Talk about MAPLight.org given to San Francisco Bay Region Chapter of the Special Libraries Association, June 3, 2009
- 1. Steve Toub Research Associate
2. My Background
- 17 yrs in & aroundnon-traditionallibraries
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- Never worked in same place as print collection
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- Never did face-to-face reference
- What led me to MAPLight.org
- Hired to do what metadata librarians do
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- Analyze, map, normalize, enrich metadata
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- Help manage metadata repository that aggregates diverse data
sets
3. About the Organization
- Nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c) 3
-
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- Rockefeller Brothers Fund
- 5 staff, 8 research interns
4. Organizational Vision
- Moneys influence on politicsbecomes the number one political
issue
- Federal, state and city governments implement citizen-funded
financingof political campaigns
5. Organizational Focus
- Publishing data and tools
- that allow journalists, bloggers,
- nonprofit groups and citizens
- to make the connection between
- and the legislative process
6. 7. 8. 9. Types of Policy Transparency
- From the Transparency Policy Project at Harvards Kennedy School
of Government
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- Explaining issues, policies and programs
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- Provide insight into how & why decisions are made
- Regulatory transparency systems
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- Disclosure and reporting incentives and requirements
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- Dissemination in ways people can truly understand
10. 11. 12. Eight Principles thatDefine Open Government Data
- http://www.opengovdata.org/
- All public data are made available. Public data are data that
are not subject to valid privacy, security of privilege
limitations.
- Data are collected at the source, with the finest possible
level of granularity, not in aggregate or modified forms.
- Data are made available as quickly as necessary to preserve the
value of the data.
- Data are available to the widest range of users for the widest
range of purposes.
13. Eight Principles thatDefine Open Government Data
- Data are reasonably structured to allow automated
processing.
- Data are available to anyone, with no requirement of
registration.
- Data are available in a format over which no entity has
exclusive control.
- Data are not subject to any copyright, patent, trademark or
trade secret regulation. Reasonable privacy, security and privilege
restrictions may be allowed.
14. MAPLight.org 15. Campaign contributions $ 16. and
legislative votes $ votes 17. $700 Billion Financial Bailout
- Banks & securities firms gave an average of
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- $212,700 to politicians voting yes
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- $150,982 to politicians voting no
18. 19. Telecom Immunity for Cooperating with Warrantless
Wiretapping
- AT&T, Verizon and Sprint PAC contributions
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- $8,359 to each Democrat who flipped
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- Opposed retroactive immunity in March 2008 amendment but
supported the June 2008 bill that included immunity
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- $4,987 to each Democrat who did not flip
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- Opposed retroactive immunity in March and June
20. 21. ReportedCampaign Contributions
- As reported by government
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- Federal Election Commission
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- California Secretary of State
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- Los Angeles City Ethics Commission
- Contributions less than disclosure threshold omitted
- We expose only contributions to officeholders
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- Candidates who lost dont get to vote
$ 22. Legislative Roll Call Votes
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- Only floor votes; no committee votes
- California State Legislature
$ votes 23. Data Sources OpenSecrets.org GovTrack.us NIMSP State
government websites $ votes 24. 25. 26. Obtaining Legislative
Data
- Sunlight Labs Fifty State Project
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- Announced in February 2009
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- First 10 days: 8 states done
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- Today: 25 states have scraper code, 11 more in progress
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- Senate votes became available in XML in May
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- Still want committee votes
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- Would like data in addition to campaign contributions
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- real-time lobbying disclosure
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- better disclosure of earmarks
27. Our value add is Support & Opposition
$ votes 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. June 4, 2003 38.
39. Dont like the default categories? 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.
47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. H.R. 801 Fair Copyright in Research
Works Act
- Would reverse NIHs open access mandate
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- passed by Congress in December 2007
- Would amend copyright law
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- create a new class of copyrighted material: stuff that your tax
dollars paid for
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- to make it illegal for the government to require that works
that are the result of government funding (not just NIH) be freely
available
55. 56. 57. 58. Projects that went live in May
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- The first jurisdiction where we coded contributors into special
interest categories
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- Phase two will include legislative data
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- Provides citations of organizations that support and oppose
bills, primarily for 110th and 111th Congress
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- Simple read-only REST API
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- Four methods, allowing you to search by organization or
bill
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- Responses in JSON and XML
59. Current Projects: Web Redesign
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- Improving information design
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- Improving interaction design
- Some backend improvements
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- Migrating to Drupal 6 and CiviCRM 2.2
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- Moving search from MySQL to Solr
60. Current Projects: Metadata
- Redesign how we research bill positions
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- Want data to come to us automagically, rather than have interns
hunt and peck
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- Shift in orientation from bill as a whole to votes
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- Start including which industries benefit from legislation
rather than those that explicitly support
- Normalizing and de-duping contributors, especially names of
organizations
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- Planning to expose all contributors/contributions
- Plan for expansion into all 50 states
- Assess viability of including other datasets
61. Questions?
62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.