Publishing open data has many practical and normative implications which can be noted and explored in the text of the open data policy. We've rounded up some of the interesting reasons policymakers in cities across the country have pursued these policies. Check them out in our #opendata policy postcards.
Tools for Transparency: A Look at #TCamp11
It’s almost been a week since the first day of TransparencyCamp and I want to take a look at some... View Article
Continue readingPhotos from TransparencyCamp 2011
We're still recovering from all the excitement and lessons of the weekend's successful TransparencyCamp and would love to share some favorites photos we found on the event's flickr pool - please add yours if you attended!
Continue readingTools for Transparency: Tell Your Story with Storify
[View the story “Tell Your Story with Storify” on Storify]
Continue readingTools for Transparency: GovSM
For the next month, we’ll be hosting special guest bloggers for our Tools for Transparency series. Today we introduce Josh Shpayher, founder of GovSM.com, a wiki website that keeps track of all the social media accounts of government, from congressional representatives to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation. GovSM believes that having a comprehensive catalogue of all the governmental use of social media will help government and the open gov community learn more about and improve their own social media practices to benefit their constituencies. By now, we’ve all heard about the social media wave and most of us have heard about Gov2.0 and governmental use (or their feeble attempts to use) social media. Though there have been many discussions amongst “good gov” people about government officials’ best practices for using social media, what has been lacking is a clearly defined method of determining how a government office or official can use social media to benefit their constituents. If a system of rating social media use can be widely circulated (similar to Golden Mouse rankings of congressional websites), I believe that the quality of government use of social media will rise dramatically.
Continue readingThe Feds and Social Media II
Here’s an exciting development! Last week, I blogged about an encouraging report by Doug Belzer at Federal Computer Week, where... View Article
Continue readingTransparencyCamp Lives On
TransparencyCamp, the unconference event that iStrategyLabs and Sunlight co-sponsored two weekends ago, was a huge success. We made a highlight... View Article
Continue readingSenate Changes Franking Rules for Web Sites
Last year, the Open House Project proposed the loosening of rules governing what lawmakers can post to their official web... View Article
Continue readingLibrary of Congress on Flickr
You should proceed as soon as possible to check out the Library of Congress's page on flickr, as announced this morning.
It's an awesome collection of about 3,000 images, of the quality you'd expect from the world's largest library. It's wonderful to see them available the same way we expect to share images with each other, sort of making history less of something living in a museum, and more of something available, relevant, and even sorted through tags.
If you're like me, you're likely to do nothing else for the next hour or two...
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