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Opening Up the Congress

 

(Viewed: times)

 

with Matt Stoller, MyDD

Karina Newton, office of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi

and Ari Rabin-Havt, office of Senator Harry Reid

and many other participants

notes by David Alpert

 

Introduction

 

now we control Congress, so we can govern!

rethink how government operates

this is first conversation in 2-month long process to come up with recommendations about what Congress can do to make itself more open and accountable

 

Topics for discussion

 

1) What are you looking for? What content do you want from Congress?

2) Who needs to be involved in the discussion about making Congress more open?

 

examples of other legislative bodies' best practices very helpful

 

Ideas suggested by participants

 

Punch Clock campaign by Sunlight Foundation

campaign to get Congresspeople to publish schedules

Kirsten Gillibrand pledged to do it and will be first member of Congress

lets us know who they are meeting with and who they are taking calls from

 

monitoring pollution: emissions data from epa not standardized

spend $180K to update and format data to create a scorecard

 

in CA have to register as lobbyist what bills you are for & against

project maplight makes that public

and tracks how often assembly person votes with lobbyists

that info isn't available at Federal level

 

contracts let to government

OMBwatch releases what contracts are given out

very expensive to pull together

should put out all data across all departments

took months for Waxman's Govt Reform committee to make database of Iraq contracts

 

contact list of reporters

advocacy groups have to pay a lot to get press lists in states and Cong. districts

we should make it all available

lists of local elected officials

 

email traffic aggregate data

don't give copies of email, but classify it and give stats

Web traffic and IM traffic?

make sure Congresspeople doing their jobs

see what other crazy coalitions are mass emailing them

existing programs to do that (Trampoline, Trakken)

225M emails come in to House servers, 100Ks of faxes

like how reporters knew something going on at Pentagon because of calls to Domino's pizza

 

open oversight: let people act as public whistleblowers and send info to Congress to show up in hearing

show up as anonymous submission or public submission in hearing

Mr. Miller has tip line now on his site

Congress does some e-hearings now so people can testify

 

U.S. code is very complex, and legislation often cross-linked there

have link in bill back to original code

see 2 versions, what is now and what new version will look like

Members can link on sections and state their public positions

internally editable wiki on the US Code

see House and Senate versions that will go to conference committee

what positions are, who's changing it, why

 

put bills online 24 hours, or 72 hours

why not a full week ahead?

current language is "at least 24" - much better than the 5 mins under GOP

 

infrastructure to support all of this

support open standards, so bills or calendars can be downloaded into other tools

use open source in vendors on internal systems

 

create ability to tag legislation

when Colin Powell shows nuclear tubes, a physicist could write rebuttal

anyone can add annotations

maybe content hosted outside Congress

make Thomas etc. accessible to annotation services like Digg

 

make Thomas more open and accessible

and have series of grants for anyone who builds interesting deployment

 

put video cameras in every hearing room

15-20 hearings a day, 3 get covered by C-SPAN

all be transcribed, posted on Web

including Q&A between Members and witnesses

 

all that content should be in public domain

C-SPAN footage included

 

gamecast for Congress - see who is in the chamber at any time online

when someone gives a great speech, and turns out only 2 people in room

links to text, amendments, everything

 

a hearing is members on dais and an audience full of lobbyists

at a Net Neutrality hearing, one Member gave thumbs-up to a lobbyist after voting against NN

every interest group submits letters, press releases, statements

document what industry groups are submitting

and tag them by industry etc.

 

will making everything public have a chilling effect?

someone tunes in for 5 minutes and sees a part and gets wrong idea, doesn't see whole hour of discussion

don't create incentives to push all government activity to private think tanks

(or could make it more difficult to do business in private think tanks)

as it's gotten more transparent, has gotten more fake

people don't talk real because they're always talking to a certain constituency

idea is to make more open and accountable, not just more transparent

 

another vote for making content easy for other services to interpret

may not be able to make Thomas better, but could empower other organizations to make better services

no pdfs - has to be text

push information out to edges

 

basic things to educate people about work of government

many people don't realize that reps don't write all speeches themselves

help them know who are staffers who work on what

some offices have good staff lists, some don't

not necessarily own rep's Web site since then they would be responsible for doing it

 

concern about focusing on external structural changes

have to approach staff and Members to get buy-in

that is challenging

we on outside can help with buy-in process

 

let challengers use video of statements by incumbents on floor

 

great possibilities in video of committees and subcommittees

let people annotate what's happening

MLB not only streams games, but also "there's a hit at this moment"

want color commentators

 

on hesitancy about pushing things outside hearing room

we're not talking about changing current politicians

want to lift up an entirely different type of politician

who doesn't want to whisper in the bathroom but wants the honest open debate

 

Stoller proposal last year for campaign communications database

any communication about official put out and logged

24 hours before it's put out; no more surprise attack ads

 

make lobbyists wear hats with big logos

seriously, make them do 30-second videos about themselves

UPS track where they are


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