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- WASHINGTON, D.C., March 17, 2010 — As part of Sunshine Week, March 14-20, The Center for Public Integrity and the Sunlight Foundation are looking for help with The Data Mine, a new online series identifying inaccessible or difficult to use information from the federal government.
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- WASHINGTON, DC - Congressman Steve Israel (NY-02) introduced a banner piece of legislation today in an effort to make public government information available to all Americans online. This bill, the Public Online Information Act (POIA), is an effort to remedy the fact that significant quantities of government data sets are designated as "public," but are hard to find, and sometimes difficult to read. POIA will ensure that government information from across all agencies will be available to everyone within a few keystrokes on a computer.
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- WASHINGTON, DC – The Sunlight Foundation will kick off a national campaign for transparent government this THURSDAY, March 18, 2010. The “Public=Online” campaign will be an ongoing effort by the Sunlight Foundation to harness public support for accountability and transparency in order to build a grassroots movement that works to hold elected officials accountable on the local, state and federal level.
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- WASHINGTON, DC – During Sunshine Week next week, Congressman Steve Israel (NY-02) will introduce The Public Online Information Act (POIA), a banner piece of legislation to require that all public government-held information be available to all Americans online. Congressman Israel will announce his plans for POIA at the press conference next TUESDAY, March 16, 2010 at the United States Capitol. Congressman Israel will be joined by Ellen Miller, executive director and co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation and Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum.
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- Every day, the federal government releases vast amounts of useful information about every aspect of our nation and how government works. This public information has a deep impact on almost every aspect of American life. Some of it can be used to hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, or have a profound effect on health, economic development and commerce. The problem is, much of this government information is too often hard to find, difficult to understand, expensive to obtain in useful formats, and available in only a few locations.
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- WASHINGTON, DC – This past Friday, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the White House delivered on their promise to release more information online. The House posted its quarterly Statement of Disbursements, which tracks how members of Congress use their official budget, and the Obama administration released a new set of White House visitor logs online. The Sunlight Foundation added both these data sets to previously existing databases.
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- WASHINGTON, DC - The Sunlight Foundation will host a comprehensive, online, real-time resource on Thursday during the president's health care summit to give reporters and the public a one-stop shop for information on the debate and on the attendees. Sunlight Live (http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/live) will bring together real-time blogging, tweets and relevant facts on congressional members in attendance including campaign finance data, revolving door information, lawmakers' personal finances and key votes to give the public a greater understanding of why the elected officials have staked out their positions on health care.
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- WASHINGTON, DC - Senator Chuck Schumer and Congressman Chris Van Hollen released a legislative framework yesterday meant to address the potential flood of corporate and union money into the political system as a result of the Supreme Court's decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee (FEC). Senator Schumer and Congressman Van Hollen addressed several critical new reporting and disclosure rules which mirror many of the recommendations that the Sunlight Foundation offered (http://sunlightfoundation.com/policy/documents/comprehensive-disclosure-regime-wake-supreme-court/) just two weeks ago. The Sunlight Foundation renewed its call for disclosures to be electronically filed and publicly available online within 24 hours.
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- WASHINGTON, DC – This morning, the Sunlight Foundation released seven proposals that should be immediately implemented in order to create a more transparent, accountable political disclosure system in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) decision last week. The proposals are structured to address new realities, including the ability for corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts of money on independent expenditure campaigns, on behalf of candidates and issues.
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- Washington, DC - Last night during the State of the Union address, President Obama made transparency a cornerstone issue for his administration this year. He called for the establishment of a single, Congress-wide database to track earmarks; better and more complete lobbying disclosure and a concerted effort to change the campaign finance laws to reflect the new realities created by last week’s Supreme Court decision on the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) case. Since these issues strongly reflect the Sunlight Foundation’s mission, it has issued policy proposals to help Congress and the White House achieve these goals.
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- Washington, DC - The Obama administration is making an unparalleled amount of data available online today. The release, as part of the Open Government Directive, is further evidence that the administration is serious about increased government transparency and is committed to moving toward a more open way of operating. The Sunlight Foundation applauds this long-anticipated action by the administration and is pleased to see its own recommendations heeded.
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- Washington, DC - Today's landmark Supreme Court decision on Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission which allows corporations to spend unlimited funds on direct electoral activities and issue advocacy makes overhauling election disclosure laws a necessity, according to the Sunlight Foundation. The majority opinion penned by Chief Justice John Roberts specifically cites online public disclosure as key to giving the public the information they need to make informed decisions on political speech.
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- WASHINGTON, DC - This morning, the Sunlight Labs launched a new resource for iPhone users which could revolutionize the way that users of Apple's popular app phone can access and interact with information about Congress. The Real Time Congress application is a fast and free way to access real-time congressional activity, meetings and documents right at users' fingertips.
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- Washington, DC - This morning, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new resource for journalists, bloggers and citizens, the Reporting Group Web site, available at Reporting.SunlightFoundation.com. The site will integrate Sunlight’s many efforts on behalf of journalists including training materials, research, data and stories—into a single site.
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- Washington, DC - Acting on the latest online release of visitor data provided by the White House last week, the Sunlight Labs released a mashup designed to make it easier for anyone to conduct independent research on who is visiting the White House. The new mashup links to data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics to show whether visitors have given campaign contributions on the national or state level; it also links to visitors’ profiles on LittleSis.org and their Google and Wikipedia search results to provide greater context of who is conducting business with the White House.