Judging our first Apps for America contest was difficult: 40+ solid, open source applications that solidly moved the ball forward in terms of opening government and providing new methods of communicating to our legislative branch.

The entries ranged from highly technical Bayesian prediction tools like Words Vote, to the super simple and super useful GovPix. Every entry presented was open source and and amazing commitment on behalf of the development community to open their government. Every single entrant was amazing and I wish we could give prizes to everyone.

But we can’t. The rules say there’s 1 prize for first place, 1 prize for second place, 4 third place prizes and 10 honorable mentions prizes. Which gives us 16 total prizes to give away.

Scoring was done with our own judging application– if you could call it that. It was just a lightweight Django application that showed each application in an iframe, and then asked each judge to rate the app according to 5 categories. Later on, I’ll run down some interesting stats from the 45 different applications, but for now, I’m sure many of you who’ve waited and waited want to see who has won.

First Place for $15,000

Filibusted: “Hold senators accountable for blocking legislation.”

Second Place for $5,000

Legistalker: “The latest online activity of Congress Members.”

Third Place for $1,000 (4)

Hello Congress

Know Thy Congressman

Yeas & Nays

e-PaperTrail

Honorable Mentions for $100 (10)

RepresentedBy
Capital Calls
iLegislator
TweetCongress
Congress Bills
LocalPolitics.in
Words Vote.
Expendicus
Call Congress
Hear Me Say This

This was a great start. For those of you who won, congratulations. For those of you who didn’t– thank you for participating. The good news is, you’ll have another shot at this soon as this will not be the last of Apps for America. Thanks to all who participated, and we hope you continue to build and support products to open up our government!