Just two weeks after announcing the Great American Hackathon, there are a dozen events planned across the country. The great govtrack.us creator Josh Tauberer is organizing one in Philly. The big-data folks at Cloudera are hosting an event. ThoughtBot is holding one in Boston, as is Steven Clift in Minnesota. And there's a handful across the country too-- in towns like DC, Atlanta, and New York. Today, Mozilla announced that they were getting in on the fun.
This is a great opportunity not just to make a difference but to meet new friends. So if you're near one-- create an account and RSVP to an event. Plan on making a difference with your skills that weekend.
And if you're not-- now's your chance too! Start organizing and creating community in your neighborhood. Get developers together. Find them in your area. Reach out and start building a community to open up our government. Check out our organizing guide and start your own.
See you in person or virtually on December 12-13th!
Continue readingCliff Notes on Congressional Oversight
POGO, the Project On Government Oversight, recently released a guidebook for congressional staffers on how to effectively build an investigation.
Continue readingWays and Means releases tariff bill database
Last week, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade released a <a Last week, the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade released a new resource page on miscellaneous tariff bills, which are measures introduced by members of Congress that cut taxes on specific imported goods saving money for a limited number of beneficiaries (usually just one). The subcommittee made a very handy database of these bills (they call it the MTB Matrix), showing who proposed each bill, who will benefit from it, how much money it will cost taxpayers, and whether or not lobbyists pushed the tariff break ...
Continue readingAfternoon Links
1) John Wonderlich joins Sheila Campbell and Mark Drapeau in grading congressional committee web sites. 2) The Center for Public... View Article
Continue readingHouse Disbursements Now Online
As we mentioned earlier, the House of Representatives' Statement of Disbursements for Q3 of 2009 is now online, in PDF form. This was expected, as Speaker Pelosi had announced in June that this would happen later in the year.
This data is in the form of a single 3000-page PDF, or 3 broken-out 1000-page PDFs. They are scanned and OCRed copies of the original 3-volume book set that the Government Printing Office produces each year. For now, we're mirroring the original PDFs here, in case the House site goes down.
Continue readingHouse Expenditures to go Online
The US House is expected today to release the quarterly Statement of Disbursements online for the first time. Sunlight has... View Article
Continue readingOpen Data We’re Thankful For
While this is a little late-- late's better than never for giving thanks. And this year, we've got a lot to be thankful for. Open Data in Open Government is making leaps and strides. The Vice President is talking data quality in government on the Daily Show. ABC News along with Recovery.gov's controversy have brought government data into prime time. It's been a long time since transparency like this has seen this kind of attention.
At this time of Thanksgiving here in the United States I wanted to give thanks for the new and changing government datasets that we have now. Some are truly amazing.
Continue readingWhite House updates visitor logs
How Transparent is Your Turkey?
The government collects terabytes of data on food—from safety to marketing to subsidies—funded by taxpayers and consumers. But that does not mean this crucial information is available to you online and in real time so you can actually do something about it.
Continue readingState Level Data Opening Up
This is from US Deputy CIO for Open Government Beth Noveck: Inspired by the President’s call for more open government,... View Article
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