Phase 1 - Open Data was completed March 9th, 2017.

A list of data sets created during this project can be viewed on our Open Data page.

Charter

Vision

The origin of Washington's disclosure law can be traced to the efforts of concerned citizens who came together in 1970 believing that the public had the right to know about the financing of political activity in Washington. The law provides citizens with an in-depth look at who is financing a campaign or has hired legislative lobbyists. In addition, monitoring efforts of concerned citizens, special interest groups, media and the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) assures compliance with the law.
The PDC has a long history of making data freely available online. Making that information available in a machine readable, standardized format can further improve public access and accountability by enabling those same concerned citizens, special interest groups and the media to analyze, filter and republish data in new and innovative ways.

Mission

We will publish PDC campaign finance and lobbying data on the Washington State open data portal (https://data.wa.gov). The data will be published so that they are easily machine readable and will include appropriate metadata and keys or dictionaries. Specifics regarding the data sets and level of documentation will be defined by the project team.

Success Criteria

The specific deliverables and success criteria has been defined by the project team, and includes:

  • Completed Datasets (Ordered by priority)
    • Campaign Finance
    • Independent Expenditures
    • Lobbying
  • The datasets are updated, at a minimum, daily
  • The datasets are complete and correct
  • The team including the stakeholders drive the development of the project
  • Additional datasets will be considered as time and resources permit


Team

Product Owner - James Gutholm

Responsible for representing the interests of the stakeholders, decision making, prioritization.

Team Leader - Kyle Veldhuizen

Responsible for team facilitation, communication and representing the needs of the team to the product owner and executive sponsor.

Stakeholders - Abraham Epton, Maya Gold, Chad Magendanz, Toyoko Tsukuda, Debbie Wuthnow, and Andrew Villeneuve

Responsible for representing the end-user functional goals, helping the team understand how the product is used.

Domain Experts - Chip Beatty and Jennifer Hansen

Provide expert knowledge regarding the business domain and customer needs.

Technical Experts - Jim Coleman, Bill King, Bruce Wendler and Kyle Veldhuizen

Responsible for development and implementation.

Approach

We will utilize the state's open data portal, as well as relying on existing tools, and using cloud services wherever possible. We will using the Agile software development methodology called Scrum. The development process will consist of 2 week sprints with back log grooming meetings on the first day of the sprint. At the end of each 2 week sprint a fully function piece of the project will be delivered to the stakeholders.

Priorities

The priority of datasets being delivered as determined by the group:

  • Campaign Finance
  • Independent Expenditures
  • Lobbying
  • Document Images
  • Last Minute Contributions

It was also determined by the group that data would be most useful if it was updated daily.

Assumptions

The existing data is relatively clean and correct, and requires less than 10 percent of our time to cleanup. Based on its nature, and preliminary tests, we are assuming the open data portal can handle the volume of data we will be uploading, as well as meet the end user's functional needs.

Constraints

The project is constrained to an 8 sprint/16 week time period, fixed staff work time, and no additional funding for services or staff.

Risks
Staff turnover.
Lack of team participation.
Performance of systems outside of agency control (data.wa.gov).
Legacy reporting systems may have unknown complexities that slow data migration.
Agency emergencies that divert technical staff to other work.