sunlight foundation

Churnalism US is a new web tool and browser extension that allows anyone to compare the news you read against existing content to uncover possible instances of plagiarism. It is a joint project with the Media Standards Trust.

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After more than four years of work from volunteers and a full-time team here at Sunlight we're immensely proud to launch the full Open States site with searchable legislative data for all 50 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Open States is the only comprehensive database of activities from all state capitols that makes it easy to find your state lawmaker, review their votes, search for legislation, track bills, and much more.

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The open government movement in the United States is well underway, though still brand new in terms relative to the pace of the workings of government. Change tends to be delivered slowly, as evident during President Obama’s re-election campaign this year when many of us had to remind ourselves that though some change has trickled down over the past four years, much of it has yet to come to pass due to the inherent processes of government bodies. And yet, it still astonishes me how quickly ‘open’ ideas are being accepted, built, and implemented into city governments from east to west coast. » Read more

Interested citizens and government professionals, meet your new pal, Scout. It sends you notifications when new developments in government happen—your government, your departments of interest, your items of relevance. 

We caught up with Scout's creator, Eric Mill, a web and mobile developer at Sunlight Foundation, to give us the details of the technology powering Scout and some explanation to why we thought this tool already existed.

Mill is an expert at developing technology that makes government more transparent and avid about open source projects.

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Recently, I created and launched a new website for the Sunlight Foundation called Scout. It's the product I'm the most proud of building in my three years there. It is essentially a search and notification engine for government action. Simple idea, simple presentation, and it's easy to compare to Google Alerts—but there's a lot underneath the hood. » Read more

A brief tweet from Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) recently invited you to see her newly-decorated apartment and head-to-toe fashions. The problem? It wasn't her apartment. The link led to the website of a staffer in her press office and was promptly deleted from Twitter fifty-seven seconds later. Looks like someone got their social media accounts mixed up.

That might be the end of the story, except the gaffe lives on through Politwoops, an archive of deleted tweets from U.S. politicians hosted by the Sunlight Foundation. » Read more

Today, the US House of Representatives is hosting a 2-day conference about how they can be more open and transparent about what they do under the dome. They are exploring ideas and recommendations on how to create transparency » Read more

How does someone new to the open government movement know where to start? Where can they can get involved and align their interests and passions with a community already hard at work?

There are myriad open government communities, ranging from Code for America to The Sunlight Foundation, GovLoop to CityCamp, and everything in between. Where is the list of organizations that are working specifically on government transparency, collaboration, participation, and open data? Until recently, I'm not sure one existed. » Read more

OMB Watch and the Sunlight Foundation today [November 16, 2011] released an open letter to the U.S. Senate supporting continued funding for the Electronic Government Fund's important transparency projects. The letter echoes the Obama administration's policy statement issued Nov. 10. » Read more