Speaking of personal transparency and salaries, according to the BCC, “There has been outrage in Italy after the outgoing government published every Italian’s declared earnings and tax contributions on the internet.” The website was put up without warning by the outgoing government and has been taken down after complaints. Said the deputy economy minister: “I can’t understand what the problem is. This already exists all around the world, you just have to watch any American soap to see that. We had the system ready by January but we delayed publication to avoid arguments during the election campaign.” (Hat tip Drew.)

Facebook needs a salary field

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The NYT has an interesting article today about the surprising willingness of young people to disclose to peers their salaries—something previously taboo. This is especially interesting to me since I spoke to House chiefs of staff today about transparency. They are up in arms because a third-party website has made all their financial disclosure forms (which were always technically publicly available) searchable online. That’s right, if you’d like to know the salary of any Congressional staffer, just search legistorm.com.

We really seem to be moving towards a more personally transparent world and, as long as it’s voluntary, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. I know I certainly share salary information with peers in my professional circles. As an economist quoted in the article points out, how else are you going to determine the market price for your talent? “Robert H. Frank, an economics professor at Cornell, said that an open flow of information is deemed crucial by young professionals who think of themselves as free agents, not company men.”

Finding out that someone with a similar job is making more money than me isn’t embarrassing, it’s a godsend. It tells me my skills are valued and that I’m in demand. It can also highlight options. I know lawyers who graduated with me who are making close to double my salary, but are in the office twice as much as I am. Knowing this is valuable information for both of us.

Apr 28, 2008 | Comment | Tags: , ,

Me on the Cato Daily Podcast

I totally forgot about this, but last Friday I was featured on the Cato Daily Podcast. Marking Sunshine Week, I spoke about online transparency. You can grab the MP3 or take a listen here:

Mar 23, 2008 | Comment | Tags: , ,

Pentagon: Why post it online when we can mail it?

McClatchy reports that a Pentagon analysis of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the invasion found no operational ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. This is of great interest to journalists and citizens, so it’s a good thing the study was publicly released. No doubt your thinking you can go to the Pentagon’s website and download a copy, right? According to the NYT:

[T]he report will not be posted on the Internet, as originally planned, and no one will conduct any briefings on its conclusions. Anyone wanting to read it will have to ask the United States Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., for a copy. Officials promise to send it by mail.

One of the themes in my forthcoming paper on online transparency is that although there are many laws that require government to disclose information to the public, few require that disclosure to be online. Because the internet is the way we disseminate information today, paper disclosure is not meaningful disclosure. The good news is the corollary to that idea, which is that if government doesn’t disclose online, third parties will. So it’s amazing to me that the Pentagon thinks it can stifle interest in a story by refusing to disclose online.

So, grab your copy at ABC News (PDF).

Mar 16, 2008 | 1 Comment | Tags: , ,

McClintock, Garrick seek online account of state spending - I’m quoted today in Capitol Weekly, California’s state politics newspaper.

I’ve created a new site called OpenRegulations.gov that is an alternative interface to the federal government’s Regulations.gov database. The notable improvement is that unlike the official offering, OpenRgulations.gov offers an RSS feed of Federal Register notices for each agency. I explain it in more detail here. Please spread the word!

I have an op-ed in today’s Des Moines Register about government online transparency. It’s also been published in the Austin American-Statesman.

I live-blogged the Senate hearing on e-government and transparency today over at TLF.

Given enough eyeballs, all corruption is shallow

I’ve been laboring for a few months on a paper about government transparency on the internet and I’m happy to say that it’s now available as a working paper. In it I show that a lot of government information that is supposed to be publicly available is only nominally available because it’s not online. When data does make it online it’s often useless; it’s as if the .gov domain has a prohibition on XML and reliable searches.

