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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European Workshop on Web 2.0 Government Best Practices
The European Commission’s ePractice portal is teaming up with some Europe-based social media consultants to host a workshop on how to promote user-driven and developed Web 2.0 tools to further public services. They will focus mainly on examples of what is being done currently to actually make government more responsive, as opposed to what might be done theoretically. The workshop will be held on March 16th in Brussels.
The organizers are responding to the dramatic rise over the past three years in user-driven, Web 2.0-style initiatives to make government more open, transparent and accountable. They rightfully point to TheyWorkForYou, the product of Sunlight’s friends at the United Kingdom-based MySociety.com, as a good example. The organizers see a growing gap between the innovation culture underlying these initiatives and government approaches to information technology innovation in public services.
The folks behind this conference want to show how Web 2.0 projects are changing public services now, in the hope that this will further encourage government to adopt the tools and mindset and they want to create an interactive and hands-on kind of meeting. It will include short presentation of projects, with more lengthy and informal discussions between participants.
The European Commission’s ePractice is hosting the meeting and participation is free. And they are counting on word of mouth to get the word out.
Hat Tip: David Osimo.
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ProgrammableGov
ProgrammableWeb recently launched a new central resource of over a dozen government-related mashups and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to improve access to legislative, civic and political information.
ProgrammableWeb is already a major hub for the Web 2.0 technology community around its directories of mashups and Web service APIs. The new site is now listing Web applications that help citizens examine and remix government data to shed more light on the work of the federal government.
ProgrammableGov’s APIs and Mashup Dashboard currently offers government information APIs and mashups developed by government agencies and those developed independently by citizens and transparency advocate organizations, including several created or supported by the Sunlight Foundation.
These include:
* The SunlightLabs API, which enables users to retrieve contact information for members of the United States Congress
* The LOUIS API, which provides searchable access to congressional, presidential, and GAO documents
* The FedSpending.org API created by OMB Watch, which includes methods for finding information about awarded contracts and information that assists businesses with applying for government contracts
* The Follow the Money API, created by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which enables querying for information about individual candidates, political action committees (PACs), ballot measures, and campaign contributors, with options for filtering and sorting the results
* The MAPLight.org API, created by MAPLight.org, which enables querying for information about legislative votes in Congress and how they are connected to campaign donations.
ProgrammableWeb, also links to resources to help US citizens find contact information for members of Congress and congressional districts for any US address. Likewise, on the site, residents of the United Kingdom can access the TheyWorkForYou API, created by MySociety.org, to learn information about their representatives in Parliament and the House of Lords.
