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On Jan. 17, the Internet Advocacy Roundtable (IAR) hosted a panel on new Internet tools that provide information and data to make government activities more transparent. "Advocacy depends on knowing what the government is doing," Roundtable founder Alan Rosenblatt told the group. Although the federal government hosts websites that provide critical information to citizens, these websites have tended to be "clunky and not designed for public use," Sunlight Foundation fellow Bill Allison said.

Fortunately, several new websites are taking government data and information and presenting it a new user-friendly way. These new resources, listed below, can help nonprofits learn about the inner workings of government and in doing so make their advocacy efforts more effective.

IAR is a monthly discussion coordinated by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. January's panelists were Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, Dan Newman, co-founder and executive director of MAPLight.org, Marc Laitin, principal at Wired for Change, which built the GovernmentDocs.org website, and Sarah Schacht, executive director and founder of Knowledge As Power, a Washington State nonprofit organization dedicated to providing citizens information on the state’s legislative process

Resources for Nonprofits

GovernmentDocs.org allows users to browse, search, and review hundreds of thousands of pages acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public disclosure, or "sunshine," laws. Users can search documents by FOIA request, and then browse individual pages. Conveniently, each page in every document has been assigned a separate URL, which makes it easy to lookup and reference individual pages. Instead of an advocate referring to page 65 of a 400 plus page PDF document, they can provide their audience with a web link directly to that page. The website also facilitates searches for specific words or phrases using a system of optical character recognition. Registered users can also comment on documents, adding context and additional information as they see fit.

MAPLight.org is a nonpartisan website illuminating the connections between money and politics in the U.S. Congress and in California. MAPLight.org combines three data sets: bill texts and legislative voting records; supporting and opposing interests for each bill; and campaign contribution data from OpenSecrets.org (see below) and the National Institute on Money in State Politics. Combining this data on an hourly basis, MAPlight.org allows citizens to connect the dots between money and politics like never before. For example, citizens can determine how much money special interests supporting and opposing each bill gave to legislators, the average donations given to legislators voting "Yes" and "No" on each bill, and the timeline of contributions and votes for each bill, graphically identifying when legislators received large donations before or after their vote.

OMB Watch's FedSpending.org is a free, searchable database of approximately $16.8 trillion in Federal government spending, with complete annual data from FY 2000 through FY 2006 and partial data available for FY 2007. A resource specific to Washington state, Knowledge As Power is a nonpartisan resource on state legislative activity. Founder Sarah Schacht developed the website out of her frustration with "how incredibly difficult it is for individuals to track legislation and to communicate with legislators." Users can track bills according to their policy interests, receive updates on legislation, and send personalized letters to their representatives. For each Washington state bill, the website translates any perplexing legal speak into eighth grade English, making government more accessible and comprehensible to citizens.

LOUIS — a website launched by the Sunlight Foundation in June 2007— aims to be a comprehensive, completely indexed and cross-referenced depository of documents from the executive and legislative branches of government. Although still in its initial stage, LOUIS currently contains, in fully searchable format, seven sets of federal documents: Congressional Reports; Congressional Record; Congressional Hearings; Federal Register; Presidential Documents; GAO Reports; and Congressional Bills & Resolutions. LOUIS differs from official government Web sites like THOMAS in that all of its data is available in a standardized, structured format.

OpenSecrets.org — provided by the Center for Responsive Politics — allows users to track the data candidates and legislators are receiving from whom. Users can search by industry, major donor, 527 committee, and more.

OpenCongress — another project of the Sunlight Foundation — brings together official government data with news and blog coverage.

• Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) database on campaign finance disclosure;
• The Library of Congress's THOMAS website which provides information on Congress and its activities;
• the Lobbying Disclosure Act Database;
• the Department of Justice's Foreign Agent Registration Act database ; and
• USAspending.gov, which provides information on Federal awards to the public, as collected from federal agencies, in an easy-to-use website.

More about the Internet Advocacy Roundtable

The Internet Advocacy Roundtable — launched in August 2005 — is a monthly panel that features in-depth discussions about digital technology strategies for advocacy and policy campaigns. The aim is to help the advocacy community use digital technology more effectively and provide a gathering for those working in this space to network and learn from their peers.