Opening up government is easier said than done. That appears to be the reaction of many early observers to “Citizen Cosponsor,” a new web app launched Tuesday by the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) designed to allow Americans to “co-sponsor,” or endorse specific bills and to receive updates about their current status through Facebook.
Users who click the “Cosponsor” or “keep me informed” buttons on any one of the six bills currently listed on the Citizen Cosponsor website will automatically get Facebook updates as those bills progress through Congress.
Citizen Cosponsor also lists each bill’s original author and shows all other Facebook users who have “cosponsored” them.
The app has already attracted hundreds of cosponsors on each of the six bills currently listed, revealing it be an early success. But a number of prominent critics in government and the private sector have also already popped up, blasting the app for being partisan and being decidedly non-transparent in crucial areas.
Hours after Rep. Cantor’s press office tweeted about the launch on Tuesday, the press office of House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) tweeted back: “We like the idea of Citizen CoSponsor, but why did you re-write the bill titles and descriptions in an entirely partisan way?”
Indeed, comparing the descriptions of the six bills currently listed on the Citizen Cosponsor website to the descriptions of those same bills on the Library of Congress website reveals that two of the bill titles have been substantially changed and at least three of the descriptions of bills have been substantially rewritten as well. Although, to be fair, bill descriptions generally aren’t the most straightforward pieces of writing to begin with, colored in policy lingo, so the re-written descriptions do serve to clarify them in some respects.
Five of the six bills listed were proposed by Republicans, including Rep. Phil Gingrey’s (R-GA) bill to repeal the health care reform Medicare advisory board and Rep. Christopher Smith’s (R-NJ) bill to end taxpayer funding for institutions that also provide for safe abortion procedures.
But more problematic to Citizen Cosponsor’s critics is the fact that the app doesn’t fully explain the selection process for the bills currently listed.
“How did you select those 6 bills in Citizen CoSponsor?” tweeted Rep. Hoyer’s press office to Rep. Cantor’s on Tuesday, “Partisan? Senate GOPers want you to include the Senate Highway bill.”
“@RepAlGreen has a bill in Citizen Cosponsor, feel free to sponsor his bill or sign up!,” replied Cantor’s press office in a tweet, referencing the Democrat Congressman’s bill to create a new position in the Department of Housing position to oversee veterans affairs.
“My concern about the partisanship of Citizen Cosponsor is borne out of past experience,” said Marci Harris, a former aid to Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) who left government to found POPVOX, a competing open government platform in the private sector that allows users to gauge public sentiment about bills.
Harris aired her concerns about the new platform in a detailed column on The Huffington Post on Wednesday. She had five key questions about the new app, including “Are ‘Updates’ neutral or partisan talking points?” As Harris wrote:
Will these updates be managed by the Majority Leader’s office? If so, are they partisan messages from the Republican Caucus or will they be couched as updates from the institution of “Congress”? Is the project being managed by the House Majority Leader ‘s communications staff, new media, or by policy staff?
“Those three possible choices aren’t wrong,” Harris told TPM in a phone interview, “It’s just that someone needs to know what they’re signing up for on the front page.”
Harris also noted that the website’s privacy policy was listed on the page of the company that developed it, IB5k, raising questions over whether users of the new app were protected by that company’s privacy policy, Facebook’s, or Congress’s.
Harris was full of praise for the new Citizen Cosposnor initiative, too, calling it a great leap forward but an imperfect one right now.
Citzen Cosponsor, developed by the San Francisco-based software company IB5k, is backed by Facebook and was built using Facebook’s “Open Graph,” a platform that allows for the creation of specific action buttons that tie-into the world’s largest social network. Facebook has not yet responded to TPM’s questions about its role in the project. Neither has IB5k, nor has Rep. Cantor’s office.