First I look at independent third parties (such as GovTrack.us) that are doing yeoman’s work by picking up the slack where government fails and making data available online in flexible formats. Then I look at yet other third parties who are taking the liberated data and using them in mashups (such as MAPLight.org) and crowdsourcing (such as our own Jim Harper’s WashingtonWatch.com). Mashups of government data help highlight otherwise hidden connections and crowdsourcing makes light work of sifting through mountains of data. If I may corrupt Eric Raymond’s Linus’s Law for a moment, “Given enough eyeballs, all corruption is shallow.” In the coming days I plan to write a bunch more on how online tools can shed light on government, including a series dissecting the FCC’s website–not for the squeamish.

I believe opening up government to online scrutiny is immensely important. If we’re going to hold government accountable for its actions, we need to know what those actions are. The Sunlight Foundation has been doing fantastic work on this front and I would encourage you to visit them and especially their Open House Project blog. I would also encourage you to send me any comments you might have on my paper as I’m still perfecting it before I submit it to journals.

Oct 22, 2007 | 1 Comment | Tags: , ,

Michael Marcus posts a lenghty critique of the FCC’s web site pointing out how unusable it is. His quick calculations show that “the FCC has more links on its home page than any other agency and just loses to Interior … on number of words.” I use the FCC’s web site in my forthcoming ‘transparency and internet technologies’ paper as an example of the inpenetrable darkness that is online agency data.

Writings

Academic Articles

Hack, Mash & Peer: Crowdsourcing Government Transparency
8 Columbia Science & Technology Law Review (forthcoming 2008)
A Tale of Two Commissions: Net Neutrality and Regulatory Analysis
16 CommLaw Conspectus 1 (2007). Co-authored with Jerry Ellig.
Growth in Regulation Slows: An Analysis of the U.S. Budget for Fiscal Years 2007 and 2008
The 29th Annual Regulators’ Budget Report. Co-authored with Melinda Warren. June 2007.
Sending out an S.O.S.: Public Safety Communications Interoperability as a Collective Action Problem (PDF)
59 Federal Communications Law Journal 3 (2007).
Video Killed the Franchise Star: The Consumer Cost of Cable Franchising and Policy Alternatives (PDF)
5 Journal on Telecomm. & High Tech. Law 199 (2006). Co-authored with Jerry Ellig.
The Spectrum Commons in Theory and Practice
Stanford Technology Law Review (2007).
An Orphan Works Affirmative Defense to Copyright Infringement Actions (PDF)
12 Michigan Telecomm. & Tech. Law Review 75 (2005). Co-authored with Bridget Dooling.
Relax, Don’t Do It: Why RFID Privacy Concerns Are Exaggerated and Legislation Is Premature
2004 UCLA Journal of Law & Technology 5 (2004).
Much Ado about Nothing: The Effects of the Post-Enactment Acquisition Rule in Palazzolo v. Rhode Island
14 Federal Circuit Bar Journal 543 (2005).

Op-Ed + Magazine Articles

Put more government data online
Des Moines Register, January 8, 2008.
Transparency (PDF)
Regulation Magazine, Winter, 2008. Co-authored with Mark Adams.
Considering Net Neutrality (PDF)
Regulation Magazine, Fall, 2007. Co-authored with Jerry Ellig.
Regulators’ Budget (PDF)
Regulation Magazine, Fall, 2007. Co-authored with Melinda Warren.
Net Neutrality: Where’s the Beef?
Tech Central Station, July 24, 2007.
Failure to Communicate
The Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2007.
Think Diffident
The American, January 23, 2007.
Public Safety Interoperability (PDF)
Regulation Magazine, Fall 2006.
Will Broadband Kill the Broadcast Star?
Tech Central Station, September 6, 2006.
Public Nuisance: The Costs of Giving Everyone A Say on Cable Television (PDF)
Doublethink Magazine, Fall 2006.
Who’s your daddy?
The Wall Street Journal, March 25, 2006. Co-authored with Bridget Dooling.
Spectrum commons (PDF)
Regulation Magazine, Spring 2006.
Orphan works (PDF)
Regulation Magazine, Winter 2005.
Competing with piracy
Brainwash, October 16, 2005.
The Castro generation (PDF)
Doublethink Magazine, Winter 2005.
“Free Culture,” free book
Brainwash, April 11, 2004.

Jul 25, 2007 | Comments Off | Tags:

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