Open House Project and That Governing Thing

I'll have a longer post up today on the Open House Project (part of the Sunlight Foundation), which officially unveiled its report in the Capitol this morning.

Minority Leader Boehner and Congressman Brad Miller were there to discuss transparency and putting a bit of Web 2.0 into the House.  Republican David All and Democrat Philip de Vellis put out this video upon the launch of the event.  It's so bipartisan.

I want to give a special shout-out to Brad Miller, who had to run off to a predatory lending hearing after his remarks.  He's been on that issue for the last four years, before it was cool.  Congressman Miller talked about citizens and journalism, and in a true sign he gets the ideology of the open left, analogized what we do to the partisan press of the late 18th century.

What I've learned from this project is that bringing Congress into the 21st century is happening, with good people all over the Hill and outside of the institution.  It's just an organizing problem.

More soon, but we should note that this whole governing thing can be pretty cool.  Cocktail weenies... Mmmmm...

Tags: open house project (all tags)

Comments

5 Comments

The FDA needs to find out...

...what the hell is in those DC weenies.

by palamedes 2007-05-08 10:55AM | 0 recs
Re: Open House Project and That Governing Thing

Congrats Matt on the Open House Project!

This is a historically important project that I am glad was undertaken...Even if it did mean that I lost John to Sunlight.  Totally kidding!

His intellect is finally being put to good use, for the betterment of us all!

This is big day for democracy!

by FISG 2007-05-08 11:07AM | 0 recs
Re: Open House Project and That Governing Thing

Wonderful!

by sayhar 2007-05-08 11:32AM | 0 recs
I'm on a diet

The thought of cocktail weenies is making me drool.

by dpANDREWS 2007-05-08 12:29PM | 0 recs
Legislative Version Control

It would be nice if handling of bill text gained something from what the software industry has developed for tools for handling source code.

For example, I hacked up the Constitution as if it were source code. In such a system, the 17th Amendment might look something like this.

http://bolson.org/viewvc/constitution.tx t?r1=1.17&r2=1.18

In the time before a bill becomes law, this would also tag any change to preliminary bill text with who made the change. Either by committee or floor amendment or conference committee, I hear bad things sometimes get inserted in strange and untrackable ways. I think there's a good solution for tracking those things.

by bolson 2007-05-08 02:42PM | 0 recs

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