying reform is admirable and the Sunlight Foundation encourages these discussions.
What other rays of sunshine are we missing? Tweet @sunfoundation or use the hashtag #sunchat to join us this Thursday for a special Sunshine Week twitter chat.
This post was originally written by Sunlight Foundation executive director Ellen Miller.
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The oblique explanation highlights what has become an increasingly difficult balancing act for the Obama administration: claiming the moral high ground on opening up the government while preserving the secrecy that gives every president the room to maneuver.
The timing of the award, given during “Sunshine Week” by a cadre of good-government groups, was already a little awkward, coming just days after a new report showed that the administration IS NOT living up to its openness pledge.
An Associated Press analysis out Monday revealed that Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were up last year, but the administration actually took on fewer cases. It also found that the federal agencies took longer to hand out records.
There were also little nuggets of irony – like this, “The Obama administration even censored 194 pages of internal e-mails about its Open Government Directive that the AP requested more than one year ago,” the AP reported.
Areas where they did improve include less frequently invoking the “deliberative process” exemption for behind-the-scenes decision-making. Obama famously pledged on the campaign trail that he’d make his administration the most transparent and open ever. And the White House has argued it is freely giving up more information - sure...