Civic Engagement
Democracy Dashboard
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.
Basic government information: lists of elected representatives, geographic information like precinct details, vote history and voter registration data, local party information, budgets, campaign contribution databases. Much of this data is already being published, some of it with APIs. A structured, public database such as Metaweb's Freebase would make an ideal datastore for the publicly available data this application would require.
I have been the director of a California voter file database project for two years, and an almost full-time volunteer activist for four years before that. (and was a software engineer & entrepreneur for ten years before that) My focus as an activist has been on field organizing and participatory democracy.
I'm primarily looking for seed funding to finish writing a specification of and then building out a demo.
There are dozens, but here are a few for starters:
OpenCongress.org :: Track Congress with Social Data
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.
“My OpenCongress†already offers ways to track and comment on any bill, issue, or Member of Congress, as well as social networking and more. These changes will create new ways for users to customize the stream of updates they view and share on their profiles.
First, Open Calais makes it possible to access rich metadata about tracked items. For example, if a user is tracking a Senator, data from the Open Calais API can inform you by automatically displaying associated organizations, facts, and events – “This Senator was appointed the Chairman of this committee on this date, click here to view more connectionsâ€.
Second, Daylife makes it possible to access professionally-moderated news coverage of tracked items. For the example of a tracked Senator, the Daylife API can suggest related stories, articles, images, and topics – “Daylife Editors selected four news articles about this Senator in the past month, click here to view themâ€. Instead of following every news mention of a bill or issue (higher-volume), users could choose to receive only featured content (lower-volume).
Our open-source development team welcomes input on these two API's, especially from their programmers, and suggestions on other data sources to consider. (Obviously, there are lots of viable options out there.)
OpenCongress is a joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation. OpenCongress is used every day by individuals and organizations as a one-of-a-kind resource that aggregates official goverment data alongside useful social wisdom. Already in the past two months, thousands of people have created "My OpenCongress" profiles to engage with the bills, issues, and Members of Congress they care about -- read more ways to use these new features.
OpenCongress has been covered widely: political blogs such as TalkingPointsMemo and Instapundit; technology blogs such as Mashable and SmartMobs; cultural blogs such as BoingBoing and Metafilter; public media such as “On The Media†and “FutureTenseâ€; and many more.
First, we seek to add programmers to our open-source development team who have experience with API’s and adding other external data (XML, semantic tags, etc.) into Rails code. Of course, the collaborative development process would start with a survey of targeted API’s and their data offerings.
Second, we seek to parnter with web designers to create a user-friendly interface for the mashups. Designers would work on “My OpenCongress†profile pages to illustrate options of the various types of content offered by each source. For example, one goal is for users to be able to see responsive visualizations (e.g., an EKG) of their settings (e.g., a higher- or lower-volume of updates).
Finally, we seek the assistance of experienced database administrators to optimize our sizable database (currently it's in postgres) and ensure zippy site performance.
MAPLight.org: Mapping Money and Politics
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.
You can choose from a range of current issues, legislators and interest groups. You can compare them at the national, state, or local level, across time or against each other.
You can interact with campaign contributions to the politicians who represent you in Congress and, eventually, in your state and for your town. Does your elected official represent your interests? Our maps showing bases of support--both in your area and outside of it--help answer that question.
MAPLight.org pioneered the combination of campaign dollars and politicians' votes when we launched our U.S. Congress site in May 2007. Our site, a large-scale mashup, reveals patterns of money and influence in unprecedented ways. For an overview, view our 6-minute Video Tour.
Our work has been featured by the New York Times, The Nation, Wired, and many others. We are the winners of the inaugural NetSquared Innovation Award and the prestigous U.N.-affiliated World Summit Award.
We need:
- Technical specialists in the current best practices of displaying geographic data on the web
- Geographic information system (GIS) software
- Academic researchers specializing in U.S. Census demographic data
- Additional funding to complete and launch the project
Read about our data sources.
MAPLight.org also publishes widgets tracking funds raised by all candidates for President and U.S. Congress, plus an API that lets programmers include candidates' fundraising data on their own websites.
