Today in OpenGov: The USA has a new federal information policy!

By The Sunlight Foundation

PROGRESS: The United States government updated its official policy for how it manages information today. We’re thrilled to see ”managing federal information as a strategic resource” is now official policy, particularly with respect to the attention paid to open data, security and privacy. The White House now requires federal agencies to “encrypt moderate & high impact information at rest & in transit.” Good idea, that. [READ MORE]

RUN DNC: If you haven’t been reading Storify or following @libbycwatson and @SFPartyTime, you’re been missing an interesting view from Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention. CAMPAIGN 2016

• QUID PRO WHAT? “The release of a trove of embarrassing hacked internal emails and private voice mail recordings reveal not only the unseemly dealmaking involved in recruiting high-dollar donations for political campaigns but also the role fundraising officials play in approving and denying access to President Barack Obama and other top officials.” [ABC News]
• PARTY FOR 2016, PLEASE. Ronan Farrow took a look at the private parties thrown by corporations and lobbyists at the DNC, including a chat with Sunlight’s Melissa Yeager. [Today]

National

• USSS STILL WORKING ON YOUR FOIA: The Office of Government Information Services published a compliance report on the Freedom of Information Act program at the United States Secret Service. Its conclusions? The Secret Service “needs a robust strategy to reduce the backlog.” It “has invested in technology, but “key systems are not fully operational” and the agency “does not proactively communicate with FOIA requesters.” Room to improve. [Yahoo News]
• FORKED: There’s a growing Congressional IT crisis, writes Seamus Kraft, who has been talking with House and Senate staffers over the past few years. “Everyone agrees that Congress is approaching a breaking point, and that the time for an across-the-board overhaul was yesterday. Staffers, whether with decades of experience or fresh out of college, do acknowledge scattered improvements and innovations — like ongoing efforts to modernize legislative data and systems — but they do not report reaping the benefits themselves, in their offices or with their constituents.” [Medium]
• DISCONNECT: Bruce Schneier warns that Russian hackers could target voting machines this November. [Washington Post]

STATE And local

• HITTING THE BOOKS:  Richard Yarrow took a look at local education data and came to this conclusion: “Open education data has its limits: data releases must safeguard individuals’ privacy and data viewers must be careful when using very specific datasets to judge the quality of a school. Yet there is vast potential in open education data and huge importance in opening up such a crucial part of government. It is time that school districts start crafting stronger policies to make their data more open and easily-accessible for the public.” [Sunlight]

interNational

• OPEN TO WHOM? Rob Pegoraro took a look at how Wikileaks has been behaving over the past decade and came to the conclusion that the organization’s behavior falls short of the journalistic mantle it has wrapped itself in. [Yahoo News]

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike.