Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Pam Selle is a News Apps Developer and Community Evangelist for AxisPhilly, a nonprofit investigative news organization that prioritizes work in the public interest. She is a resident of Philadelphia, speaks at national and regional technical events, and blogs at thewebivore.com. Follow her at @pamasaur.
Philadelphia is known as a leader in the open government movement – the city lays claim to the second Chief Data Officer in the country (Sunlight OpenGov Champion Mark Headd), is a two-time Code for America host city, is home to an active Code for America Brigade and has social good hackathons at least every month, sometimes every week. There’s a strong interest in creating applications to inform and empower citizens with apps such as Lobbying.ph, PhillySNAP and Baldwin using public data for their respective purposes.
In February, the city released the AVI calculator, an online app that helps residents determine real estate taxes under a new policy that went into effect. The city also made the data powering the calculator available as an API. This allowed AxisPhilly, an independent, nonprofit news organization, use the AVI calculator API and transform it from just informational to a discussion tool.
The website appsforphilly.org, which lists open source projects in Philadelphia, lists these two projects side by side. So how did a city government and a news organization end up next to each other on this list of open source projects? What’s the story behind Philadelphia making a web app and releasing the data to enable tools like AxisPhilly’s? For one, both projects are open source and allow for code-sharing. You can access the code for both the City of Philadelphia’s AVI project and AxisPhilly’s map project template on GitHub. AxisPhilly’s project also leverages the property parcels open data set.
OpenGov Voices: Come to CityCamp Kansas City
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight
Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Jase Wilson is Co-founder & CEO at Neighbor.ly -- a civic crowd funding platform.
On April 20, CityCamp returns to Kansas City for its second year. Based on the popular series created by Code for America alumnus Kevin Curry and inspired by the Sunlight Foundation’s own TransparencyCamp, CityCampKC is a day long unconference at the nexus of community, government and technology in Kansas City.
Last year’s event focused on open source and open data, helping to drive communication and innovation within local government in the Kansas City region. Things will be a bit different than last year, but trust us, that’s a good thing! Instead of a predefined speaker list, sessions will be programmed by attendees and will emphasize the increasing diversity in government, government technology and civic engagement. Specifically, trying to balance gender, race and age cohorts involved in the conversations that shape the city. This year, discussion topics will be chosen the morning of the event and can be suggested by anyone!
Passionate about something in the KC community? Come share it and inspire others to get excited too!
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Searching for Snowballs in Silicon Valley
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Seamus Kraft is the Executive Director at OpenGov Foundation -- an organization dedicated to developing and deploying technologies that support every citizen's ability to participate in their government and hold it accountable. You can reach him at @seamuskraft
The best technology is insidiously useful. It does not force better ways of doing business. It suggests them, extending the familiar and comfortable without the user realizing she has gone farther, faster, smoother. Like the perfect note in a song, you cannot imagine it not being there.
But technology is only a tool. If it helps you do your job or live your life more efficiently and effectively, buy it. If it makes life harder, slower or more costly, don’t buy it. Plain and simple. Especially in the United States Congress, where money, time and tech are scarcer than snowballs in Silicon Valley.
The purpose of Congress is to make policy on behalf of taxpayers. Public officials perform very specific and specialized tasks to fulfill that purpose. Citizens keep an eye on them and hold them accountable. Can technology help these users — inside and outside of government — collaborate to do their jobs better? Project Madison, launched by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), was our first attempt at answering in the affirmative.
Recap: Open Data Day Boston
This post was written by Shauna Gordon-McKeon co-organizer of the Open Government Boston group. On February 23, Sunlight Boston together... View Article
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Book preview: The Foundation for an Open Source City
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the guest blog.
Jason Hibbets is the project manager at Red Hat and lead administrator for opensource.com. He has been applying open
source principles in neighborhood organizations in Raleigh, NC for several years, highlighting the importance of transparency, collaboration, and community building. Follow the rest of his thoughts at @jhibbets.
My latest writing project has been quite challenging. At the beginning of 2013, I wrapped up the first draft of a book I’m writing about the open government movement in Raleigh, North Carolina. The City of Raleigh has made a lot of progress over the last two years, which is part of the inspiration for collecting Raleigh’s story. The movement towards a more open and transparent government started to accelerate after the city council unanimously passed an open government policy.
Raleigh is on the verge of defining their open data policy and a draft of their open data standards is currently posted on Open Raleigh. From my conversations with Jason Hare, the Open Data Program Manager for the City of Raleigh, the city is about to strategically release a bunch of open data. All this is in preparation for an upcoming Triangle Datapalooza, a region-wide event rumored for later this spring that aims to excite the entrepreneurial community about open data and discover new opportunities.
This is all very exciting for civic geeks and hackers in the Triangle area. I’m excited because I saw an opportunity to collect Raleigh’s open government and open data story. I’m in the final stages of finishing the book. The first round of editing is complete and my editors and I are finalizing the latest changes. I plan to self-publish the book (paperback and eBook), and I’m considering starting an IndieGoGo campaign to help crowdfund the initial round of publishing. I am also crowdsourcing ideas for the book cover on my personal blog.
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Coming to a City Near You: Open Data Day
The third annual International Open Data Hackathon is this Saturday, and it’s an exciting opportunity to explore what’s possible with... View Article
Continue readingOpenGov Champions: Shea Frederick, Baltimore, MD
Meet Shea Frederick, our latest OpenGov Champion. Last September, Sunlight’s video team — myself and Associate Video Producer Solay Howell... View Article
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Innovative Investigations — How a Watchdog Group Uses the FOIA Process to Push the Limits of Transparency
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the guest blogger and those providing comments are theirs alone and do not reflect the opinions of the Sunlight Foundation or any employee thereof. Sunlight Foundation is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information within the 
guest blog.
Mary Beth Hutchins is the Communications Director at Cause of Action. Prior to joining Cause of Action, Hutchins spent several years at an Alexandria, VA-based public relations firm where she managed press outreach for a number of national non-profit groups.
The need for government transparency has never been greater than it is right now and at Cause of Action, we’re working to make sure it happens.
As a nonprofit government accountability organization, Cause of Action works to expose cronyism, waste, fraud and mismanagement in the federal government through a combination of investigations, education and litigation.
With our staff of investigators, lawyers and communications professionals committed to government transparency, Cause of Action frequently uses Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to shed light on otherwise opaque facets of the Federal Government.
Open States: Find and Follow Your State Capitol
After more than four years of work from volunteers and a full-time team here at Sunlight we're immensely proud to launch the full Open States site with searchable legislative data for all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico.
Continue readingLearning why transparency matters: a new Sunlight Foundation research project
We have so far been fortunate that most people intuitively grasp the value of technology-driven openness and transparency, and as a result, an impressive range of NGOs and governments around the world are building on the basic understanding that “Sunlight is the best disinfectant” (Justice Brandeis’ aphorism that gave the Sunlight Foundation its name). For example, as of this writing, 58 countries have signed onto the Open Government Partnership. But the quick-to-grasp nature of transparency’s potential has its dangers: 1) that we cease asking questions about it because it has become an article of faith; and 2) that, as strong advocates for the cause, we begin to oversell its potential (and thus undermine its genuine contributions). This year, we are kicking off an attempt to both clarify and test our understandings of what transparency can do. Thanks to support from Google.org, we at Sunlight are embarking on a research project to evaluate the impacts of technology-driven transparency policies around the world. We plan to conduct a series of case studies.
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