State Government in Your Pocket

Slovenian ambassador apologizes for signing ACTA, Poland halts ratification

Apparently, some EU countries are reconsidering their support to ACTA, only a week after signing the agreement.
Helena Drnovsek Zorko, Slovenia's ambassador to Japan, has in fact issued a public apology to her country for signing it. Meanwhile, Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk says he's halting the ratification process of the international treaty.
Last week people took the streets in Poland, and a protest is planned in Ljubljana tomorrow. GO

Did Newt Gingrich Lose Florida for Want of a Better API?

Slate's Sasha Issenberg has a great story outlining one narrative about Newt Gingrich's loss in Florida: He inspired a group of tech-savvy volunteers, but gave them no way to plug in to the campaign. GO

House GOP Hosts Legislative Data and Transparency Conference

Today, House Republicans are hosting a conference on legislative data and transparency. The goal, as it's been explained to me, is to set the table for a conversation between House leadership and open government/open data advocates about what the House could or should do next.

More information on the conference is here. It's being live streamed.

When House Republicans Aren't Winning With Transparency

House Republicans have been pushing the results of their transparency initiatives, such as a pilot project to archive video of some committee hearings.

But other committee hearings are apparently off-limits. Politico reports today that documentary filmmaker Josh Fox was arrested while attempting to videotape a House Science Committee hearing on hydrofracking. Only credentialed members of the Congressional press corps can film hearings of that committee.

The archived webcast of that hearing, which was streamed live, is here, if you can get the software to work. Each committee chair has discretion over what to do with video of their hearings, although there's also an office of in-House broadcasters who keep archival footage of everything, staffers have told me previously. As a result, there's no universal standard for how hearings are streamed or archived. The Science Committee uses a content delivery platform powered by Akamai.

Komen's Planned Parenthood Decision Raising Eyebrows Online

Online campaigns have begun to organize in response to news that the breast cancer group Susan G. Komen for the Cure would be cutting its financing to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening and education programs. According to the news reports, Komen says the decision is not in response to pressure from anti-abortion groups, as Planned Parenthood alleges. Rather, a spokesperson told the A.P., the main factor is a new rule adopted by Komen that prohibits grants to organizations being investigated by local, state or federal authorities. Currently, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) is looking in to how Planned Parenthood spends and reports its money. "Susan D. Komen" has been trending on Google since yesterday. GO

Team Obama Spends Big On Digital

There's more to come from recently filed campaign finance reports from the presidential campaigns. Meantime, Politico notes that Barack Obama's re-election effort has so far spent $2.2 million in online advertising, millions more on payroll and $809,000 on computer equipment and software. GO

Romney Campaign to Test Out Square Tonight

As Nick Bilton noted last night, the Mitt Romney campaign plans to test out Square for fund-raising at a Florida event tonight. A spokeswoman for Barack Obama's re-election campaign told us yesterday that Obama campaign staffers and select volunteers around the country would be getting the devices, which attach to mobile phones and work as credit card readers, as well as custom software that collects the information necessary for donations to be compliant with Federal Election Commission requirements.

Update: Now with screenshots!

How Much Should a Campaign Know About an Online Volunteer?

Rick Santorum's campaign is asking folks to go online and make calls today on the former senator from Pennsylvania's behalf. Earlier this morning I noted that Mitt Romney's team is doing the same.

One ongoing discussion around this type of tool is how much the campaign should know about the volunteer before the volunteer is allowed to, well, volunteer. Mitt Romney's campaign just asks for a name and email address. Santorum's campaign requires volunteers to put in a full address before it starts revealing to users of their click-to-call tool the names and phone numbers of prospective voters. It's an additional step to protect voters' privacy — and to get more data for the campaign — although it isn't difficult for tricksters to use a fake or inaccurate address in a form like this.