Today the Sunlight Foundation unveils our latest app to reinforce the power of the data around you. It's called Sitegeist, a simple iPhone and Android app that presents a huge amount of information from disparate sources in straight-forward infographics. Just scroll and swipe your way through rich statistics about your location from demographics to popular local venues.

Sitegeist is a mobile application that helps you to learn more about your surroundings in seconds. Drawing on publicly available information, the app presents solid data in a simple at-a-glance format to help you tap into the pulse of your location. From statistical data on the people and housing to the latest popular spots or weather, Sitegeist presents localized information visually so you can get back to enjoying the neighborhood.

The app is intuitively designed such that location-specific information that would be normally difficult to track down is now all together in one place on your smartphone. As you user, just launch the app, plug in your location or a spot you're curious about and then swipe between the categories of data. Age distributions, political contributions, median home values, record temperatures and much more will appear instantly. We will continue to add new data and bolster the app as we get public feedback so please let us know with your tweets, email and comments.

Behind the scenes we dug up publicly available data and brought thousands of records together just to display one fact about your location. For example, when you drop a pin on the map and see the age distributions, we are pulling age data from the 2010 U.S. census based on the specific census tract the pin you dropped on the map is in. You don't need to know where to find the census data or even know what census tract you're in, just drop the pin and learn. Sitegeist presents a fresh perspective on a location and lets you consume complex information immediately taking on Herbert Simon's famous observation, "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." If you happen to have a wealth of attention, tap on much of data to get more information from the source. Find a contaminated site nearby? Tap to be taken to the EPA's site with a longer description of the issue.

Sitegeist was created by the Sunlight Foundation with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and is the third in a series of National Data Apps. The first two National Data Apps are Sunlight Health, that brings healthcare ratings data and prescription drug safety information to your pocket, and Upwardly Mobile, a web app that helps users find a better place to live by comparing salary, living and employment data and ranking it based on their preferences. Sitegeist was created by the Sunlight Foundation, in consultation with design firm IDEO.

We're excited to announce Upwardly Mobile, Sunlight's new webapp funded by the Knight Foundation that allows you to research where in the country you could enjoy financial security and an improved quality of life. Upwardly Mobile is an easy-to-use relocation research tool backed by powerful economic data, allowing granular comparisons without digging through arcane government reports for each indicator. We sifted through all this data so you don't have to, and this information is now presented seamlessly on any mobile or tablet platform.

Just enter your zipcode, career information and cost-of-living importance and then Upwardly Mobile gets to work generating a list of ideal places for you to move. Alternatively, you can browse individual cities to compare them to national averages. Through charts and graphs, you can explore how metropolitan areas of similar size compare to where you live now, including:

• Occupation: Both the average salary for the selected occupation over time and income data for the entire metropolitan area.

• Housing costs: Rents, as well as maintenance services and goods such as furniture and appliances.

• Cost of living: Apparel, education, food and childcare.

• Quality of life costs: Recreation, transportation and health care.

Part of putting this responsively designed app together included deciding which economic factors make the greatest difference in people’s lives. For instance, we decided that salary and housing costs are more important than other economic indicators such as the cost of recreation services. These weights impact the base ranking, but the importance attached to each economic category can be changed by your selections in the survey. For more information on this methodology and the technical background, check out my colleague Jeremy's blog post here.

The Upwardly Mobile app utilizes data comes from many sources: Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Federal Financial Institutions Examinations Council, Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies and the U.S. Census.

Upwardly Mobile is the second in a series of National Data Apps, developed with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The first was Sunlight Health, which helps people make more informed decisions about medical care. Sunlight also created mobile apps for monitoring lawmakers: Congress for Android and Windows phones and Real Time Congress for iPhone. The recently launched OpenStates app for iPhone and iPad tracks the inner-workings of all 50 state legislatures.

Note: 4/3/12, 5:25 p.m. This post has been updated to clarify the weighting of salary and housing costs against other economic indicators.

The tide has turned for the transparency movement. A unified voice in demand for more openness from the government has been displayed in a recent survey. The increase in citizens' interest in the operations of their leaders is a clear sign that abuse of public office or governing in the dark, will not go unchecked. And now, with the existence of the Knight FOI Fund, media organizations will hopefully be encouraged to pursue accountability from government, especially when Freedom of Information is violated.

• A survey conducted by the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) and the Media Law Resource Center (MLRC) found that more citizens are demanding for government transparency. The study also revealed that due to a lack of resources, news organizations are less likely to file FOI lawsuits. Pia Christensen is not surprised by media’s reluctance to go after FOI violations. She is noting the significant increased in open records requests made by private citizens and other non-media organizations on Covering Health.

• Chicago mayor Rahm Emmanuel started his first 100 days in office on a good note; with admirable efforts to open up the city’s data including lobbyists information, city building permits and the much publicized online posting of all city employee salaries. Blogger Ramsin Canon, is not sure that this is enough. In his “Transparency Ex Post and Ex Ant” he explains how the mayor’s creation of transparency actions without the involvement of the citizens defeats the function of government transparency -- which is supposed to be to encourage public participation. Read more of his post on Mechanics

• Provoked by a recent presentation by Bob Freeman from the New York Open Government Committee - on the state’s Open Meeting Law, Warren Gross is examining how open or otherwise the law is. He mentions a pending legislation introduced by Councilwoman Amy Paulin to strengthen the Open Meeting law but is skeptical because currently, the law is not even enforced by the State and it depends on the diligence of municipal bodies to comply with it. Check out his message on accountability to the community on Talk of the Sound.

