Don't forget expenditure data.

[karichisholm]

There are quite a few websites that attempt to make FEC data more transparent and approachable. But (almost?) all of them focus exclusively on the contribution side. And while transparency about contributions is good, there are very strong reasons to make expenditures transparent as well. Among those reasons:

• When funds are donated from one committee to another, there should always be a disclosed expenditure that matches a disclosed contribution. If that doesn't happen, something hinky is going on. Even when fully disclosed, a pattern of rapid committee transfers can reveal the rough equivalent of political "money laundering" to hide the original source of funds.
• Historians, political scientists, and public interest researchers (and political opponents) will find expenditure patterns useful to understand how campaigns execute their chosen strategies.
• Studying expenditures can also lead to revelations of misconduct by campaigns, like candidates that use funds for personal expenses, inappropriate payoffs to political supporters, cronyism, etc.

[rjmajma]

Thanks for the feedback! Expenditure data is definitely an important piece of the pie. It's something we're looking into, along with how other information is presented on FEC.gov. Mind if I ask how you currently use the data? How accessible is it to you currently?

[adamclayman]

I think that many of us would like to see travel that's funded under the MECEA Program included as a "campaign contribution of unknown and unpredictable size" in both the Contribution & Expenditures lists. The Representative of my district (OH-11) went on two trips in 2013 that were funded by other governments that aren't otherwise represented in FEC Filings. A 2012 trip to Bahrain she didn't report on at all for a period of two years, and it was only reported after the National Journal confronted a spokesperson from her office about the reporting failover.

There should be a placeholder for dark money in FEC Forms, and it should appear as a debit/credit on the Contribution Page and the Expenses pages, so that anyone reading the report can flag that filing with red-flag error bars of unknown size.

Here's a link to an article on the MECEA Program: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/flight-risks-20140912

[dwillis]

@adamclayman's proposal is, imho, a non-starter well outside the scope of this project. The commission would need to approve additions to forms, and any additions described above would have to, by definition, be optional, and thus no committee in its right mind would fill them out. More to the point, these forms are not designed on a whim - the information collected in them is done by statutory requirement. We can't just invent things we'd like to see on them, and 18F cannot provide that functionality.

Privately funded travel should be reported (it isn't always done in a timely manner) to offices in the House and Senate, and federal election laws have no provision granting the FEC authority over them (indeed, the FEC could not require such disclosure by lawmakers unless Congress passed a law saying so).

[saizai]

Is the FEC prohibited from importing data released via Congressional expenditure reports and using it as part of educating the public about political expenditures?

I understand that the FEC can't mandate new info to be filed without a rulemaking (and then only within the scope of existing statutory authority), but there are at least some data sources already available for this that could be integrated (e.g. the congressional lobbying disclosures and the states' campaign finance databases)

[dwillis]

To be blunt, yes. The FEC is charged with implementing and enforcing the Federal election laws. It cannot simply expand its jurisdiction. The FEC has no authority to, much less the resources and staff, to integrate lobbying and state campaign finance data. What you are asking for is a perfect system. What we have is a federal system with pretty strict lines of responsibility.

[saizai]

That's unfortunate. Perhaps this is something that would merit a NPRM, or legislative authorization and funding if it's outside of statutory jurisdiction.

To my mind at least, transparency is not something that can be siloed in this way.

I understand that of course there are different responsibilities for who reports to whom, but for the big picture of public transparency into the finances behind politics — which is basically the point of campaign finance disclosures — it's missing a huge chunk of the picture to ignore any segment of it.

This might not be within the scope of what the FEC or 18F can currently do, but IMHO it should be. That's not something we can change on Github, of course; statutory change is a bit harder than a pull request. ;-)

[dwillis]

The FEC has no current authority to issue an NPRM that would place legislative information under its jurisdiction. It would have to be a statutory change passed by Congress. Heck, we haven't even talked about Section 527 political organizations, which file with the IRS. So, basically, call your congressperson :-)

I think the point of this effort is to improve what can be improved - and there is a lot that can be done - and the time we spend debating systemic changes to campaign finance law distracts from that mission.

