US Web Sites Push For More Transparency and Accessibility In Government

by K. C. Jones

June 23.- One unemployment bill before the U.S. Congress has generated more than 17,000 comments, thanks to one of many sites using technology to increase transparency, accountability, and participation in government.

OpenCongress aims to make everyone a political insider. It gives readers access to more detail and depth of information than traditional news stories. The free, open source, nonpartisan site does so by combining traditional news stories, summaries of bills, sponsors, status, roll calls on the latest issues put up for votes, and an area for user comments.

The site is a project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. David Moore, executive director of PPF, spoke about the site at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York on Monday.
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Another site featured during the conference is MetaVid, an open source online domain that archives video from proceedings in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Citizens who want to see what their representatives said on a specific issue can search for and play the specific footage they see.

"I can set it up to watch every time my senator mentions peace," said Michael Dale, the main developer of the MetaVidWiki software and a major participant in the project.

Bloggers can embed and annotate any clip onto a Web page for discussion. They can also link back for the full day's discussion to provide broader context. The clips are open to all media ...

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