Tim O'Reilly's advice: pay attention to the disruptive forces of Ellen Miller and the Sunlight Foundation. Why? Because, as Executive Director Miller explains in this Web 2.0 Expo keynote, the Sunlight Foundation is using the internet to create greater transparency and openness, and in turn greater accountability, in Government.
In this enlightening and inspiring conversation with O'Reilly, Miller explains the principles behind the creation of the Sunlight Foundation.
She also discusses how government data is like a hamburger and chips - indigestible. The Sunlight Foundation is making it palatable through digitizing data and enabling the development of databases and tools to make it more understandable. By having meaningful access, the public can discuss, debate and ultimately have more impact on what their government is doing.
Miller uses examples including FedSpending.org and USAspending.org to illustrate what the Sunlight Foundation has already achieved. However she also talks candidly about the challenges facing the Government such as support and resistance to openness and Web 2.0 technology, getting the Government to adopt these new ideas, how the technical community can get involved and if there's money to be made, and the future of the Sunlight Foundation itself.
Ellen S. Miller is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based, non-partisan non-profit dedicated to using the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency. She is the founder of two prominent Washington-based organizations in the field of money and politics – the Center for Responsive Politics and Public Campaign – and a nationally recognized expert on government transparency, campaign finance and ethics issues. Ms. Miller is a well-recognized public speaker, commentator, and writer on the issues of money, politics, and power. Her experience as a Washington advocate for more than 35 years spans the worlds of public interest advocacy, grass roots activism and journalism. In addition to her more than two decades of work on the issue of money in politics, Ms. Miller served as Deputy Director of Campaign for America’s Future, where she directed its Project for an Accountable Congress, the publisher of TomPaine.com and a senior fellow at The American Prospect. She spent nearly a decade working on Capitol Hill. She blogs regularly at the Sunlight Foundation site and has written frequently for TomPaine.com, The Hill, The American Prospect, and The Nation. She was named by WIRED Magazine in the 2008 Smart List as one of the “15 People the Next President Should Listen To”, and appeared in Fast Company’s February 2009 “Most Influential Women in Technology.”
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