Track 3: Free Law and Government Policy

• Government, and government information policy in particular, forms an important part of the environment for open access to law. It places technical and legal restrictions on the availability and format of documents; creates intellectual-property, privacy, financial, and secrecy regimes that dictate what is available to whom; and instantiates a bureaucratic process between the public and government information. It does much to determine the economic value of legal information and facilitate rent-seeking. It may also be a key player or competitor in the open-access arena. This track is concerned with the effects of various aspects of government policy and government behavior on open access to law.

  What it’s about

  • Transparency
  • Access to legal information and bulk data
  • Public records and personal information
  • Assessment/evaluation of public access and open-government systems
  • Digital divide and public understanding
  • Public sector experience in developing countries
  • Private-public collaborations for open access
  • Failures

  Who it’s for

  • Policymakers
  • Compliance officers
  • Public policy researchers
  • Journalists
  • Advocates

   

  Track Chair

  Daniel Schuman is the Sunlight Foundation’s policy counsel and director of the Advisory Committee on Transparency. He works to develop policies that further Sunlight’s mission of catalyzing greater government openness and transparency.

  An expert on the U.S. Congress, Daniel regularly works with congressional and executive branch staff to craft transparency and ethics legislation and policies. He directs the Advisory Committee on Transparency, a project of the Sunlight Foundation that educations policymakers on transparency-related issues, problems, and solutions, and shares ideas with members of the Congressional Transparency Caucus.

  Daniel regularly speaks and writes about transparency and technology issues, and has appeared on NPR and C-SPAN and been cited by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media outlets. He also serves on the ABA’s Lobbying Reform Task Force. Contact Daniel on twitter @danielschuman or by email at dschuman(at)sunlightfoundation.com.