Government is not the enemy, writes guest author Matthew Burton, a technologist who consults for the intelligence community, as well as a transparency activist. It's time for the loose coalition of bloggers, web developers, engineers, activists, philanthropists and agitators who believe in government transparency, election reform and weakening the influence of lobbyists and big donors to change how government functions by actually going inside it and making direct change happen.

He writes: "We need a community of coders who are committed to improving the inner workings of DC, and doing it in a way that inherently promotes transparency while fighting government waste. We need a Mozilla Foundation for the government. A stateside Geekcorps. A geeky Americorps. An army of impassioned programmers committed to improving the government’s information services, both internal and those it provides to the public. It would make government more organized, accountable and effective, and it would save them a lot of tax dollars. And the result—open access to the code that runs our country—is a great first step toward the kind of government transparency we’re after."

A new article in Yale's Journal of Law & Technology offers up a somewhat counterintuitive new online plan for the next presidential administration to make government more useful, more accountable, and more transparent -- in short, give up.

At a talk on Monday, Ellen Miller, Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation (Andrew and Micah are advisers to the Sunlight Foundation), said "there is a fundamental cultural change that has to happen not only with government to embrace the notion of openness but even in the NGO sector to understand that 'of, by, and for the people' now has to become 'of, by, for, and open for the people' (at 2:15 in the video clip).

From Obama's "bitter" brouhaha to making new rules for the superdelegates, Internet activists are upending this presidential campaign.

Confronted by the prospect of internet-driven public participation in crafting legislation, the past head of the American League of Lobbyists says, "What's next? Are we going to let the American people decide our defense policy, our trade policy, our immigration policy?"

A super interesting controversy has been brewing over LegiStorm, the transparency-obsessed site devoted to bringing public — but buried — documents and data to light.

The movement towards transparency and free information in government is gaining ground, yet a rec

I'm at the National Press Club for the launch of Stanford Prof. Larry Lessig's new project, Change-Congress.org. He's here as part of Sunshine Week, and his speech is co-sponsored by the Sunlight Foundation (which I consult for) as well as the Omidyar Network. As you may know, last year, Lessig decided to shift his focus from the fight for free culture to the fight for a clean government. Here are my notes on his talk, paraphrasing as best as I can...

Semi-pro campaign journalism gets a mid-term review; Republican consultant launches NoJohn.com; Chuck DeFeo shares his secrets for getting attention online; Obama gets naked with his earmarks, will Clinton follow?; and now you can listen in too on those campaign conference calls.

Google the words “DailyKos” and you’ll get about 2.6 million results. Google the words “Democracy Alliance” and you’ll get about 44,000 hits, and from them you won’t find out much. That's why I'm writing to praise journalist Matt Bai's new book, The Argument.