[saizai]

Fair enough. Consider that part to be a bit of side conversation for others interested in campaign finance transparency on how the system you're working within could itself be improved. I know you don't have the authority to change it. ;-)

And oy, I even forgot about the non-FEC-filing 527s. ><

[konklone]

I'm not on this project, and the below is my opinion based on my experience working on open government infrastructure while at the Sunlight Foundation (not 18F -- perhaps vainly trying to not wear that hat here) --

I think what @dwillis describes as the confines of law is also actually the appropriate role of a government agency. The FEC (and gov't agencies generally) should do an amazing job 1) publishing their bulk data without use restriction, 2) publishing an API that uses their data that adds value and provides infrastructure which takes advantage of that agency's resources and domain expertise, and 3) create nice websites/visualizations that help make that data more accessible.

That's also the priority order, because ultimately the role of painting the big, inter-branch picture has to and should fall on the public and civil society. Executive branch agencies are domain experts by design, and Congress is intensely political by design. The Sunlights and NYTs of the world are going to be a whole lot more imaginative and a whole lot less politically constrained at tying together Congress' data and the FEC's data than either Congress or the FEC would.

We need to make sure our country has all the Sunlights and NYTs that it needs to do that. While we could always use more, fortunately in the US we do seem to have a vibrant enough civil society that it can handle the role of data-driven accountability. And that's getting better every year, as civil society gets more technically skilled, and open source tooling continues improving and making people more productive.

We also need to make sure -- and really, again here, Sunlight-honed opinions speaking -- government agencies properly see that their role is to provide part of the picture. They should expect their datasets to be connected to things they have no control over or expertise in. That means unique IDs. That means letting people easily obtain the entire dataset. That means eliminating any and all use restrictions. The foundation of a government agency's data responsibility is to provide a high quality, high fidelity window into their area of expertise, and then to back off.

That's not to diminish the value of work on top of that data: solid explanations and narrative, great visualizations, and overall making the information more accessible. An agency will have a valuable and unique perspective on their work, and they're going to be more expert on it than any outside group will be. I'm just saying: data first, and it's okay for an agency to embrace the silo.

[DanielSchuman]

I'd like to cheer on Eric's comments, particularly this:

"Their datasets should expect to be connected to things they have no control over or expertise in. That means unique IDs. That means letting people easily obtain the entire dataset. That means eliminating any and all use restrictions."

To my mind, that means that agencies should look to the practices of others (to the extent reasonable) to try to line up data fields and data names so that they can be easily connected.

Daniel

On Fri, Oct 3, 2014 at 1:18 AM, Eric Mill notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm not on this project, and the below is my opinion based on my experience working on open government infrastructure while at the Sunlight Foundation (not 18F -- perhaps vainly trying to not wear that hat here) --

I think what @dwillis https://github.com/dwillis describes as the confines of law is also actually the appropriate role of a government agency. The FEC (and gov't agencies generally) should do an amazing job 1) publishing their bulk data without use restriction, 2) publishing an API that uses their data that adds value and provides infrastructure which takes advantage of that agency's resources and domain expertise, and 3) create nice websites/visualizations that help make that data more accessible.

That's also the priority order, because ultimately the role of painting the big, inter-branch picture has to and should fall on the public and civil society. Executive branch agencies are domain experts by design, and Congress is intensely political by design. The Sunlights and NYTs of the world are going to be a whole lot more imaginative and a whole lot less politically constrained at tying together Congress' data and the FEC's data than either Congress or the FEC would.

We need to make sure our country has all the Sunlights and NYTs that it needs to do that. While we could always use more, fortunately in the US we do seem to have a vibrant enough civil society that it can handle the role of data-driven accountability. And that's getting better every year, as civil society gets more technically skilled, and open source tooling continues improving and making people more productive.

We also need to make sure -- and really, again here, Sunlight-honed opinions speaking -- government agencies properly see that their role is to provide part of the picture. Their datasets should expect to be connected to things they have no control over or expertise in. That means unique IDs. That means letting people easily obtain the entire dataset. That means eliminating any and all use restrictions. Government's primary data role is to provide a high quality, high fidelity window into their area of expertise, and then to back off.

That's not to diminish the value of solid explanatory work, great visualizations, and overall making the information more accessible. An agency will have a valuable and unique perspective on their work, and they're going to be more expert on it than any outside group will be. I'm just saying: data first, and it's okay for an agency to embrace the silo.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/18F/FEC/issues/10#issuecomment-57753591.

[LindsayYoung]

There were a lot of thoughts here but, the main point, having expenditure data in the API and website is part of the beta https://beta.fec.gov/data/disbursements/

Feel free to open additional issues with other aspects of this data.

As always, thanks for writing in!