Why, hello there! Do you have a second? Would you like to come and visit?

The Sunlight Local team, which brings you analysis and resources for state, county and municipal open data and transparency policies, has just updated the team homepage. We’d like to show you around!

The main content of the page still contains our team mission, but now it’s paired with our Local Open Data Policy Map, a visual expression of the spread of open data policies. We update this map as soon as we hear of the existence of new formal policies, so please get in touch with us if you’re aware of a policy that’s missing on the map. Below the map, find our central resources on open data policies: our Open Data Policy Guidelines, our line-by-line analysis of existing open data policies and posts on our blog which explore existing and developing open data policies. Below this section you’ll find our other approaches to thinking about opening government data.

Our Municipal Open Data Deep Dives identify trends and best practices in such important areas of municipal data disclosure as campaign finance, asset disclosure, lobbying, crime and zoning. Below the deep dives, find our chief Sunlight frameworks for developing tools to access state and local open data: Open States, a suite of tools which allow you to discover, track and download state-level legislative information, and Open Civic Data, a project to develop a similar suite of tools for local-level data.

In addition to our main content section, we’ve reformatted the page with a sidebar to highlight some of our resources which used to be buried more deeply on the site. These resources include our blog posts on open government; our Sunlight Cities Tumblr and Open Data News Pocket; and our Scout feed which tracks developments in state-level open data policies.

If you’re interested in learning more about the development of the open data movement, take a look at our Open Data 101 section which includes our “Why Open Data” series, responding to common fears about open data, as well as our “Guidelines to Guidelines” series, historical overviews of the development of existing open data guidelines.

In the next group of sidebar sections — Educational Materials, Community Building and Resources — we invite you to come join the movement yourself by learning to use our tools and connecting with broader communities of open data advocates. Have some tech experience? Dig into the process of using open data with our APIs. Doing something exciting with open data? Consider applying for one of our OpenGov Grants, where we support the development of new open-source tools with a one-time grant.  

The revamp of the Sunlight Local page is intended to help us provide a “one-stop shop” for your local open data needs. We’re hoping it will make it easier for you to keep track of developments in the world of local open data, Sunlight’s new resources and what we’re generally up to. We hope you’ll visit us real soon!