Sunlight Foundation

Washington, DC - The Sunlight Labs, Sunlight Foundation’s open source development team, announced a new mashup contest, Apps for America, which will award developers for best applications based on data from Sunlight and its partners that makes Congress more accountable, interactive and transparent.

The grand prize is $15,000. Additionally, Sunlight is offering one second place award of $5,000, four third place awards of $1,000 each and 10 honorable mentions at $100 each. Entries must be applications that use a host of government information APIs or datasets, including the Sunlight Labs API, OpenSecrets.org API, the FollowtheMoney.org API, the Capitol Words API and other Sunlight APIs and datasets. Sunlight also encourages contestants to use Sunlight’s code libraries, which the Labs recently open sourced.

“We received more than a dozen fascinating entries to Sunlight's first Web 2.0 Mashup Contest in 2007 and can’t wait to see what creativity Apps for America sparks to shine a light on Congress in unprecedented ways,” said Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation. “We hope this contest and the growing community of Sunlight Labs coders create even more compelling applications that, in turn, inspire Congress and the new Obama administration to see how access to government data catalyzes the invention of Web applications that are both innovative and beneficial for us all.”

Apps for America entries will be judged by Peter Corbett, CEO of iStrategyLabs (Corbett collaborated with the Washington, DC CTO Vivek Kundra in a mashup contest using DC government data); EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty (who is also co-founder of the Django open source framework); technology journalist Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing.net; Aaron Swartz, director of Watchdog.net (and a founder of Reddit.com) and Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs .One more judge will soon be announced.

Submissions are due March 31. Sunlight plans to announce winners on April 7, 2009.

Notably, the team behind Sunlight’s last mashup contest winner, "Unfluence," have gone on to design other political mashups, like Oil Change International’s “Follow the Oil Money" site.

In related news, Sunlight recently welcomed software luminary Mitch Kapor as a member of its advisory board. Kapor is the founder of Lotus Development Corporation, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the original chair and currently on the board of directors of Linden Lab, a member of the advisory board for the Wikimedia Foundation, board member of the Mozilla Foundation, the founder of the Open Source Applications Foundation, founder of Foxmarks, and founder and trustee of the Mitchell Kapor Foundation.

“Mitch Kapor was an early outside advisor to Sunlight. We look forward to having him as an even closer advisor to our work,” said Miller.

The Sunlight Foundation supports, develops and deploys new Internet technologies to make information about Congress and the federal government more accessible to the American people. Through its projects and grant-making, Sunlight serves as a catalyst to create greater political transparency and to foster more openness and accountability in government. Visit SunlightFoundation.com to learn more about Sunlight’s projects, including The Open Senate Project, Capitol Words and OpenCongress.org.
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