This is awesome: the folks over at uscode.house.gov agreed to extend their RFP deadline by one week to August 18th. If you were thinking about getting a team together to create a bid, now you've got a bit of breathing room.
Continue readingHow to Search FedBizOpps.gov for Web Related Federal Contracts
Since I realized we dropped the ball and only heard about the uscode.house.gov opportunity with six days left, I've spent a good portion of the day figuring out how to find government contracts that relate to the web. It starts with FedBizOpps. That's where government releases publicly available contracts. In a later post I'll talk to you about how to tell if you're qualified and how to qualify (as soon as I figure it all out) but for right now, I thought I'd give you this little ScreenCast.
Continue readingOpportunity: uscode.house.gov
We just got wind of an RFP from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel (LRC) which manages the US Code -- the codified version of our federal public laws. You should think about it as an opportunity. This is an opportunity for smart developers and designers to do something amazing. The LRC is asking for someone to:
Continue readingThe Recovery.gov Technical Proposal
Here's the proposal that was released by the Recovery board on Friday. Lots of redactions, but it should serve two purposes-- one, to let us see what they're working on, and two, to let us figure out how to write these proposals.
Continue readingOur FEC Testimony
I went in to testify last week on how the FEC can improve their website. Their hearing was actually the first to be streamed live on the Internet. I'm hoping we can get a recording up soon.
It went well. The commissioners were very amenable to feedback and heard what we had to say. I delivered all your comments, and they were receptive to all of them. Primarily in my own testimony I talked to the FEC about how they should spend less time making maps and more time making bulk data available in extensible formats, and that they should hire a New Media Director to carry the ball on this stuff and make sure it happens.
Continue readingHow do we Redesign FCC.gov?
Our next goal in our redesigning the government series is to do the FCC website. Check it out. According to archive.org, the last time the site underwent a redesign was in August/September of 2001. The site is long overdue for an overhaul. When we started kicking around the idea of doing the FCC website, we talked to a few folks about it and we think that unlike any other mock redesign we've done, we're going to open the process and have community help drive this.
Continue readingOur Fifth Judge
I'm happy to announce our fifth and final judge in Apps for America 2 the Data.gov Challenge: Cyrus Krohn. Cyrus the Director of Local Programming at Microsoft and former Director of the Republican National Committee's e-Campaign Division during the 2008 election cycle. He was Slate magazine's first employee and launched the groundbreaking webzine in 1996. He brings a unique perspective of having both worked in politics, and worked with local data. We're happy to have him participating as the fifth and final judge.
So, there you have it-- you can follow all the judges on twitter, too:
Continue readingFEC Hearing tomorrow
I'm going to testify to the FEC about your ideas that you came up with on how the FEC can improve their website. There'll be live audio of the event and you can tune in around 2pm Eastern for the remarks, or tune in to the whole thing if you'd like starting in the morning. Thank you for all the comments and hopefully we'll be able to help the FEC make some real changes. I'll let you know how it goes when I get back.
Continue readingWe won the Google/O’Reilly Open Source Awards
Last night at the Google Open Source awards, I won the "Best Community Builder" award on behalf on Sunlight Labs. While my name is at the top, I think that's a mistake-- I'm the "best community builder" because we have the best community.
This is only the beginning. In six months we've been able to do some amazing things-- 47 applications have been designed and inspired by our community, and developers are starting to wake up and realize that they're the key to making our government accountable, accessible and responsible. In a few months when Apps for America 2 is complete, with your hard work we'll have more applications that we can then use as justification to the government to release more data and make it easier for developers to work on the outside and on the inside.
Congratulations to you all!
Continue readingData.gov is great
Yesterday, ReadWriteWeb posted a story titled Data.gov to Face a Challenger From Sunlight Labs. I've actually been asked a few times questions along the same lines: "Does this mean you're giving up on Data.gov?"
Ask OpenSecrets if they've given up on the FEC or ask Weather.com if they've given up on the National Weather Service. The answer is quite the opposite: we're only able to do the catalog because of Data.gov. Without it, Government wouldn't be investing in and publishing its own data to add to our catalog. We're doing what you're supposed to: build on the shoulders of giants.
In addition, this project, like Apps for America 2, helps to ensure the success and longevity of Data.gov. And who knows, maybe we can help influence the features and functionality of Data.gov while we're on the way.
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