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Hill Moves: House Majority Whip Gets New Digital Director

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, May 10 2012

House Oversight Committee deputy digital director Justin LoFranco has left Rep. Darrell Issa's committee staff to join House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy as digital director, starting today.

"Through data visualization, social media, video and civic innovation, look for @GOPWhip to be building creative and innovative community conversations and content that fosters deeper social engagement and dialogue with Congress," LoFranco said in a statement.

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Sunlight Says House Appropriations Committee Not Making the Grade in Online Transparency

BY Miranda Neubauer | Tuesday, April 17 2012

Despite a House of Representatives rule adopted in January 2011 requiring that video of hearings be made available online, a full quarter of House hearings are not making it online, according to a new analysis by the Sunlight Foundation.* That's thanks in large part to the House Appropriations Committee, whose hearings account for 70 percent of those not available online, per Sunlight. Read More

House GOP Hosts Legislative Data and Transparency Conference

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, February 2 2012

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.

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When House Republicans Aren't Winning With Transparency

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, February 1 2012

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.

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The GOP's Twitter and YouTube-infused Response To SOTU

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, January 25 2012

Last night, House Republicans used the hashtag #SOTUGOP to collect questions about President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, and YouTube to post video responses. The result is a collection of short YouTube video responses. Click through to watch one and note how all of the thumbnails after the video link to other responses. Read More

House Republicans Will Do a Full Day of Listening on Open Legislative Data

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, January 19 2012

Today the Committee on House Administration announced the Legislative Data and Transparency Conference, with precisely the subject matter you'd expect. The event will be on Feb. 2, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., in the Cannon House Office Building near the Capitol. Read More

A New Tool to Crowdsource Legislative Markup Comes From the U.S. House

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, December 7 2011

In the hopes of attracting the eyeballs — and maybe the comments and revisions — of Internet geeks, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) plan on Thursday to unveil their alternative to the ... Read More

Quote of the Day: Hearts and Minds

BY Nick Judd | Monday, October 24 2011

The Republicans in Congress are using new media technology to compete for the attention of Beltway reporters ... We use it to compete for the attention of the American people ... These are two different goals. — ... Read More

The Floor of the U.S. House in the Palm of Your Hand

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, October 11 2011

Houselive.gov The office of the clerk of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has released the House's own tablet-friendly website for watching live, streaming video of floor proceedings. Taking a page from ... Read More

New Survey Finds Republicans Tweet More Often, But to Whom?

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, September 29 2011

More House Republicans send messages on Twitter than Democrats, according to figures compiled by students at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. The Medill students compiled a look at how members of ... Read More

News Briefs

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This Isn't What Political Air Time Usually Means

MoveOn.org is asking supporters for $150,000 in donations to fly a plane above high-dollar fundraisers for Mitt Romney with "a message that reminds voters how he represents his corporate and 1% donors." MoveOn previously hired a plane to fly over Romney's Liberty University graduation speech with the message "GOP = HIGHER SCHOOL DEBT." GO

There's a New $200 Million Fund for Super-High-Speed Broadband Projects

An initiative to build and test gigabit-speed broadband networks is set to fund up to six next-generation Internet access projects across the country, fueled by a new $200 million broadband development funding program, Gigabit Squared and Gig.U announced this morning. GO

New Rice University Paper Chronicles Impact of the Internet On U.S. Foreign Policy

We all know that the Internet has transformed the way that the United States conducts diplomacy, and the way that it views national security, but where should we look to find evidence of this? This is the wide-ranging subject matter of a new paper published on Tuesday by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The paper provides a round-up of some of the major turns of events between 2005 and 2011 in the realms of Internet governance, the development of online public diplomacy at the State Department, the evolution of the Internet-fueled Arab Spring, and the establishment of the shadowy U.S. Cyber Command in Fort Meade, Maryland, among other things. GO

Messin' with Lamar Smith, Revisited

Remember that grassroots fundraising campaign to put a "Don't Mess with the Internet" billboard in the home district of Rep. Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and sponsor of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act? All of the money required came in, and Fight for the Future, the advocacy group opposing more stringent copyright protections online, writes that the billboard went up. GO

Republican National Convention Organizers Sever Ties With Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions

After eight years producing online content for the Republican National Convention, GOP web consultant Becki Donatelli's Campaign Solutions is off of the project. "Campaign Solutions was retained to help develop our convention website and digital strategy, but they are no longer involved in convention planning," James Davis, the convention's communications director, told techPresident Tuesday. It's unclear what precipitated the of the relationship between the convention organizers and Campaign Solutions, which has been producing the online component of the event since 2004. But Donatelli's name surfaced in a controversial anti-Obama ad pitch sent to a Super PAC backed by TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, which appeared in its entirety in the Times last week. Ricketts has since disavowed the proposal and Donatelli has denied any involvement. GO

PD+ This Thurs 1pm: Thriving Online With Howard Rheingold

I'm really looking forward to talking with author Howard Rheingold this Thursday on the next PD+ teleconference. His new book, Net Smart, is a concise and thoughtful guide to understanding and making the most of the hyper-networked, always-on, firehose of information and distraction that is the contemporary experience of anyone who uses ... GO

City of Joplin, Mo. Launches New Online Center Ahead of Tornado's Anniversary

The city of Joplin, Missouri launched its new web site over the week-end ahead of the May 22 anniversary of the massive tornado that devastated the city and killed 161 people. The new site enables Joplin citizens to sign up for emergency alerts via text message, e-mail and RSS. In addition to those alerts, individuals can also sign up for ... GO

In Virginia, City Council Debates to Include Questions Posed Online

The Alexandria Democratic Party in Alexandria, Virginia has partnered with online civic engagement platform ACTion Alexandria to include questions solicited in an online forum in the final Democratic primary debate for a City Council election there on June 4, ahead of the June 12 election, according to a statement released by the group. ACTion Alexandria hopes to work with both parties during the general election.

Participants in the project can add questions to the forum, or vote on questions that have already been posed, although each user is only given three votes to distribute. Users are also encouraged to use their real names. Questions submitted so far hit on topics ranging from broadband access to a ban on food trucks in the city.

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