Baton Rouge wants to make sure residents know about new open datasets as soon as they’re available. Leaders see this as a way to keep residents in the know about new resources, as well as an important part of how governments can and should be transparent in a digital era. A new website brings together all this work in one place.
Continue readingOpenGov Voices: Why data journalism tries, and fails, to go global
Data journalists have a tremendous role to play in being a public-service watchdog around the world. How to make that happen effectively is still something we're trying to figure out.
Continue readingDatathons and open data portals: Virginia’s new civic tech initiatives
Virginia is getting its citizens involved with opengov in multiple ways, including the 2015 Datathon Challenge and a new open data portal in Richmond.
Continue readingA permanent hacker space in the Brazilian Congress
The Brazilian Congress just opened a physical hacker space - open to the public, and right inside the Congress' own building!
Continue readingUnveiling Sunlight Open Gov Events
If you have been to any of our TransparencyCamp unconferences, the popular Labs Open House or happy hour then you know that we organize great events. And just as much as you support our events, we equally enjoy supporting other events -- especially when they involve bringing together a bunch of geeks like us who love cracking open code and making our government more transparent and open.
In that light, we are casting the net further by reviving our events platform to get you talking about your own event and assist you with sponsorship needs. For an idea about the kind of events that we are looking to engage in, here are a few that we have been a part of, so far:
Types of events we consider for sponsorship:
- Hackathons
- Tech Meetups
- Tech Bar Camps
- Datafests
- CityCamps
- Small tech conferences
- Tech Happy hours
Photos credit: Paul Schreiber, Howard Dy, dtraleigh.
Continue readingSunlight @ PyCon 2011
Two years ago we held an Open Government Sprint at PyCon 2009. We had never hosted an event like that before, and had no idea what to expect. To our amazement we ended up with one of the largest groups of any of the sprint projects, completely filling our room for the first few days. Approximately 30 people attended and kicked off what has now become the Open State Project.
Next week, we'll be heading to PyCon and hosting an Open Government Hackathon for the third year in a row. The primary focus will again be the Open State Project but our space is open to everyone interested in government data. If you have a project you'd like to hack on let us know and I'll be sure to mention your project when I plug the sprint. If you aren't attending PyCon but happen to be near Atlanta you're welcome to join too, the Hackathon is free and open to the public (March 14th-16th @ the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta).
Additionally, I'm going to be presenting a poster on the technical aspects of the Open State Project on Sunday. I'll be around to talk about the project itself but also web scraping and opening government data in general, so if you're at PyCon stop by during the poster session Sunday morning and say hi.
Continue reading
59063
