Today I attended an interesting discussion of “Public=Online, Government in real time” at Google’s Washington, DC offices.  Sunlight Foundation’s Jake Brewer (pictured) led a panel discussion on the prospects for better democracy through increased transparency, and afterward gave a short presentation on Public=Online, a new, “national, non-partisan campaign seeking to create a transparent government built on open data and information.”  The group’s site launched today and should get a lot of well-deserved attention in the Gov 2.0 and transparency world. Today was the sunniest day of the year in Washington, with temperatures hitting 70 degrees, so it’s fitting to note that the discussion falls within Sunshine Week, “a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information.”

On the transparency front, today Rep. Israel introduced the Public Online Information Act.  More on POIA at the Sunlight Foundation’s blog, as well.  UtI also has a story.

POIA requires the federal chief information officer to put all executive documents online, in a user-friendly format, permanently, and without charges or fees. Every federal agency will be required to establish a searchable catalogue of all public documents, because transparency isn’t just having documents available, it’s “knowing what documents” are available, according to Israel.

I’ll write more about these topics in the weeks to come, especially in light of next week’s Transparency Camp.

My photos from the event are on Flickr here.