Blog : Sunlight Foundation

What do you think of USA.gov?

by Clay Johnson

technology

Jan 4, 2010 11:10 am

About a year ago, we posted our first Redesigning the Government results. The post-- entitled Rethinking USA.gov set off a firestorm of comments both inside and outside the Federal Government.

Now the GSA is interested in getting your ideas on what they can do with the site. They've launched a site called Your Voice Matters to get ideas from citizens. Did our feedback make sense? Do you agree with some of the comments? Now's your chance to give them your thoughts.

State Government Online

by Ellen Miller Jan 4, 2010 10:47 am

There was a terrific op ed in the Maryland section of the Washington Post this weekend by two locally based... View Article

White House Visitor Logs — 25k Records Released for Late September

by Daniel Schuman Dec 30, 2009 5:17 pm

Today the White House released its log of White House visitors for the period of September 16-30, 2009. (Here’s today’s... View Article

It Was A Very Good Year

by Ellen Miller Dec 30, 2009 2:07 pm

Sunlight hasn’t been around nearly as long as that song — it was first recorded in 1961 and we opened... View Article

What’s The Plan for 2010?

by Clay Johnson

technology

Dec 29, 2009 12:57 pm

Tis the season to write year end or decade-end wrap-ups, and erroneous predictions of the future. But instead of making (nonsense) predictions, I'd like to discuss where we're headed as a community and the big problems we face moving forward.

Our mission is to help developers make their government more accountable and transparent through the use of technology and open data. In 2009 we focused on building infrastructure and community. In 2010, we need to start solving problems. Here are the big challenges on the horizon:

24 Days Of Local Sunlight – Day 24

by Nisha Thompson Dec 24, 2009 3:28 pm

24 days just isn’t enough. I can write a blogpost every day for a whole year about all the great... View Article

24 Days Of Local Sunlight – Day 23

by Nisha Thompson Dec 23, 2009 7:02 pm

Today I want to give a shout out Bacon’s Rebellion. The blog is dedicated to covering Virginia; especially infastructure, transportation... View Article

Year 1 in Review

by Clay Johnson

technology

Dec 23, 2009 3:16 pm

2009 Year in Review

On December 19th, 2008 we launched a new site with a new mission-- to build a community of developers around making government more accountable. On that day, we proclaimed our new mission:

Sunlight Labs is an open source development team dedicated to making their government accountable. And we want you to be a part of it.

People have been organizing to change government forever-- and people like John McCain in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004, and Barack Obama and Ron Paul have been raising the bar of organizing by using the Internet to move votes and raise money. Developers have been organizing to make great software, too. Projects like Mozilla and Apache have been helping developers organize to make great software for years.

Sunlight Labs is an experiment to try and blend those two things and see what happens. About a year ago, we asked the question: Can developers be organized to change their government?

Here's the data-- you be the judge: