1. Steve Toub Research Associate

2. My Background

17 yrs in & aroundnon-traditionallibraries

• Never worked in same place as print collection

• Never did face-to-face reference

What led me to MAPLight.org

Hired to do what metadata librarians do

• Analyze, map, normalize, enrich metadata

• Help manage metadata repository that aggregates diverse data sets

3. About the Organization

Nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c) 3

Supported by

• Foundations

• • Sunlight Foundation

• • Rockefeller Brothers Fund

• • Others

• Individual donors

5 staff, 8 research interns

Downtown Berkeley

4. Organizational Vision

Moneys influence on politicsbecomes the number one political issue

Federal, state and city governments implement citizen-funded financingof political campaigns

5. Organizational Focus

Publishing data and tools

that allow journalists, bloggers,

nonprofit groups and citizens

to make the connection between

campaign contributions

and the legislative process

6. 7. 8. 9. Types of Policy Transparency

From the Transparency Policy Project at Harvards Kennedy School of Government

Explanatory transparency

• Explaining issues, policies and programs

Procedural transparency

• Provide insight into how & why decisions are made

Regulatory transparency systems

• Disclosure and reporting incentives and requirements

• Dissemination in ways people can truly understand

10. 11. 12. Eight Principles thatDefine Open Government Data

http://www.opengovdata.org/

1. Complete

All public data are made available. Public data are data that are not subject to valid privacy, security of privilege limitations.

2. Primary

Data are collected at the source, with the finest possible level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.

3. Timely

Data are made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the value of the data.

4. Accessible

Data are available to the widest range of users for the widest range of purposes.

13. Eight Principles thatDefine Open Government Data

5. Machine processable

Data are reasonably structured to allow automated processing.

6. Non-discriminatory

Data are available to anyone, with no requirement of registration.

7. Non-proprietary

Data are available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.

8. License-free

Data are not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege restrictions may be allowed.

14. MAPLight.org 15. Campaign contributions $ 16. and legislative votes $ votes 17. $700 Billion Financial Bailout

Banks & securities firms gave an average of

• $212,700 to politicians voting yes

• $150,982 to politicians voting no

18. 19. Telecom Immunity for Cooperating with Warrantless Wiretapping

AT&T, Verizon and Sprint PAC contributions

• $8,359 to each Democrat who flipped

• • Opposed retroactive immunity in March 2008 amendment but supported the June 2008 bill that included immunity

• $4,987 to each Democrat who did not flip

• • Opposed retroactive immunity in March and June

20. 21. ReportedCampaign Contributions

As reported by government

• Federal Election Commission

• California Secretary of State

• Los Angeles City Ethics Commission

Contributions less than disclosure threshold omitted

We expose only contributions to officeholders

• Candidates who lost dont get to vote

$ 22. Legislative Roll Call Votes

U.S. Congress

• Only floor votes; no committee votes

California State Legislature

Los Angeles City Council

• Later this year

$ votes 23. Data Sources OpenSecrets.org GovTrack.us NIMSP State government websites $ votes 24. 25. 26. Obtaining Legislative Data

California status

• Lawsuit continues

Sunlight Labs Fifty State Project

• Announced in February 2009

• First 10 days: 8 states done

• Today: 25 states have scraper code, 11 more in progress

U.S. Congress

• Senate votes became available in XML in May

• Still want committee votes

• Would like data in addition to campaign contributions

• • real-time lobbying disclosure

• • better disclosure of earmarks

27. Our value add is Support & Opposition

Gathered from:

Hearing testimony

News databases

Websites

$ votes 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. June 4, 2003 38. 39. Dont like the default categories? 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. H.R. 801 Fair Copyright in Research Works Act

Would reverse NIHs open access mandate

• passed by Congress in December 2007

Would amend copyright law

• create a new class of copyrighted material: stuff that your tax dollars paid for

• to make it illegal for the government to require that works that are the result of government funding (not just NIH) be freely available

55. 56. 57. 58. Projects that went live in May

Los Angeles site

• The first jurisdiction where we coded contributors into special interest categories

• Phase two will include legislative data

Bill Positions API

• Provides citations of organizations that support and oppose bills, primarily for 110th and 111th Congress

• Simple read-only REST API

• • Four methods, allowing you to search by organization or bill

• • Responses in JSON and XML

59. Current Projects: Web Redesign

Focus on usability

• Improving information design

• Improving interaction design

Some backend improvements

• Migrating to Drupal 6 and CiviCRM 2.2

• Moving search from MySQL to Solr

60. Current Projects: Metadata

Redesign how we research bill positions

• Want data to come to us automagically, rather than have interns hunt and peck

• Shift in orientation from bill as a whole to votes

• Start including which industries benefit from legislation rather than those that explicitly support

Normalizing and de-duping contributors, especially names of organizations

• Planning to expose all contributors/contributions

Plan for expansion into all 50 states

Assess viability of including other datasets

• Project Vote Smart API

• Lobbying

• Earmarks

61. Questions?

[email_address]

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.