Lobbying

“K Street Files: Defense, Tax Aides Join McBee” by Kate Ackley in Roll Call.

“Lobbying World” in The Hill.

California: “Former assemblyman registers as a lobbyist” by Laurel Rosenhall in the Sacramento Bee.

Georgia: “Georgia speaker unveils sweeping ethics legislation” by Chris Joyner in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Missouri: “Lawmaker: Legislators should never become lobbyists” by Bob Watson in the News Tribune.

Campaign Finance

“FEC Increases Contribution Limits for 2014” by Kyle Trygstad in Roll Call.

Montana: “Montana legislators, groups at odds on campaign donation limits” by Mike Dennison in the Missoulian.

New York: “On Campaign Finance Reform, Senate Republicans Stand in Gov. Cuomo’s Way” opinion piece by John Petro in the Huffington Post.

Ethics

“Ethics Office Opened 32 Cases During 112th Congress” by Amanda Becker in Roll Call.

Hawaii: “Honolulu Ethics Commission Wants to Double Its Resources to Fight Public Corruption” in the Hawaii Reporter.

Illinois: “Former state ethics commissioner hit with $2,500 ethics violation” by Rafael Guerrero in the Chicago Tribune.

Maine: “Bill would bar state officials from quitting to immediately work for industries they regulated” by Naomi Schalit and John Christie in the Bangor Daily News.

New York: “NY ethics board talks conflicts in secret session” by The Associated Press in the Albany Times Union.

New York: “Ex-aide to City Controller John Liu snared in campaign finance fraud probe is granted immunity to testify in former treasurer’s trial” by Robert Gearty in the New York Daily News.

South Carolina: “SC Supreme Court to hear Nikki Haley ethics case” by Andrew Shain in The State.

Elections

Michigan: “Snyder nixes plan to split Michigan electoral votes” by Alexander Burns in Politico.

Ohio: “State Sen. Turner proposes election reform package” by Joe Hallett in the Columbus Dispatch.

Ohio: “Secretary of State Jon Husted and other Republicans say Electoral College changes not in store for Ohio” by Henry J. Gomez in the Plain Dealer.

Open Government

Mississippi: “Mississippi gets low grades for transparency on state, local websites” by Donna Harris in the Sun Herald.

South Dakota: “Legislature: Public records plan falls short” by David Montgomery in the Argus Leader.

Campaign Finance

“Phone Company PAC Funds Campaigns Against Republicans With Customer Overpayments” by Janie Lorber in The Hill.

“Super PAC Influence Falls Short Of Aims” by Neil King, Jr. in The Wall Street Journal.

California: “Measure attacks corporate campaign funds” by Heather Knight in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Iowa: “Iowa sees $29.6 million TV ad inundation” by Jennifer Jacobs in the Austin Post-Bulletin.

Washington: “State watchdog says Owen violated campaign laws” by The Associated Press in The Seattle Times.

Lobbying

Alabama: “Probation sought for ex-lobbyist Jennifer Pouncy in bingo bribery trial” by Kim Chandler in the Birmingham News.

Canada:  “Feds respond to Lobbying Act review, but don’t scrap controversial 20 per cent rule” by Bea Vongdouangchanh in The Hill Times.

North Carolina: “Ethics guidance on legislative staffers and lobbyists” by Mark Binker in WRAL.com.

North Carolina:  “Tillis: Second staffer had relationship with lobbyist” by Mark Binker and Laura Leslie in WRAL.com.

Pennsylvania: “Lobbying.ph updated: which tech orgs spent the most lobbying in Philly so far this year?” by Juliana Reyes in Technically Philly.

Ethics

Michigan:  “Kwame Kilpatrick prosecutor: Bernard Kilpatrick acted to ‘cash in’ on son’s mayoral power” by Gus Burns in the Detroit News.

Political Campaigns

“Obama Campaign Adopts ‘Wet Signature’ to Entice New Voters” in Government Technology.