• When Kevin Dietrich’s co worker attended a hearing organized by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, in Greenville, South Carolina, little did he know that he would not be allowed to record it. Eric Ward a blogger with The Nerve (South Carolina Policy Council’s official blog), was stopped from videotaping the hearing about lowering unemployment and bringing high-paying jobs in the state but was promised an edited version of the recording by the Committee’s staff. Dietrich is not happy about the censoring and he shares his frustrations on The Cotton Boll Conspiracy.

Photo credit: Chuck Olsen

The Sunlight Foundation would like to extend a hearty congratulations to the 2011 winners of the Knight News Challenge just announced today at the MIT-Knight Civic Media Conference. They are an impressive collection of folks and we are excited to see such innovative ideas gain the support they need to expand.

Among the many winners we're particular thrilled to see some familiar faces. Waldo Jaquith, a Sunlight mini-grant recipient for his work at Richmond Sunlight in 2008 getting video online from the Virginia legislature, got funding for the State Decoded platform to make state codes easier to use and understand. DocumentCloud, a great tool to annotate documents for journalists that has won News Challenge funding in the past, is a Sunlight favorite whose lead developer is a two-time winner of our Apps for America contest. We're also big fans of ScraperWiki, a collaborative approach to building web scrapers to free data that has huge potential for journalists and others to sniff out interesting data. We look forward to learning about all the winners of this year's challenge and will certainly look forward to integrating them into our work.

It's so incredibly exciting to see the new ideas for open government and engaging citizens that have won these awards this year. Our community is getting bigger and better every year.

The Knight News Challenge is an initiative that promotes projects around the globe to transform journalism through innovative new tools and has funded over 75 projects with $27 million over the past 5 years. The Knight Foundation provides grant support to the Sunlight Foundation and we are proud to continue our partnership.

A study of three cities released today by the Pew's Internet & American Life Project and the Monitor Institute finds that citizens' trust in their government is strongly tied with their engagement and involvement in their communities. When the local government is transparent, accountable and readily accessible the study shows that citizens are more likely to be satisfied with city services ranging from libraries to the fire department. At Sunlight, this news is hardly a surprise, but it is always gratifying to read a reputable and thorough study that confirms our mission.

[G]overnment transparency is associated with residents’ feelings of efficacy and empowerment: Those who think their government shares information well are more likely to say that people like them can have an impact on government. It might be the case that signals from government that “we want to be open about what we do” make people think they can take advantage of that openness and influence the way the government operates.

The research, entitled 'How the Public Perceives Community Information Systems', focused on three cities: Macon, Philadelphia and San Jose. Each community is demographically unique and has different levels of enthusiasm to share municipal information. The eight-month study found that broadband users are more likely to seek information online and be involved in their civic institutions, though they are often more critical of their local government as they are exposed to more issues in their neighborhood.

This exploratory study follows up on discussions from the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy that argues a "healthy democratic community depends on a strong information system and engaged citizens who take advantage of that information." Key indicators of a strong community includes:

• A local government with a committed policy on transparency
• Ready access to information that enhances quality of life, including information provided by trusted intermediary organizations in the community on a variety of subjects
• A majority of government information and services online, accessible through a central and easy to use portal

What is your experience with your government? You should tell us about it and check back on our soon-to-be-announced Transparency Camp.

I’m thrilled to announce that the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation just announced a new $1.2 million two-year grant to us to support Sunlight in our nascent “National Data Apps” initiative that allows us to give you access to more government data that affects you in your daily life. The funding also allows us to further expand our award-winning Sunlight Live real-time accountability platform that combines streaming video, government transparency data, journalistic background and social media coverage of major events in Washington. (Be sure to tune in on Election night, when we’ll cover the results of this year’s mid-term elections.)

Our Sunlight Labs will design -- along with our Reporting Group --  the National Data Apps and issue reports on the government’s track record for making this kind of data available to the public. Additionally, the Sunlight Foundation Reporting Group will train journalists, bloggers and other members of the media on how to use the National Data Apps when they are launched in early-2011. (Use the comments below to let us know if you’re interested in this kind of training, or send us an email.)

Knight’s previous funding of Sunlight has supported our creation of Poligraft, Influence Explorer and our free embeddable Politiwidgets about members of Congress that you’ve seen used in our blog posts and on some of your hometown newspapers’ websites.

^{[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="180" caption="High fives all around!"][/caption]}

I'm thrilled to announce that our real-time investigative reporting platform, Sunlight Live, has won the prestigious Knight-Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. While the work of Sunlight is meant to benefit everyone, one of our core communities are journalists. It's fantastic to be recognized from an accomplished set of judges. We couldn't be more thankful to J-Lab and the Knight Foundation.^*

For more information on Sunlight Live, read up on our previous episodes: GOP Job Forum with Lobbyists, Financial Reform and Health Care Reform.

Sunlight Live has only just begun its innovation of live news coverage and data jamming. We hope you'll join us in our continued mission to make government transparent and accountable.

<sup>*The Sunlight Foundation received a grant from the Knight Foundation in 2009.

(Photo: WIRED under Creative Commons)</sup>