(email from our google group)

Clay Johnson, Sunlight’s Labs Director, has put together an introductory post and wiki page on how anyone can help participate in the labs work.

In that same spirit, I’ve got three rather simple things that anyone could do to help open the House and Senate.  If editing a wiki is a challenge, don’t worry!  Still-preliminary formatting is among the best of all problems to have, and the editors of Congresspedia are always happy to help, too.

Assemble a clear view of what’s available.  When we first started the Open House Project, I did an inventory of the information House information I could find from official sources.  That wiki page has been cleaned up, and is now available on Congresspedia here.  I started a Senate version, too.  These two pages will help enormously, since we can’t advocate for more openness without fully understanding what’s available.  If anything is missing, please feel free to add it!  The Senate version of the page will have many of the same resources as the House version, but they haven’t been added yet.  We should also consider adding such an information ecology for executive branch data, although I think this work may have been started elsewhere already.  Has it?  Should we start a third (executive) page, and link it to the other two?

Share Events.  If you know of any upcoming events related to transparency in government, add them to our wiki page.  No single news source does a comprehensive job collecting events resources, despite exhorbitant costs, so that’s something that issue advocates should probably take upon themselves to collect.

Share Reform Ideas.  As the Open House Project moves along, and as the Open Senate Project catches up, we’ve got a ton of issues to address.  If something strikes you as under-addressed, or you’ve got a question about how to find some piece of information or data, please ask.  I prefer that we err on the side of too much (relevant) email, rather than not enough.

thanks!

John