The Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) is an American nonprofit
watchdog organization investigating corporate and government accountability.[1][2][3] Founded in 2008 and based in
Buffalo, New York, it operates the volunteer-run online database LittleSis, described by its co-founder "an involuntary
Facebook for influential people".[4][5][6] LittleSis, a play on the authoritarian
Big Brother from
George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, was funded by a grant from the
Sunlight Foundation and launched in January 2009.[7][4] By August of that year it included profiles and financial information on over 28,000 individuals and 10,000 organizations.[4]