Open data, we believe, will enhance CRP’s reach and utility. Not only will distribution of our research be more efficient and widespread, but we may also focus more of our attention on the critical work of showing the links between money and influence. CRP’s Capital Eye blog and e-newsletter are critical to making these connections for people. But more is needed to explain to a general audience how a tiny elite uses its political influence to shape everything from gas prices to our health care options. And of course, CRP will continue to maintain up-to-date data on OpenSecrets.org because, although bulk data is a huge boon to tech-savvy users, a reporter or blogger looking for one figure does not want to download literally millions of records. Furthermore, most users probably do not need (or possess) the skills or comfort level to accurately process and use massive data sets.
OpenSecrets.org continues to evolve. Concurrent with the “OpenData” release, we expanded our “Member Profiles” to the top 100 organizations and all industries, and simultaneously made these tables downloadable in various formats. We’ll expand these further so that users may ask what should be a simple question: did Congressman A get money from Organization B? Getting that answer is still not as easy as it should be, but it will be much easier once we add all of our standardized employer information (instead of just raw FEC data) to the individual donor search section. This is among the most valuable—and unique—tools that nobody other than CRP offers, yet we hadn’t allowed access to that data on OpenSecrets, even though the donor lookup feature is one of the most popular on the entire website! Therefore, very soon we will reprogram the donor lookup to deliver our clean, uniquely CRP data, instead of holding it back.
CRP is poised to add new features to OpenSecrets.org that maximize user flexibility and to connect the dots more effectively—linking individual and organizational donor dossiers to lobbyists, their clients, and politicians’ personal financial holdings. These will be integrated, and then presented with interactive options, not presented as static add-ons. And they need to pull from useful, related troves of data that other organizations publish and maintain, while also enabling new features on their sites that speak to their audiences. One such CRP mashup compares campaign contributions to earmarks, incorporating data from Taxpayers for Common Sense. And FedSpending.org (and now the government’s own USASpending.gov) makes it easy for us to incorporate government contracts that those earmarks subsidize. Especially as the Obama administration and Congress tackle wide-ranging policy debates such as health care, energy policy, and the re-regulation of Wall Street, these dossiers of leading Washington players could emerge as vital tools to clarify and inform the debate—on our site and, now, on many, many other sites too.