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.
Read MoreWhen 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.
Read MoreOn NY Gov. Cuomo's Transparency Record and Online Initiatives
BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, January 18 2012
New York political writer Azi Paybarah sums up Andrew Cuomo's record as a first-year governor. In his first year, Cuomo shepherded through the legalization of same-sex marriage, flouted protesters who had dubbed him "Governor One Percent" by passing tax reforms that increase taxes on the rich, and laid the political groundwork for a brand new convention center to be built in one of New York City's outer boroughs — all largely outside of the public eye. Read More
Movement Times: TechPresident's Top Posts of 2011
BY Micah L. Sifry and Nick Judd | Wednesday, December 21 2011
From the streets of Tunisia to Wall Street, and online from the WikiLeaks wars to the early election skirmishes of 2012, this has been a tumultuous time. Next year, who knows, maybe everything will just get really boring. Though we kind of doubt it. But in case you missed anything, or just want a refresher on what went down on these pixels, here's our subjective, selective and unrepresentative sampler of the Best of techPresident 2011. Read More
In Abu Dhabi, A Miraculous We-Government Moment for Ushahidi and Some Afghanis
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, December 14 2011
Juliana Rotich, the ED of Ushahidi, blogs about a moment of "discovery and awe" that just happened at the Eye on Earth conference in Abu Dhabi. They got into a conversation about crowdsourcing with three participants from Afghanistan, and on the spot discovered--to everyone's surprise--a robust deployment of Ushahidi's Crowdmap tool being used by the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock in Nangarhar Province. Read More
Next PdPlus Call: Jeff Jarvis on Publicness, Privacy and the Future of the Web
BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, November 30 2011
We're looking forward to our next Personal Democracy Plus conference call on Thursday December 8 at 1pm ET, which will be with longtime PdF friend and prolific blogger, author and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis. We'll ... Read More
Croatian Transparency Activist Marko Rakar Making Waves Again
BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, November 28 2011
Two days ago, Marko Rakar, Croatia's leading transparency activist (and frequent PdF conference speaker), made front-page news there with a massive new data release: All the public procurement data for government ... Read More
As Mayors Check In to Foursquare, Checking Out Their Transparency
BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, November 23 2011
Earlier this week, Tampa, Fla. Mayor Bob Buckhorn announced he was joining Foursquare, to the expected sound of ink hitting newsprint. Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York and Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago are already ... Read More
The Europe Roundup: Restart Romania
BY Antonella Napolitano | Thursday, November 17 2011
Romania | Restart Romania Like many post-Communist countries, Romania is having troubles promoting a modern idea of citizenship: transparency, activism and engagement are relatively new words for Romanians. ... Read More
New Website Lets Chileans Browse Their Lawmakers' Financial Ties, Reported and Otherwise
BY Nick Judd | Monday, October 24 2011
Inspectordeintereses.cl Over the weekend, Fundacíon Ciudadano Inteligente released Inspector de Intéreses, a site for Chilean citizens to explore possible conflicts of interest between their legislators and entities ... Read More