“Campaign expense list: Beer, limos, Chick-fil-A” by Tarini Parti in Politico.

Open Government and Gov 2.0

“One year later We the People petitioners have mixed reviews” by Joseph Marks in Nextgov.

“Open government partnership marks first anniversary” by Kedar Pavgi in Nextgov.

Canada:  “Alberta gets a ‘D’ in freedom of information audit” by Darcy Henton in the Edmonton Journal.

A report compiled by the General Services Administration shows that nearly one-fifth of federal Web domains are inactive and one-fourth redirect to other dot-gov sites.

The report was released as a part of the GSA’s dot-gov reform initiative which is part of President Obama’s Campaign to Cut Waste, identifying unnecessary websites that can be consolidated into other websites to reduce costs and improve the quality of service to the American public. It is a goal of the GSA to significantly cut down the number of federal websites and create a more cohesive and standardized look to the remaining federal websites which will also help improve the government’s customer service.

Although agencies have failed to maintain many of their dot-gov domains, they have announced plans to shut down 26% of dot-gov domains, and merge 4% of domains into other domains.

To learn more, read Only half of dot-gov sites are active, GSA reports by Joseph Marks.

The Massachusetts state government, like many other state governments, has launched a transparency website to provide citizens with data that they previously could not easily access.

What sets the Massachusett’s transparency website, Massachusetts Open Checkbook, apart from similar websites is their level of detail and the option to view the spending data in different ways.

Some states, such as California, have taken down their websites because after the initial creation of the website, information had not been adequately updated, and the website was not serving the purpose that it was meant to serve.

The Massachusetts Open Checkbook provides different categories and displays a detailed breakdown of their budget on pie charts, making this website possibly the most user friendly transparency website launched by a state government yet.

To learn more, read Massachusetts Puts User-Friendly Checkbook Online by Sarah Rich.

Friday morning, the Committee on House Administration unanimously adopted “Standards for the Electronic Posting of House and Committee Documents & Data.” Beginning on January 1st, this will allow anyone with access to the internet to now have access to all House bills, amendments, and resolutions for floor consideration. The documents will be formatted in XML schema maintained at http://xml.house.gov.

According to a post on the Sunlight Foundation’s blog, committees will also be encouraged to post their documents on that site in XML whenever possible — and searchable PDFs when not — with the expectation that mandatory publication requirements in XML will soon be imposed. The House will also store video of hearings and markups, and work to implement standards “that require documents to be electronically published in open data formats that are machine readable,” thereby enabling transparency and public review.

The new standards document can be read here.

For those of you who may have missed some of today’s relevant social media articles, here’s a few for you to check out!

• A platform called Change By Us allows anyone from a city agency, not-for-profit, business, community-based organization, block association, and just normal citizens to start a project to improve his or her city. ‘Change by Us’ Connects Citizens to Government
• You can post and vote for questions that will be asked at the GOP debate that will be held in Orlando, Florida on Sept. 22. GOP Candidates to Face User-Submitted Questions in Google/FOX News Debate
• While government apps have starting to appear everywhere, if they are not updated regularly, they become useless and misleading. Agency apps must be regularly updated or face obsolescence
• The White House will soon be launching a tool that will allow the public to float a petition to the executive branch that becomes “searchable” once it accumulates at least 150 electronic signatures, and the White House will issue an official response if it gets 5,000 signatures. With ‘We The People,’ White House Promises to Go E-to-the-People

Enjoy!

While social media has offered a new medium for constituents to interact with their legislators, it is very rare to receive a detailed, satisfying response from their representatives.

OpenCongress.org added a new feature to their website about a month ago that allows users to send letters to their representatives. While it is definitely not guaranteed that you will receive a response, a blog post by Donny Shaw shows 9 examples of the 1,500+ letter submissions made on the new feature, 2 of which received responses.

