Shining a Light on Politics: An Interview with Ellen Miller of The Sunlight Foundation

Publication: Netsqaured

Britt Bravo
May 1, 2008

http://cdn4.libsyn.com/netsquared/Shining_a_Light_on_Politics__An_Interview_with_Ellen_Miller.mp3

You vote, right? But do you use Congresspedia, Wiki The Vote, the SuperDelegate Transparency Project, OpenSecrets.org, FedSpending.org, or PublicMarkup.org to be an informed voter? They are all projects whose creation was facilitated by the Sunlight Foundation to educate citizens and increase transparency in politics.

On March 28th, I talked on the phone with Ellen Miller, the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, about their work. Ellen is also a NetSquared Advocate. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.

Ellen Miller: The Sunlight Foundation is a two-year-old organization that is a combination of a grant-making, and operational institution that focuses on creating greater transparency for the work of Congress.

We were founded in major part to initially digitize existing political information about the work of Congress, and then to free that data out of the silos so that citizens can more easily understand the connections between money and lobbyists, and the work of the institution.

Britt Bravo: Can you talk a little bit about why you think the social web is important in the development of policy, and what its role is in advocacy?

EM: I think Sunlight was founded at a really unique moment. Two things came together that really allowed for the space for an organization like ours to exist. The first was that the corruption in Congress had reached a fevered pitch. This was in late fall of 2005, the time of Tom DeLay and Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham, who are all considered now to be some of the most corrupt members of Congress in recent memory. So, that was in the background.

The second thing that created us, that led to our creation, was the ability of the new technology to put information into the hands of citizens, and allow them to do stuff with it. The whole rise and experimentation in the networked sphere meant that we didn't have to do all of the work, we could encourage citizens and experts to work with us, and participate with us on various projects.

To that end, the very first project that we launched was something called Congresspedia, which is a wiki on Congress. We did that as a joint project with the Center for Media and Democracy, and we've proven what a huge resource this has been, both as an opportunity for people to participate in adding information about their members of Congress, and now we have a section called Wiki The Vote where we allow people to add information about every single candidate for Congressional office. And we have a section called the Superdelegate Transparency Project, where we encourage people to participate by adding information about who the Superdelegates are.

We've really proven through a number of projects now, Congresspedia being the first, that the networked sphere really works in this arena, this unique arena, of the combination of technology and politics.

BB: I think with all the hoopla about Superdelegates, people would love to know more about the Superdelegate Transparency Project. Can you talk a little more about how that works?

EM: We got a list of all the Superdelegates. We added those names to the website, and we said to people who come to the website, "Tell us who these people are." We've just stood back and allowed that to happen. It's a very simple, straightforward, typical wiki-focused kind of project.

BB: You've listed a few of them, but what are some of the web-based tools you think every voter should know about and be using on a regular basis to be a good, conscious voter?

EM: One of our challenges has been to digitize existing political information. We think that everyone should know the earmarks that a member of Congress requests, and make decisions about whether those are good ideas or not. So, we've worked with Taxpayers for Common Sense to create a database of earmarks.

We think that every member of the public should know about the political contributors to members of Congress, and the lobbyists who lobby Congress. We have facilitated the creation of those databases at the Center for Responsive Politics at OpenSecrets.org.

We also think that citizens having information about government grants and contracts is hugely important in terms of making decisions about how government is doing what government is doing. We facilitated the database at FedSpending.org, that is actually a database that is operated by a group called OMB Watch.

Those things are hugely important. One of Sunlight's challenges is to be able to bring all of these databases together, and to make it really simple for citizens to search all that information in essentially one click. That's something that we're working on, and we'll bring that forward fairly soon, actually.

BB: You had a Congressional mashup contest last year...

EM: We did.

BB: Are you going to do another one this year?

EM: We are indeed. In fact, we were going to do it about the same time that NetSquared was going to do it. It's just coincidental in terms of timing. We decided we'd hold off and let yours go through because we are very excited about what you are doing and we think it's hugely successful in terms of stimulating nonprofits' thinking about how to use data and information in really creative ways.

We were thrilled last year that the number one winner [of the NetSquared Innovation Award] was a grantee of the Sunlight Foundation. We are equally thrilled that four of our grantees are now in your finalist category [of the NetSquared Mashup Challenge]. We feel we are very much on the cutting edge of organizations that are understanding the power of mashups of information.

BB: Can you talk a little bit about what came out of your contest last year, what you've learned, how you might be doing things differently this year, and how this year's contest will work for people who might be interested in entering?

EM: We haven't set the parameters, but no doubt it will be a contest about political information. We want to do this as soon as the APIs are publicly available from all of our organizations where we have funded databases, that will be probably around the middle of May.

People should watch for an announcement on our website. Last year, we received about a dozen really viable and exciting political mashups of information and data. We asked our Board of Advisors, they were our judges on this, and they picked one or two of them for the first and second prizes. They really were the most interested in the most simple, straightforward, easily understandable ones. Those are the ones that won. One of the winners has gone on to create other mashups of political information.

BB: You are doing such amazing, important work. How can people who read this get involved with your work?

EM: We are frequently, I was going to say constantly, but that would be a slight exaggeration, we are frequently announcing new projects in which citizens can participate. Early next week, we will be announcing a new project called PublicMarkup.org that will be available for citizens to participate. [The site has been launched since the interview took place].

This is an interesting project because Sunlight developed a draft model bill on government transparency. It's an amalgamation of legislation that is already pending that concerns creating more transparency, more databases, more information, and putting information online in a timely fashion. After we developed it, we said, "We really want to consult with people who are FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) experts. We really want to consult with people who are experts on government grants and contracts." Then, we had the idea of just putting it online.

We'd love to have anyone, citizens, experts, and people who are just interested in the issue of government transparency to participate. It's a very simple structure. The issue isn't the structure, the technology behind this, but it's really trying to help us gather, literally, the wisdom of the crowds about how to create greater transparency.

We'd love to have people come and take a look at it, participate in it and give us their feedback and their ideas. Tell us what we've missed, tell us what we've gotten wrong. Our goal is to take all those ideas, vastly improve this bill, take it up to Capitol Hill, look for some sponsors for it, and actually try to move it forward.

It's not an academic exercise. It's really an intent to devise legislation that Sunlight is very interested in, in a very real world way.

BB: Finally, is there anything else about the Sunlight Foundation's work, or the relationship between the social web and policy, that you didn't get to talk about that you want to share with listeners?

EM: Well, I think we have to understand - when we're in this mode of using the social web - that this is all about experimentation. We don't know what projects are going to work always. We don't know what is going to be too complex. I think groups should not be afraid to experiment.

To that end, one thing that I didn't mention is that Sunlight, while we are a grant maker and we focus many of our grants on actual development of databases, we also have a relatively smaller pool of money of very modest grants - grants not to exceed $5,000 that we call mini-grants. Many of these go to technologists who are interested in experimenting in the development of ways to engage citizens in their work.

All of our grants are listed on our website at Sunlightfoundation.com. I'd urge people to come to the website, take a look at those and particularly, take a look at these smaller grants that are listed there. It they have ideas, we have a very open process. You can find the one-page form to send us your basic idea. If it looks like it fits - that is to say it concerns the issue of transparency for the work of Congress - we'll take a look at it, move it through the process quickly, and let you know whether or not it actually might be something that is eligible for a grant from the Sunlight Foundation.