This Week in Civic Tech: Philly Releases Salary Data, John Oliver Uses Open Data to Attack Congressional Fundraising

"The HBO pundit, and former Daily Show anchor, lambasted Congress for 20 minutes on April 3 for its excessive — and what some might call obscene — amount of time spent on campaign fundraising activities. One of Oliver’s weapons was the Sunlight Foundation’s Political Party Time database, a crowdsourcing site that tracks congressional fundraising events. Digging into the data, Oliver dissected more than 2,800 of these gatherings during the 2013 to 2014 election cycle, an experience he described as shocking. “The sheer amount of time that politicians take for fundraising is not just embarrassing, it’s horrifying,” Oliver said. “Some say that Congress members can spend from 25 percent to up to 50 percent of their time on it.” As proof, he went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that compels its congressmen with minimum DCCC funding contribution quotas. The lowest he reported was $125,000 and the highest reached $800,000. To hit these numbers Congress members have to spend, on average, four hours of their day soliciting for donations.The situation is the same on both sides of the aisle. In 2014, such efforts by congressional candidates raised more than $1.7 billion ... On April 5, Philadelphia Chief Data Officer Tim Wisniewski released salaries of city employees, searchable by name and title, on Philly's open data portal. As far as top earners go, the data lists Sam Gulino, the city medical examiner, as the highest-paid staff member at $260,730 per year — or about 11.5 times the city’s per capita income. Gulino is followed by Deputy Mayor and Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. at $240,000; Deputy Medical Examiner Albert Chu at $231,505; Mayor James Kenney at $217,820; and Airport CEO Rochelle Cameron at $215,000. The release represents salaries as of March 22, according to the city, but will see a refresh every three months ..."