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House Floor Summaries available in Bulk XML Format

BY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, January 8 2013

House floor summaries are now available for bulk download in XML format, the office of Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) announced today. Read More

Israel Gets a Chief Information Officer

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, February 15 2012

The brand-new Times of Israel reports that Israeli officials have named Carmela Avner to the post of Chief Information Officer:

The decision places Avner in charge of information systems in all government ministries — the first time that one person would be responsible for that level of government data. According to the government decision, the CIO will consult with officials of all government ministries on the ease of use, convenience, and accessibility of their sites.
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Should You Bring Your iPad to the City Council Meeting?

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, May 19 2011

The Boston Globe's Kathy McCabe has a smartly done enterprise story today about the intersection of public meetings and "e-government." Popping around Massachusetts towns, she compiles a list of anecdotes that sum up the ... Read More

Defense Department Launches Web Campaign for "Real Warriors" Dealing with Psychological Wounds

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, May 27 2009

Via NextGov, the Department of Defense has launched a new online campaign aimed at destigmatizing the mental health struggles for active duty and reservist soldiers. Read More

Job Description Woes: Oregon County No Longer Asking "Do You Tweet?"

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, May 14 2009

Multnomah County, Oregon, won't be getting its very own Twittering, Facebooking, and blogging social media coordinator after all. After getting heat for advertising the job at a government salary of $60,000 to $70,000 a ... Read More

EFF, CDT Propose Nuanced Alternative to Government Cookie Ban

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, May 12 2009

In a report released today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology are advancing the idea that the federal government's near-blanket ban on persistent cookies -- imposed by OMB ... Read More

What Scares CRS About Going Public

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, May 12 2009

Here's how you know that open government absolutists and CRS, the internal research wing of Congress, are so far apart that the entire Library of Congress plus the states of Connecticut and Arizona could fit comfortably ... Read More

An Open Government Paradigm Being Built Behind Closed Doors

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, May 12 2009

This whole thing is something like a leather-bound edition of Diet for a Small Planet. Holding an AA meeting at a bar. Passing around a charity box at an Objectivist conference. The Obama Administration's process for ... Read More

WhiteHouse.gov: Moving Into Advanced Work Before Mastering the Basics

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, May 12 2009

The Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas does his second round of grading WhiteHouse.gov, the White House's main online home, and a salient criticism peeks through the comments of the various graders. On the plus side, ... Read More

Can Uncle Sam Balance Privacy and Engagement?

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, May 11 2009

The set-up for tomorrow's "Privacy and Analytics on Government Web Sites" event in Washington DC promises a refreshing blend of techno-utopianism and cyber conspiracy thinking. The Center for Democracy and ... Read More

News Briefs

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Cory Booker Hires Democratic Organizing Veteran Addisu Demissie To Manage Senate Run

Newark Mayor Cory Booker has hired a veteran of the Democratic organizing world Addisu Demissie to manage his run to succeed the late New Jersey Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. GO

ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools

ShareProgress, a left-leaning tech startup in downtown San Francisco, launched its social sharing optimization platform Tuesday after several months of testing with the progressive advocacy group CREDO Action. GO

New Organizing Institute to Move from Collecting Election Data to Organizing Election Officials

The New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit that trains campaigners and is no led by former Obama for America data director Ethan Roeder, is launching a new initiative next week aiming to "fix that" for local elections. NOI will announce a national network where local election administration officials can congregate to share solutions to common issues. It's a transition for a team at NOI that had previously been managing the Voting Information Project, which collects data on polling places, election districts and voter registration deadlines and prepares it for third parties in machine-readable format. In the 2012 election cycle, backed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and partnered with Google, VIP made information available in all 50 states. GO

Russian SOPA Passed First Reading

A first draft of a law nicknamed “Russian SOPA” was approved by the Russian parliament last Friday, June 14. Like the original Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill will establish penalties and procedures for online copyright violations.

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monday >

Czech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal

The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.

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friday >

Mayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit

The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO

New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy

New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO

Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup

Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.

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A “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award

“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO

Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China

Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.

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thursday >

U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday

A long dormant independent agency that was at least nominally supposed to exercise a modicum of oversight over the booming intelligence-industrial complex is scrambling to meet up next Wednesday, but the public will still be none the wiser about what it plans to do, since it is a closed door meeting. The only indication that the toothless ... GO

Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data

Reporters are shoaling around the news that New York City's new bike sharing system, Citi Bike, is benighted with problems stemming from its high-tech software. But that's not putting the brakes on plans to explore what programmers might do with data generated by the system by hosting a Citi Bike Civic Hack Night later this month. GO

Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy

Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO

wednesday >

New Russian Law Makes Publication of Information on Gay Rights Illegal

On June 11 the Russian parliament passed a bill against “homosexual propaganda” that effectively outlaws gay rights rallies and bans informational or pro-gay rights material from publication in the media or on the Internet. Violators of the law will risk heavy fines and censorship and, in the case of a media outlet, risk being shut down. It had near unanimous support, passing in a 436-to-0 vote, with only one abstention.

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Macedonia Draft Law to Regulate and Restrict the "Last Arena for Freedom of Speech"

The draft of a media regulation law in Macedonia has journalists and press freedom watchdogs up in arms. The proposed Law on Media and Audiovisual Media Services was written by the government behind closed doors and without input from the media or NGOs. It has been interpreted as a decisive move on the part of the government to limit speech online in a country where press freedoms are already limited. Until now, Internet-based news sites were not regulated like print media.

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Trying to Prosecute Online Piracy in Canada? Good Luck!

A private firm that is monitoring Canadians who download pirated content online has found itself at the center of a legal battle. GO

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