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Washington, DC - Today, the Sunlight Foundation launched Transparency Corps, a Web service that enables citizens to help create greater government transparency by performing small, discrete tasks to analyze and enhance the usefulness of government data. Sunlight’s Transparency Corps aggregates simple actions—such as evaluating lawmakers’ earmark requests—that require human intelligence, but not specialized political knowledge. Sunlight demonstrated the new, open source site at the annual Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York.
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Washington, DC - This Friday, Congress plans to vote on a bill that could fundamentally alter the American economy, dramatically affect the climate, and have huge implications for our national security. But, right now no one knows what's in the bill or how it came to be.
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Washington, DC - Late yesterday, Reps. Baird and Culberson introduced a resolution (H. Res. 554) to require the U.S. House of Representatives to post online all non-emergency legislation 72 hours before debate begins. This resolution will create more transparency of the legislative process by giving lawmakers the time to debate bills with full knowledge and consideration of their implications, while giving citizens time to read legislation and voice their concerns to their congressional delegation. Sunlight posted a copy of the resolution on its site.
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Washington, DC –The Sunlight Labs, Sunlight Foundation’s open source development team, is organizing the hundreds of developers in its community, and the public at large, to collaboratively bid on the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board’s request for proposals (RFP) to build Recovery.gov. Through its blog, wiki, listserve and Internet chat room, the Sunlight Labs is leading the discussion on how to build a new Recovery.gov site. The RFP, which Sunlight obtained on Tuesday afternoon, is due June 26.
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Washington, DC - Today, following the Sunlight Foundation’s calls for online disclosure of House members’ expenditures, Speaker Pelosi instructed House administrators to post House members’ expenses on the Web. These statements disclose how representatives spend their Member Representational Allowances, which are federal funds allocated to support expenses such as staff salaries, official travel and administrative supplies.