One of the big challenges still facing campaigns and civic engagement organizations is delivering basic information to voters. Television commercials and direct mail do a poor job of this: personalized contact is the future. The Democracy Dashboard will help facilitate that personal contact. The Dashboard is a personalized, trusted and reliable first-stop for American voters to get basic information about elections, their current elected representation and government, and groups, parties and activists that are active in their area. The Dashboard system would also serve as a tool for activists, groups and campaigns to reach out to and connect with new potential supporters.

The U.S. Congress produces thousands of bills every year -- so it’s difficult to figure out which are significant, and which aren’t so much. Some data is available on official government websites, but usually without real-world context for determining which bills affect the things you care about. Non-profit organizations and issue-based groups could use more helpful ways to follow their interests in Congress.

OpenCongress.org is a free and open-source public resource that combines official government data with news and blog coverage about Congress. Recently, we launched a set of new features for tracking and sharing the best info about bills, issues, and Members. But this is just the start of how social data on “My OpenCongress” can bring you closer to what’s really happening in Congress.

New data mashups on “My OpenCongress” will allow users to customize the stream of info they receive about their tracked items. In other words, it can be a lot easier to separate the signal from the noise on Capitol Hill-- to figure out what bills and votes are important or meaningful to you. Users will have access to a wider variety of content, more streams of helpfully-curated data about their interests, and more social wisdom from around the web.

Here’s an example of how these mashups would work: a user reads about a bill of interest, and adds it to her “My OpenCongress” profile as a tracked item. On her page of Tracked Bills (view sample), she would then be able to choose from a few simple options for how much info to display for that bill: every news article and blog post that mentions it, or just those rated highly from different data sources, or blends of the various options.

Adding this social data would enhance the value of peer-to-peer communication throughout the site and make "My OpenCongress" a more useful public resource (register or login). These mashups can serve as tools for greater government transparency, combating the influence of corruption, and opening up our democratic process.

Politicians raise millions of dollars to fund their campaigns, and they often pay back campaign contributors with special access and favorable laws. While many people know this, they are do not know how much our money-dominated system affects them and the issues they care about.

Mapping Money and Politics is a “mashup“ showing campaign contributions on a map. It provides unprecedented transparency, providing an informative and appealing way to compare candidates and track special-interest giving.

Watch the video tour of Mapping Money and Politics

With this groundbreaking project, anyone can create, view, and share maps of contributions from the oil industry, labor unions, or any other interest influencing government. You can compare candidates, to see who has the most local support and whose financial support comes from out-of-state. You can even display income, ethnic, and other demographic information along with campaign contributions, to better understand what neighborhoods and populations have a greater or lesser stake in our democracy.

Mapping Money and Politics lets you zoom from a map of the whole U.S. down to your local neighborhood. We aim to illuminate the connection between special-interest campaign dollars and your own state, town, and neighborhood.

Looking at the country through the lens of campaign contributions helps you see the distorted terrain our legislators work in. It’s no wonder they can’t take straight action on the serious problems facing our country.

Mapping Money and Politics is a visual mash-up--it’s better to see it than read about it. Watch our 3-minute project tour now.