Center for
Responsive
Politics
OpenSecrets.org
Susan Alger
Information Technology
Director

Who We Are
• The nation’s premier research group tracking money in U.S.
federal politics.
• Our goal is to create a more educated voter, an involved
citizenry and a more responsive government.
• Our web sites:
– OpenSecrets.org provides a personal investigation kit for
anyone inquiring about money’s impact on elections and
public policy
– CapitalEye.org provides analysis

What We Do
• We gather raw data from the FEC , IRS, SOPR and
others
• We standardize and code millions of individual
contribution, expenditure and lobbying records using
automated processes, research and manual edits.
• We make this information available on our web sites and
via specialized research requests to journalists, advocacy
groups, academics and the public

Core Databases

New Databases

How We Do It
• 16 full time staff
3 Administration
2 Communications
7 Data coding and Research
4 Technology (IT Director, Systems Administrator,
DB Manager and Web programmer)
• $1.3 million annual budget

Challenges
• Maintaining our core functions
– Shrinking, insufficient resources
– Expanding data sets
– New data sets
• Meeting/exceeding the expectations of the
public, our board, our funders and ourselves
• Making HUGE data sets accessible,
meaningful and interesting
• Limited funding sources

Got Some – Need More!
• Social Networking • Mash Ups
• RSS • APIs
• Mapping

In the Works
• Databank • ASPs
• Pivotability • Personalization
• Power Searching

Considered – but Rejected
• Blogs
• Distributed Networking
• Wikis

What’s Worked
• Hire well and leverage talents
• Automate
• Open source and low cost specialty tools
• Partnerships
• Teamwork

Guiding Principles
• Hire brightest creative self-learners
• Focus on the organization mission
• Keep your core strong
• Insist on maintainability
• Cross-train and cultivate
• Learn from your mistakes

Center for
Responsive
Politics
OpenSecrets.org
Susan Alger
Information Technology Director
salger@crp.org