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Continue readingOpen Data’s Business Value Isn’t That Important
I agree with Jonathan's diagnosis of distinct strains within the open government data community. But I don't think they have to be in tension. I've argued before that a big tent is beneficial to us all -- that blurring the lines between open data for accountability and open data for economic development can serve both constituencies' needs. After all, the great thing about open information is that its supply is limitless.
Continue readingWe Have a Winner!
Last week we celebrated our billionth API call by announcing a giveaway, and Tuesday we went ahead and pulled the name of a random API user who had made at least one successful query. I've been emailing with him since, and am please so say that Matt Gabrenya is our winner! You can find his Github profile here, and his business site, Boston TechCollective, here.
Matt used our APIs to power his BillTrack project, which aims to make it easier to run advocacy campaigns on issues like SOPA and the Keystone XL pipeline.
We're delighted that Matt found our APIs useful, and thrilled that thousands of you have as well. We're going to keep making them better, deeper and more powerful; we're counting on all of you to put them to good use.
Sunlight APIs: One Billion Served!
Last week was dominated by news of the first government shutdown in seventeen years. But at Sunlight it also marked a different, more cheerful milestone. Last week, Sunlight's APIs served their billionth request!
Continue readingEasy Problems, Hard Problems and Healthcare.gov
This Reuters article about Healthcare.gov has been getting some attention today. Alas, it's not very good, focusing on client-side optimizations that are probably unrelated to the site's early woes. Healthcare.gov's problems are almost certainly occurring at a deeper level of the system, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for an outsider to gauge their seriousness.
To explain, let's do one of those analogy things. Say that Kathleen is planning a birthday party for herself.
What Happens to .gov in a Shutdown?
The U.S. Code Arrives In XML
Good news: for the first time, the U.S. Code is being published in a usable, open format, directly from the government! Alex Howard tells the story here. This has been a long time coming; House leadership deserves enormous credit for making it a reality.
Nonprofit E-File Data Should Be Open
The IRS is refusing to release digital e-file data for public documents filed by nonprofits--instead, they release it as PDFs. This introduces wasteful barriers for people who want to use this data. Carl Malamud's been fighting to fix this problem. We at Sunlight join him in calling for the IRS to release 990 e-file data.
Continue readingMaking Open Government Data Sustainable
Earlier this week, David Eaves kicked off a fascinating conversation with a post on TechPresident. Titled "Optimism, Fear and the Knight News Challenge," it raises important questions about how open government work is supported and sustained. In particular, David focused on Democracy Map, one of two KNC finalist projects from friend-of-Sunlight Phil Ashlock. Democracy Map aims to improve U.S. citizens' ability to determine who represents them at all levels of government. David argues that a subsidy from Knight to DM could threaten the business of companies like Cicero that are trying to solve the problem through a commercial offering. Once the Knight money dries up, will Democracy Map still be around? Or will it only last long enough to kill off Cicero?
Continue readingMeasuring Lobbyists with Raspberry Pi
A few of us in the labs dabble in hardware hacking, and we were all pretty excited by the debut of the Raspberry Pi. So when we saw that MAKE Magazine was running a contest for creative uses of the Pi, we figured we'd better enter. As it happens, I had picked up a handsome vintage voltmeter at Uncommon Objects during a recent trip to Austin, and had been toying with the idea of making it Pi-enabled. With this competition for inspiration I decided to take the plunge.
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