"High Value Datasets" is a bunk term.
When the feds introduced the term High Value Data, my immediate response here was "what the heck is 'High Value Data'?!" We quickly extracted the definition from the Open Government Directive and here it is:
"High-value information is information that can be used to increase agency accountability and responsiveness; improve public knowledge of the agency and its operations; further the core mission of the agency; create economic opportunity; or respond to need and demand as identified through public consultation."
Now we've had a chance to go through and take a look at some of the datasets. Our http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com is having a field day analyzing the data, pointing out flaws in the data and generally doing a great job of figuring out what's actually new in the datasets.
Continue readingHow to Request Datasets from Government Right Now
The Open Government Directive has pushed agencies forward to start soliciting feedback from the public. We threw together this quick screencast to show you just how to do it. Check it out after the jump.
Continue readingThe Coming Government Data Flood
Government is releasing data at a breakneck pace, and it is just getting started. One interesting side effect of our National Data Catalog is that we're regularly parsing all of the data on data.gov, and we're able to do interesting things with the aggregate metadata. By parsing out the release date for each dataset on data.gov, and grouping each release by quarter though it's easy to see that since the second quarter of 2009-- when Data.gov was released, the federal government has released more raw datasets than it ever has in the past. Take a look at what's happened after Data.gov launched:
DC Gov Builds Amazing Open Gov Dashboard
On Saturday, the White House released its Open Government Dashboard. It features a big chart with 29 agencies on it measured by four attributes. I suspect that the technology behind this dashboard is likely an excel file, alongside staffers or interns checking each agency website for compliance. It's a start of something-- but a chart does not a dashboard make.
Here in Washington DC, amidst a couple feet of snow (with more on the way!), Mayor Fenty released Track, a real way for citizens to watch their government's performance. Both substance wise and technically, it out-atheletes the White House's Open Government dashboard.
More on how after the jump
Continue readingCitability Codeathon
Silona Bonewald from citability.org is holding a hackathon here in Washington, DC. You should consider attending. Citability is seeking to make it easy for government to publish documents online in a citable way.
Continue readingHow to Manage Large Volunteer Hackathons
Here at Sunlight, we've handled lots of hackathons for the developer community-- especially around Open Government. Some have been productive, some have not. By now, I think we've gotten it down to a particularly good set of principles and ideas to share. Below is a collection of those ideas that will help you run your event more smoothly, and hopefully get the most out of your event.
Remember: hackathons are not social engagements or consensus driven activities. They're about doing work. Habitat for Humanity, for instance, doesn't get bunches of people together to talk about how they should build a house at the beginning of the day. They identify skillsets and put people to work as quickly as possible, often times before the volunteer event starts, and have a plan for what roles people can play before they get there.
Your attendees will show up eager to work, and more than likely they've sacrificed some of their time so that they could feel useful. It is your job to make them leave there feeling useful. That means being able to put them directly to work. That means:
Continue readingEvaluating /Open pages
Right now, we're focused on one thing: watching agencies put up their /Open page. We built a little tool that allows us to check in with each agency daily and notify us when it is up. When we put it up, agencies like the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Agriculture quickly put up placeholder pages to get a green check-box next to their name. Silly.
The point of the Open Tracker not to evaluate, it's to let us know when we can start evaluating and to encourage federal agencies to meet the deadline they're directed to meet.
Continue readingCrisisCamp DC Wrapup
While Haitian relief isn't core to Sunlight's mission, we decided it was OK to step out of bounds for a weekend to help out. This weekend, we saw around 150 people show up in our small office space and quickly get to work. To read about the projects that were worked on and where they're at, check out CrisisCommons.org.
The media picked up on it quite a bit-- getting across the point we've been driving at for over a year now: Developers have skills that can help all kinds of volunteer efforts, and they're willing to help out. Check out the story that American Public Media's Marketplace radio ran: Devising aid programs on their laptops.
We got a lot accomplished-- through a very driven and regimented development routine, 10 projects got strong starts, though the work isn't through yet. There's still so much to do and room for lots of your participation. So if you're free this weekend, consider contributing some of your time to one of the great projects at CrisisCommons.org.
Continue readingSunlight Labs + CrisisCamp DC: Haiti
It's hard to work on government transparency while this is going on. And here at Sunlight Labs, we like to use our skills for good. This weekend, we'll be supporting CrisisCamp Haiti Hackathon in any way that we can. We're encouraging our developers to go this CrisisCamp Hackathon on Saturday, and putting incentive to it offering them compensatory time off if they show up and contribute to the various projects that will go toward relief efforts. While the event's location is TBD, as long as it is in the DC area, we'll be there to help out. We're going to host the event here at Sunlight Labs and let the CrisisCamp Hackathon folks show us what to do.
The DC tech community and the community at large should find ways to give not only their money but their talent and skill toward saving lives and finding homes this weekend. We hope that if you're in the DC area and have some great tech skills, you'll join us in serving the folks leading CrisisCamp, and helping folks in Haiti.
Update:
We'll be providing space and bandwidth for the event as well. The event is hosted here in our offices at Sunlight. We hope you'll join us.
P.S. There's one in Silicon Valley too
Continue readingWatch Congress in Real Time on your iPhone
There are a lot of different iPhone apps out there about Congress. But it seems like they all do the same thing: allow you to look up legislators, find contact information for them and their staff members, call them, and get details about who they are and what they've done. In the Android Marketplace, there's only one app that does that-- our Congress app. But in iPhone land, there's at least a half-dozen.
Our project lead on our new iPhone [app], Josh Ruihley decided to take a different approach. We want to make data about what's happening inside Congress more available to the public. It isn't just who your member of Congress is that matters, but also what they do. It's also important to see what they're reading and who they're listening to, and what the process looks like.
Continue reading
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