While this does not prove that this platform is the key to easy communication between the public and their representatives, it is yet another step taken in response to the Open Government Initiative that is making interaction between every day citizens and law-makers a possibility.

To learn more about this new feature, read “In Search of a Citizen-Congress Feedback Loop” on TechPresident.com

A new 311 smart phone app for Salt Lake City, Utah allows a citizen to take a geo-coded picture with his or her smartphone and enter more detailed information about the problem. In response to the citizen’s entry, a real-time case is created that’s sent directly to the staff person who will handle the situation.

According to this article on GovTech, the app called Salt Lake City 311 transmits the request to the city’s GIS database, which then provides an address match for the city responder to answer the notification personally, with no middleman in between.

This app streamlines the process of fieldworkers responding to calls, as well as creating a convenient and easy way for everyday citizens to report problems.

This kind of 311 app is something that is likely to be seen in many other municipalities across the nation in the near future.

In a time of increasing austerity in the government, we are also experiencing an increasing demand for many government services.

While most agency websites have made it increasingly possible for the public to participate on their websites since President Obama’s Open Government Initiative was launched, an industry report released August 22 asserts that much more research needs to be done for these agencies to make sure that they are providing opportunities for quality public participation and to better be able to measure the impact this participation has on their agency.

Read the full industry report published on GovernmentExecutive.com.

True to the recent trend that can be observed in both local governments and the federal government, the city of Burleson, Texas has released a new Facebook app named the Citizen Request Tracker soon to be spread  to other communities nationwide that makes it easier for citizens to report problems and request services from its local government.

This app can help alert the local authorities about such issues such as pot holes, graffiti, barking dogs and malfunctioning streetlights.

Read more about the Citizen Request Tracker Facebook App in “New App Connects Social Media Users with Municipal Services” by Brian Heaton posted on GovTech.com.

Mobile Gov is an interagency group that has the mission to discover information and make the case for mobile in your agency, discuss with the public the challenges to mobile gov, and design this mobile future.

An article titled “Government Apps Should Be Task-Oriented and Mission Driven, Mobile Gov Director Says” by Joseph Marks posted on NextGov.com indicates that Mobile Gov is charged with culling best practices for agencies as they begin developing mobile apps, and they hope to leverage the government’s website experience to make the mobile transition more orderly.

The article also discusses smartphone apps that have already been created which include apps such as IRS2go and MyTSA. A really cool one that I downloaded onto my Android phone is called the NASA App which collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources.

A full list of all 68 official U.S. Government smartphone apps can be found here. To read the full article which includes much more information on government smartphone apps and Mobile Gov, click here.

It seems that following Obama’s Twitter Town Hall, politicians across the nation are following suit and making the effort to use social media to connect to their followers more than ever. Hopeful Republican presidential nominee Newt Gingrich, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont are three examples of such politicians.

Being one of the first politicians to utilize the new Google+, Newt Gingrich hosted his first Hangout, posting the 13 minute long video of him having a conversation with up to 10 regular Americans at a time onto YouTube. TechPresident published an article written by Nick Judd providing the video and more information here.

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As the federal government is utilizing the internet in more and more ways to connect with the public, members of the U.S. House of Representatives are following suit by displaying official letters between themselves, President Obama, and other colleagues on Facebook.

Such House members such as Pete Olson from Texas, Cathy McMorris Rodgers from Washington, and Justin Amash from Michigan have posted letters sharing their concern about actions committed by Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, and President Obama.

More is said about these letters in this article called “U.S. House Members Share Letters on Facebook” posted yesterday by Jennifer Moire on allfacebook.com.

An article titled “Feds Creating Mobile Government Model for Agencies” by Brian Heaton posted July 1 on govtech.com talks about a program launched in June called Making Mobile Gov that will establish a community-generated wiki and toolkit on how to implement mobile websites and applications that better serve citizens who need information from the government while on-the-go.

To read the full article click here.