The ethics commission of the city asked us to testify in front of them on how the lobbying data could be improved.
One of the big problems with it is that it's only released annually, so by the time you actually get the data, most of the decisions have already been made. We recommended that it be released in a much more timely fashion: daily, weekly, or at the latest, monthly. That would make big improvements.
Also, we're only told which committees they appear in front of, or which people they talk to; we're not told on what. There's not enough detail on what issue they're talking about. The lobbyists are basically allowed to describe what they're doing with almost no details.
We've also talked with the City of San Francisco about the same issue. We're even thinking about putting together basically a national software application to collect and show the data, one that has more granularity, faster reporting, and all that kind of thing.