Take Away
Luigi showed how government has lots of useful data but few tools to make sense of the data. Here's where software developers can make a contribution: to build free tools to make this data more accessible. He talked about the various opportunities and why accomplishing them would make a real difference.
Introduction
Luigi Montanez
luigi@sunlightfoundation.com
@LuigiMontanez
Purpose: get government to open up its data and provide software tools to comprehend it.
Over a thousand people in their effort.
16-paid staff.
"D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people."
Guiding principles:
- Electoral Politics no
- Governance yes
- Open source
Civic Side Projects
Purposes/Challenges
- Challenging entrenched bureacracies
- Open source + Open data = better Government
- Government opens data; they write apps aeround it.
- Government as a wholesaler, not retailer.
Sunlight Labs API
- Bio and contact info for elective office holders.
OpenSecrets.org
- Contributions
- Example: how much health insurance money has been spent politically and how.
GovTrack.us - Bills and Vote Records
MAPLight.org - Vote Influence
- How representative voted correlated w/ donations.
Code for America
- Will choose 5 cities
- 5 developers will be supplied to each of those cities.
- Modeled after Teach for America program.
Getting Involved.
- groups.google.com/group/sunlightlabs
- #transparency on Freenode
- github didn't get actual repository
Benefits:
- Enhance your skillset
- Low risk, high reward
- Another testing framework? Really?
- Local/state govts. an untapped market
- Solve a hard problem.
TED Talk
- David Cameron: in a Ted talk "The next age of government"
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