Groups Seek More Congressional Transparency

The Sunlight Foundation recently launched the Open Senate Project as part of its ongoing attempt to improve congressional transparency. The project is a bipartisan initiative to study the Senate's current information sharing practices and subsequently develop recommendations for improvement, particularly through the use of technology.

The first stage of the project is to establish a dialogue among interested individuals and groups about the Senate's current practices and policies for disclosure, information sharing, and interaction with the public. The Sunlight Foundation has established an open Google Groups e-mail list, as well as a blog, to initiate the online discussion on Senate transparency reform.

The project has been endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who stated that he would welcome the recommendations resulting from the collaborative effort. Specific recommendations from the project are expected next spring.

While many government openness groups and access advocates have focused on executive branch openness issues, the Sunlight Foundation has concentrated on congressional transparency. The legislative branch, which has passed several laws to require greater openness by executive agencies, has appeared reluctant to significantly increase its own transparency requirements. Since the executive branch has no authority to impose such requirements on Congress, the situation will only improve when Congress chooses to set new standards for itself.

 

The Open Senate Project is paralleling another Sunlight Foundation project started in 2007, called the Open House Project. The House-focused project began with the same Google Groups approach to identify issues and generate ideas. The project culminated in a May 2007 report on transparency in the House of Representatives. The Open House recommendations focused on technical areas such as coordinating web standards, removing web-use restrictions for members of Congress, and creating video access to congressional proceedings.

The Open House Project has made significant progress over the years on several of its recommendations. Among the successes was the Library of Congress' decision to create permanent links on THOMAS, the government's online federal legislative information directory. A summary of other progress can be found in the project's retrospective report.

Other organizations have made efforts to improve congressional transparency. For instance, Taxpayers for Common Sense has published a database of congressional earmarks for Fiscal Year 2008. Still other groups focus on Congress's role in making executive branch transparency efficient and accountable. The right-to-know community's recent report, titled Moving Toward a 21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda: Recommendations to President-elect Obama and Congress, contains recommendations concerning Congress in the areas of oversight, funding, and new legislation.

back to Blog