A few months ago, we embarked on a journey to create a repository of civil society organizations working around transparency and open data issues from all around the world. With our annual TransparencyCamp having evolved into a significant hub for open government advocates alongside Sunlight’s growing involvement in the global and municipal open data movement, it seemed a logical next step to map the landscape of like-minded folks and create a single spreadsheet that tracks local and international players in the field.

Besides simply locating open data activists, coders, hacker groups, transparency advocates, anti-corruption research institutes, think tanks and even some government-led transparency projects from a wide variety of countries, Sunlight tried to filter information about relevant actors by area of operation, issues covered and the actual approach. Crowdsourcing the whole project would have definitely made our job easier. However our experience shows that empty spreadsheets do not facilitate engagement so we spent some time collecting that vast of amount of information and we now decided to make it publicly available.

The initial goal was to create a repository of all the groups who could be possible partners in Sunlight’s municipal and international projects but we had to realize that there’s an increasing demand coming from the open government community to have access to that information so we eventually decided to share our resource with the wider public.

Such a pledge is always endless and the repository is never considered complete but instead of sitting on the information any longer, we are now opening up the process and ask for the community’s help to verify or correct the data in the sheet and add missing organizations or projects. Our approach was rather experimental and we did not seek perfectionism so a lot of information is missing or incorrect but it’s your turn to contribute!

The spreadsheet is now public – though not editable – and available here:

Contribute

We have compiled a repository of over 500 organizations from countries listed in alphabetic order. At the end of the sheet, you’ll find a couple of organizations without a country code – mostly regional networks or international organizations – but if you feel they should be listed under a certain country, please let us know.

Though amazingly long, the list is far from complete. If your project or organization is missing, don’t even think of having hard feelings but send us the relevant info and we will update the repository! If you work with (technology-driven) transparency or open data issues and your project is not on the list, please fill this form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zwEhr3Y3b1AWxc5Ng5q6dKrVP-4QlXAlUKjKMQyU2Q4/viewform) or contact us at jkeseru@sunlightfoundation.com and send your contact information, a link to your project, area of operation (country or region), a few keywords for the topics you cover and the approach of the project. If you are enlisted but information is missing or incorrect, let us know! We also encourage everyone to dive into the list and use it as a resource for research or a space for inspiration.

Google group

If you want to know more about the international work of Sunlight and our partner groups, please join our new International Google Group at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sunlight-international!

Many thanks to Alisha Green, Matt Rumsey, Matej Kurian, Melissa Ortiz Masso and Madeline Magnuson for their contribution to the spreadsheet!