WASHINGTON -- Politicians, prepare yourselves. Lobbyists, look out. Today the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics is putting 200 million data records from the watchdog group's archive directly into the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics.
For the first time in CRP's 26-year history, the nonprofit research group's most popular data archives are fully and freely downloadable for non-commercial purposes from the Center's website, OpenSecrets.org--a four-time Webby winner for best politics site online. OpenSecrets.org will remain the go-to independent source for most users interested in tracking money's political influence and, in fact, the site has some new general-interest features as of today. (More on those below.)
With today's announcement, skilled data-divers can explore the information that's already aggregated on OpenSecrets.org to its full depth. Web developers and database experts can grab federal money-in-politics data that CRP's researchers have standardized and coded, and mash it up with other data sets. Timelines, charts, maps, other graphics and mobile applications are just some of the projects that could result--all powered by CRP's unparalleled data.
"Putting our data into more hands will put more eyes on Washington and, we hope, engage more Americans in their government," CRP Executive Director Sheila Krumholz said. "We hope that more people counting cash will lead to more people making change."
The OpenSecrets OpenData initiative is being generously underwritten by a three-year $1.2 million grant from Sunlight Foundation, which supports uses of the Internet to promote greater transparency of government and the interplay in Washington between money and public policy.
"Building on its outstanding and long-earned reputation for accuracy and integrity, CRP is giving the public the keys to take government transparency to the next level," said Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation's executive director and co-founder. "This will have a long-term impact, undoubtedly inspiring many effective and creative uses of the data by civic hackers, journalists and bloggers."
Center's Researchers Clean Up, Categorize Government Data
The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org's Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php:
- CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP's researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence.
- LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well.
- PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports.
- 527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.
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