The Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) is an American nonprofit

watchdog organization Watchdog journalism is a form of investigative journalism where journalists, authors or publishers of a news publication fact-check and interview political and public figures to increase accountability in democratic governance systems. Rol ...

investigating corporate and government accountability. Founded in 2008 and based in

Buffalo, New York Buffalo is a Administrative divisions of New York (state), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York and county seat of Erie County, New York, Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of ...

, it operates the volunteer-run online database LittleSis, described by its co-founder "an involuntary

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

for influential people". LittleSis, a play on the authoritarian Big Brother from

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

's dystopian novel ''

Nineteen Eighty-Four ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also published as ''1984'') is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically ...

'', was funded by a grant from the

Sunlight Foundation The Sunlight Foundation was an American 501(c)(3) nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocated for open government. The organization was founded in April 2006 with the goal of increasing transparency and accountability in the United States ...

and launched in January 2009. By August of that year it included profiles and financial information on over 28,000 individuals and 10,000 organizations.

References

External links

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LittleSis.org
Organizations established in 2008 Non-profit organizations based in New York (state) Organizations based in Buffalo, New York {{nonprofit-org-stub