The Words They Used, by MATTHEW ERICSON, New York Times, September 4, 2008. "The words that speakers used at the two political conventions show the themes that the parties have highlighted."

This is a bubble graph of number of times words were used per 25,000 words spoken and a list of which speakers used which words. Ericson has done a good job of looking at phrases as well as individual words, of combining similar words and phrases, and of noting phrases that have very little or no use by one or both parties. Another good example of how, when we have access to the "raw data" (as opposed to transaction-based, search-and-retrieve, one-page-at-a-time access), the data can be used, re-used, and analyzed.

The Sunlight Foundation has launched a new web site, Party Time!, which aims to document the political party circuit -- not "political parties" as in "GOP" and "Democratic," but parties as in champagne, food, golf... and money: "the social whirl surrounding politicians in their quests to raise cash to run their campaigns."

There is a searchable database that lets you track parties thrown at the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions as well as fundraising activities by all lawmakers running for Congress that happen all year round going back to 2006.

"What used to take hours to dig up and analyze is now laid bare for you to see in seconds or minutes," so states the homepage of MAPLight.org, a new website that brings together campaign contributions and how legislators vote, creating more transparency of the connections between money and politics. This includes:

- How each legislator voted on each of the 5,000 bills in the 2003-2004 California legislative session.

- All campaign contributions made to each legislator from 2001-2004, categorized by the interest or industry of the contributor.

- Supporters and opponents of each bill, and the industries and interests those supporters and opponents represent.

- A brief description of each bill, and the subject the bill is about.

- The full text of each bill, including committee reports and amendments.

So far, MAPLight.org currently includes all 5,000 bills in the 2003-2004 California legislative session and all California campaign contributions from January 2001 through December 2004. They are seeking donations and support to extend MAPLight.org to include data for other states and U.S. Congress. This is a very promising project, so let's give them our support!

Panelist notes politics of putting agency information online, by Aliya Sternstein, National Journal's Technology Daily, June 19, 2007 PM edition. (reprinted in GovExec and available without subscription)

Patrice McDermott, executive director of OpenTheGovernment.org, chose to participate in a Tuesday workshop sponsored by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Web Science Research Initiative because she wants to convince techies that the government's underutilization of the Internet has a lot to do with politics.

...She said that at the workshop, attendees told her that government agencies just need to make their databases available on the Internet, and others in the online community will reformat the contents so the information is compatible with new technologies. "Others will create the [topical] tags" that allow the content to be integrated into advanced Web technologies, they said.

McDermott's reply: The policy is already there to do that. "It's been there for years. It's just not being enforced. It takes leadership from the White House."