Making Government Transparent and Accountable
The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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Announcing Apps for America
Sunlight Labs is pleased to announce our new mashup contest for 2009: Apps for America. Inspired by our own mashup contest in 2007, along with the DC Office of the CTO’s Apps for Democracy contest. We’re doing things a bit differently than our first contest in that we’ve broadened the number of APIs that make your app eligible, we’ve increased the prize money, and we’re requiring that all the applications submitted be released under an open source license.
The contest details are here
Basically, you need to use one of the APIs or data dumps listed on this page to make a compelling application. You can develop on any platform you want as long as the judges can judge it. For instance— we wouldn’t recommend making an TI-85 application because none of our judges saved their calculators from high school, but we would recommend web applications, client applications, Adobe AIR applications and the like. If you’re looking for some ideas, check out our Project Ideas page for some inspiration.
Our judges are pretty awesome: Adrian Holovaty from the Django Project. Aaron Swartz, Founder of Reddit.com. Xeni Jardin from BoingBoing.net. Peter Corbett, one of the inventors of Apps for Democracy and founder of iStrategy Labs. We’re keeping one slot open for one other judge. I’ll be a judge, too.
This marks a shift here in the Labs too, from being an experimentation laboratory to a full-scale open source development organization. After all, we can’t call on Government to be transparent if we’re not transparent ourselves.
So let the games begin! We’ll be blogging about the contest as it goes on through March over on the Sunlight Labs Blog so make sure to stay tuned for updates!
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NetSquared.org’s Mashup Challenge
Our friends at NetSquared.org understand as well as anyone the tremendous potential the Web holds for non-profits and NGO’s working for social change. They help these groups build strategic capacity, knowledge and skills through online tools, greatly enhancing their effectiveness and impact.
And voting has begun for NetSquared.org’s Mashup Challenge to decide which projects will go on to the 3rd Annual NetSquared Conference (N2Y3), which is to take place May 27 – 28 in San Jose, Calif. You may remember that our grantee MapLight.org was a winner last year.
The community will select the 20 mashups that will go to the conference on March 24. At the conference, NetSquared will ask the 20 selected project teams to present their mashups and attendees will vote to select the top three. They will receive a share of $100,000 in prize money.
Here’s the link to this year’s candidate projects. And since the folks at NetSquared encourage each of us to share our slate of selected projects, here are five I know I am voting for (all Sunlight Foundation grantees):
MAPLight.org: Mapping Money and Politics
OpenCongess.Org: Track Congress With Social Data
Ask Your Lawmaker: Connecting Local Communities To Their Lawmakers
Congratulations to NetSquared…And good luck to the projects!
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Mashup of the Day
With one week left till the close of our Congressional Mashup Contest we are excited to report that Steve Nelson’s Second Life entry has made "Mashup of the Day" at Programmable Web. If you recall we introduced this exciting Mashup before here. Seeing Congressional information take center stage on this cutting edge website really shows how people get excited about new ways to view Congress.
Seeing Congressional information in different, visual ways can inspire people to respond and engage politically. This is why we are thrilled about all the great entries we have had so far. Keep them coming!
