In criss crossing the country talking with government technologists and business managers, I have been highlighting the experiment in co-creation of useful things by the District of Columbia. You will remember earlier posts about the all-skate data mashup that was Apps for Democracy. After 30 days of frenetic activity, the contest netted 47 new applications submitted by what might be best called "citizen developers," second cousins to citizen journalists (bloggers) who work in binary code rather than words.
These citizen developers are in growing demand. In fact, the federal government's launch of Data.gov this week came with a non-profit collaborative chaser. Nisha Thompson, Organizer and Outreach Coordinator with the Sunlight Foundation, dropped me a note earlier today:
As it happens, Apps for America has become a regular part of our conversations out on the road but had not made it to a blog entry yet -- at least until now. The Data.gov challenge comes with over $20,000 in prize money -- it is what competition in the phrase friendly competition. The coding commences immediately with the announcement of winners expected at the end of summer.
For its part, Apps for Democracy is back with what it is calling the Community Edition. The sequel adds the dimension of community-based requirements definition -- that is, asking the people of DC what they would like -- during May, followed by a month of application development during June. Not insignificantly, they have found another $35,000 in prize money. There is even a code jam on June 6-7. Details are available on its website.
The similarly named initiatives do a number of things that are important. It is a real world test for the open source community and an opportunity for it to prove its worth in making government more transparent and the data it holds more useful. It is also a test for governments to explore the possibility of engaging citizens where they naturally congregate -- on social networks and around the small glowing screens of their iPhones.
As the open government or transparency movement shifts from the historic focus on public records to data, these feed-driven apps begin to show us what can happen when public data are actually public.
These citizen developers are in growing demand. In fact, the federal government's launch of Data.gov this week came with a non-profit collaborative chaser. Nisha Thompson, Organizer and Outreach Coordinator with the Sunlight Foundation, dropped me a note earlier today:
You have been blogging about Apps for Democracy so I wanted to let you
know about the Sunlight Foundation's new contest Apps for America: The
Data.gov Challenge. As you might know Data.gov was launched today. To
take advantage of the new information available in friendly formats we
wanted to challenge developers to make creative applications.
You can see the contest information here:
http://sunlightlabs.com/contests/appsforamerica2/.
This is a wonderful, one-time opportunity to show the administration
the good that follows when they make information free. So we need to
seize it. And everyone's help in getting the word out is key. At the
end of the day, the more great entries the Apps for America contest
receives, the more likely government is to release more data - and the
more data government releases the more transparent, accountable, and
efficient it can be.
As it happens, Apps for America has become a regular part of our conversations out on the road but had not made it to a blog entry yet -- at least until now. The Data.gov challenge comes with over $20,000 in prize money -- it is what competition in the phrase friendly competition. The coding commences immediately with the announcement of winners expected at the end of summer.
For its part, Apps for Democracy is back with what it is calling the Community Edition. The sequel adds the dimension of community-based requirements definition -- that is, asking the people of DC what they would like -- during May, followed by a month of application development during June. Not insignificantly, they have found another $35,000 in prize money. There is even a code jam on June 6-7. Details are available on its website.
The similarly named initiatives do a number of things that are important. It is a real world test for the open source community and an opportunity for it to prove its worth in making government more transparent and the data it holds more useful. It is also a test for governments to explore the possibility of engaging citizens where they naturally congregate -- on social networks and around the small glowing screens of their iPhones.
As the open government or transparency movement shifts from the historic focus on public records to data, these feed-driven apps begin to show us what can happen when public data are actually public.
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