It’s that time of year again: time to CodeAcross! On the weekend of February 21-23, Code for America and the Sunlight Foundation will host 40+ events around the globe. The mission of these events is to have citizens participate in making real progress towards taking open government “Beyond Transparency.” We’re making government data more open and accessible — through taking an inventory of a city’s open data to drafting an open data policy to designing an app powered by that open data.

In its third year, CodeAcross is scheduled to coincide with International Open Data Day. These events are designed to be not just an opportunity to move the ball forward on creating more open and transparent governments, but to build communities of citizens who want to participate in strengthening public institutions–on February 21-23 and beyond. This is NOT just another hackathon.

This year, Code for America and the Sunlight Foundation have collaborated on three “challenges” that CodeAcross participants of any technical proficiency level can participate in:

• The Open Data Inventory: Take stock of where your city stands on publishing some fundamental datasets.
• Open Data Policy: Work with your local officials to create an open data policy, or draft an implementation plan or accountability structure for a recently passed policy.
• Open Civic Data Scraper: Create scrapers to pull down important civic information to feed the Open Civic Data API.

On February 21-23, join an event near you! We want citizens of all stripes and backgrounds to participate: coders, activists, designers, organizers, public transit enthusiasts, you name it. You can find a full listing of the events here.

We’re thankful to our sponsors, Esri and Microsoft, for making CodeAcross possible.