Going Real-Time!

We're excited to announce that we're starting a new chapter in the life of Influence Explorer. Going forward, Influence Explorer's goal will be to get crucial influence data to you as soon as IT'S available. Our mission will be to publish useful data as soon as possible to support the work of reporters, watchdogs and researchers who need to know what's happening right now.

The necessary trade-off with live streams is that data quality will be heavily influenced by the quality of releases from the government. We'll be working iteratively to improve the automated systems that we've developed to improve that quality without sacrificing speed, but be aware that this data is not meant to be authoritative. Instead, it should be viewed as a resource for tracking live events and generating leads for new investigations.

So please explore these new resources, and give us your feedback!

Retiring TransparencyData

Along with the changes coming to Influence Explorer, we'll also be phasing out the TransparencyData project. TransparencyData started more than five years ago as a resource for mashing up data from OpenSecrets.org and FollowTheMoney.org, along with a few other sources. In the years since, both OpenSecrets and FollowTheMoney have matured and today each makes their data available both in bulk and through APIs. At Sunlight, we're thrilled to see that, and recognize the limited utility of having a third-party API that republishes these resources.

With that in mind, and with huge congratulations to our partners at the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics, we're retiring TransparencyData. Starting in September 2015, we are deprecating the Influence Explorer and TransparencyData APIs. They will be turned off beginning January 2016.