Award-winning website from the Center for Responsive Politics now provides 20 years of downloadable money-in-politics data–for free

WASHINGTON — Politicians, prepare yourselves. Lobbyists, look out. Today the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics is putting 200 million data records from the watchdog group’s archive directly into the hands of citizens, activists, journalists and anyone else interested in following the money in U.S. politics.

For the first time in CRP’s 26-year history, the nonprofit research group’s most popular data archives are fully and freely downloadable for non-commercial purposes from the Center’s website, OpenSecrets.org–a four-time Webby winner for best politics site online. OpenSecrets.org will remain the go-to independent source for most users interested in tracking money’s political influence and, in fact, the site has some new general-interest features as of today. (More on those below.)

With today’s announcement, skilled data-divers can explore the information that’s already aggregated on OpenSecrets.org to its full depth. Web developers and database experts can grab federal money-in-politics data that CRP’s researchers have standardized and coded, and mash it up with other data sets. Timelines, charts, maps, other graphics and mobile applications are just some of the projects that could result–all powered by CRP’s unparalleled data.

“Putting our data into more hands will put more eyes on Washington and, we hope, engage more Americans in their government,” CRP Executive Director Sheila Krumholz said. “We hope that more people counting cash will lead to more people making change.”

The OpenSecrets OpenData initiative is being generously underwritten by a three-year $1.2 million grant from Sunlight Foundation, which supports uses of the Internet to promote greater transparency of government and the interplay in Washington between money and public policy.

“Building on its outstanding and long-earned reputation for accuracy and integrity, CRP is giving the public the keys to take government transparency to the next level,” said Ellen Miller, Sunlight Foundation’s executive director and co-founder. “This will have a long-term impact, undoubtedly inspiring many effective and creative uses of the data by civic hackers, journalists and bloggers.”

Center’s Researchers Clean Up, Categorize Government Data

The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org’s Action Center at http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php:



CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign fundraising and spending by candidates for federal office, as well as political parties and political action committees. CRP’s researchers add value to Federal Election Commission data by cleaning up and categorizing contribution records. This allows for easier totaling by industry and company or organization, to measure special-interest influence.

LOBBYING: 3.5 million records on federal lobbyists, their clients, their fees and the issues they reported working on, dating to 1998. Industry codes have been applied to this data, as well.

PERSONAL FINANCES: Reports from members of Congress and the executive branch that detail their personal assets, liabilities and transactions in 2004 through 2007. The reports covering 2008 will become available to the public in June, and the data will be available for download once CRP has keyed those reports.

527 ORGANIZATIONS: Electronically filed financial records beginning in the 2004 election cycle for the shadowy issue-advocacy groups known as 527s, which can raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, labor unions and individuals.

To download bulk data from OpenSecrets.org, users must register on the site and agree to prominently credit the Center for Responsive Politics, along with other terms of service. CRP is making its data available through a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, which allows users to remix, tweak, build upon and share the Center’s work non-commercially. CRP will continue to offer its data to commercial users for a negotiable fee.

OpenSecrets.org also offers a number of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to give users direct access via web programming to data displayed on OpenSecrets.org. Web developers are already using these APIs to display OpenSecrets data on their web pages and create mashups using live, up-to-date data.

Users can also share CRP data using OpenSecrets.org’s widgets, which can be placed easily on any website or blog. New widgets for the 2010 election cycle are in development.

Another New Feature: Enhanced Politician Profiles



In addition to making its data archives available, today the Center has enhanced its online campaign finance profiles for members of Congress. Visitors to OpenSecrets.org now have three options for viewing the top industries and contributors supporting a particular lawmaker: 1) money raised by the politician’s campaign committee, 2) money raised by the politician’s leadership PAC or 3) money raised by the campaign and PAC combined. More than 300 members of Congress are also linked to a political action committee, ostensibly to raise money to support other members of their party.

“Campaign committees and leadership PACs are two of the deepest pockets in a politician’s coat,” Krumholz said, “so it’s important to watch them together to see who’s potentially building the most influence with a lawmaker.”

OpenSecrets.org’s enhanced profiles for members of Congress also now allow users to download deeper tables of data-aggregated data and “top” rankings, but not individual records, in a variety of formats with one easy click. This feature will be integrated into other sections of OpenSecrets.org in the future.

Krumholz said, “All these enhancements to OpenSecrets.org are about one thing: showing more people how money’s influence on politics affects their lives–and empowering them to do something about it.”

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OpenSecrets.org’s bulk data is now available for download through the site’s Action Center at

http://www.opensecrets.org/action/data.php.

ABOUT THE CENTER FOR RESPONSIVE POLITICS

The Center for Responsive Politics is the nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. For more than 25 years the nonpartisan, nonprofit Center has aimed to create a more educated voter, an involved citizenry and a more responsive government. CRP’s award-winning website, OpenSecrets.org, is the most comprehensive resource for campaign contributions, lobbying data and analysis available anywhere. For other organizations and news media, CRP’s exclusive data powers their online features tracking money in politics. CRP relies on support from a combination of foundation grants and individual contributions. The Center accepts no contributions from businesses, labor unions or trade associations.



For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: [email protected]

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