Food and discussion begins at 12:30 pm. Everyone invited.

In order to hold government accountable for its actions, citizens must know what those actions are. To that end, they must insist that government act openly and transparently to the greatest extent possible. In the Twenty-First Century, this entails making its data available online and easy to access. If government data is made available online in useful and flexible formats, citizens will be able to utilize modern Internet tools to shed light on government activities. Such tools include mashups, which highlight hidden connections between different data sets, and crowdsourcing, which makes light work of sifting through mountains of data by focusing thousands of eyes on a particular set of data.

Brito will discuss his experience crowdsourcing accountability with StimulusWatch.org, and the challenges of building a new version to track spending using data made available on the Recovery.gov. He will also discuss plans for a new alternative interface to the federal government’s official regulatory portal, Regulations.gov.

Jerry Brito is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He also serves as adjunct professor of law at GMU. His research focuses on technology and telecommunications policy, government transparency and accountability, and the regulatory process.

Brito received his J.D. from George Mason University School of Law and his B.A. in political science from Florida International University. Jerry is the creator of OpenRegulations.org, an alternative interface to the federal government’s regulatory docketing system, and the co-creator of the accountability website Stimulus Watch.