Larry Lessig blogs today about why he's supporting Barack Obama for President. There are a number of reasons, including this one:

... a commitment to making data about the government (as well as government data) publicly available in standard machine readable formats. The promise isn't just the naive promise that government websites will work better and reveal more. It is the really powerful promise to feed the data necessary for the Sunlights and the Maplights of the world to make government work better. Atomize (or RSS-ify) government data (votes, contributions, Members of Congress's calendars) and you enable the rest of us to make clear the economy of influence that is Washington.

 Here's a link to the entire policy statement by Obama, and another report.

The Reason Foundation has been getting the presidential candidates to talk more about transparency on the campaign trail by asking them to sign a pledge to run a transparent administration and fully enforce the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006, also known as Coburn-Obama. The FFATA requires the Office of Management and Budget to disclose all federal funding contracts, grants, and earmarks in a searchable database. The Sunlight Foundation was a part of a coalition of groups that worked to pass the bill, in particular working to out the Senator with a secret hold on the bill. So far, three candidates - Barack Obama, Ron Paul, and Sam Brownback - have signed the pledge. It's great to see transparency taking a hold as an issue in the 2008 presidential election. Hopefully, we'll hear from more candidates on the issue soon. For now, check out below for the statements made by the three pledge signees.

Two months ago, Sen. Barack Obama laid out his plan to make the executive branch more transparent and accountable to the American people. Ellen wrote a blog post then which both acknowledged the importance of a major Presidential candidate putting transparency on the agenda and pushed for an even more active transparency agenda. Yesterday in Iowa, Sen. Obama reiterated his transparency agenda while adding a bit more to it.

From TechPresident this morning...

Following in the footsteps of Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, and Al Gore, Barack Obama has posed a question on Yahoo! Answers, reports the Chicago Tribune. His question? "How can we engage more people in the democratic process?" . . . The Tribune notes that Obama isn't the first candidate to use the forum; Hillary Clinton and John McCain have been there, done that.

Yesterday during the debate on the Senate ethics legislation Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Co.), along with cosponsor Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), introduced an amendment to require that each Senate committee and subcommittee post to their website “a video recording, audio recording, or transcript of any meeting not later than 14 business days after the meeting occurs.” Salazar’s amendment (SA 15), which modifies Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nevada) substitute amendment SA 3, was agreed to by a voice vote yesterday.