I was lucky enough to spend last week at the Aspen Institute, attending the annual Forum on Communications and Society. Thirty-odd of us spent four days talking about how to make government more open and more innovative. The guest list will leave reasonable people wondering how I got invited—Madeline Albright, Toomas Hendrik Ilves (the President […]
Category Archives: Tech
New Virginia Decoded features.
Since March, my 9–5 job has been building The State Decoded, software based on my Virginia Decoded site. Although it would be fun to have spent all of this time adding new features to Virginia Decoded, most of it has been spent adapting the software to support a wide variety of legal structures. I released […]
Sunlight Foundation “OpenGov Champion.”
The Sunlight Foundation has put together a very kind mini-documentary about my open government technology work. (I can’t see that any of its contents will come as news to anybody who reads this blog.) It was fun to participate in the making of it, and it was a joy to watch filmmakers Tiina Knuutila and […]
Congress declines to let people download copies of bills.
From the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations comes their annual report on spending on the legislature, this one for the 2012–2013 fiscal year. It includes this gem of a section (on pages 17–18) on proposed spending to let people download copies of bills: During the hearings this year, the Committee heard testimony on the dissemination […]
Opening up Virginia campaign finance data with Saberva.
With the Virginia State Board of Elections starting to provide bulk campaign finance data, a whole new world of data has opened up, and I intend to make the most of it. Although the esteemed Virginia Public Access Project has long provided this information (laboriously cleaned up and displayed in a user-friendly fashion), it’s useful […]
The White House’s Ethics.gov promo video.
Introducing Virginia Decoded.
Since it’s Sunshine Week, I figured I should stop obsessively polishing Virginia Decoded and just make it public. So here it is. What is it? Think Richmond Sunlight, but for the whole Code of Virginia, rather than just the bills proposed each year. So why not use the official website for the code? Look at […]
I’m speaking at tomorrow’s Jefferson Jackson event in Richmond.
I don’t normally mention my public speaking engagements, but tomorrow I’ve got one that’s free, open to the public, and liable to be of general interest. Tomorrow is the Democratic Party of Virginia’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner, the party’s big annual event. As a part of the day’s activities, I’m speaking on a panel with former […]
I seem to have this website.
I publicly launched Richmond Sunlight five years ago this week. Upon its launch I gave it to the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy because, as I wrote, “they’re non-partisan, they have an attention span longer than a housefly, and they have access to resources that I don’t.” I concluded: “I’ll run it for them […]
“Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.”
There was a moment in an episode of The Simpsons (“Mountain of Madness”), that aired back in 1997, that I’ve mentally revisited every so often over the past decade: In transcript form: Homer: So, Mr. Burns is gonna make us all go on a stupid corporate retreat up in the mountains to learn about teamwork. […]