Tools for transparency

Along side the Minnesota Civic Hackathon on Dec. 12, the Other Future of News event will be going all day.

Steven Clift will be sharing five minutes with this online media-oriented gathering on "tools for transparency." He has a 60 slide presentation on How the Internet Can Support Government Transparency and Citizen Engagement Presentation from last year available as well. The plan is to present great examples of newer online tools useful in reporting tied to government transparency and political engagement as well as notable media and other online efforts using raw government data in interesting ways. We are interested in local, state, and some national examples. Operational sites only.

Transparency Tools for Reporting

Example sites that one might want everywhere. Note the emerging trend of online services that generate new information/shared experiences that promotes government accountability, transparency, better service, etc.

• Little Sis - Profiling and linking the powerful
• NYC Uncivilservants - Reporting city parking permit abuses
• WhatDoTheyKnow - Independent UK site from mySociety.org for the public to submit Freedom of Information requests and share the responses
• Responsiveness of UK MPs to letters sent via WriteToThem.com
• OpenlyLocal.com - Opens up (UK) Local Governmnet data and makes it available online, and as data feeds
• Fixit sites: SeeClickFix (US) allows people to create watch areas, FixMyStreet (UK) sends govs queries, Canada
• Estonia's Document Register - Also note the X-Road system which gives the public secure access to the private government data held about them.
• Tom Steinberg's Blog Post on Nine Flavors of Transparency Sites.
• Seoul's Open System
• Florida school boards - Example site for tracking meetings
• SubsidyScope - Tracking Federal subsidies in the economy
• Ushahidi - Crowd-sourcing crisis information, based in Kenya
• [1] - Reports votes cast by institutional investors (mutual funds, public pension funds) at annual meetings of public companies (and submitted in SEC filings); users can view voting profiles that compare institutions' voting patterns or see how funds voted on individual proposals.
• [2] The Sunlight Foundation has a number of tools for reporters here.
• GovMapper - Government services for mapping your public, city, state, or municipal data for your local citizens.

Government Data Reused - Local Examples

• Everyblock - Over a dozen cities with a dozen local government databases (obtained and scraped) displayed on maps
• ThisWeKnow - Minneapolis - Sourced from Data.Gov
• Emerging Local Government Data Catalogs - Contest - Example Reuses
  • DC - Apps contest: Social311 iPhone/Facebook - VacantDC
  • NYC Data Mine - Apps contest happening now - Entrants
  • San Francisco - Apps Showcase - Crimespotting
  • Toronto - Community "demand" expression site - Google Groups hosted by government to support initiative
• Itasca County MN Government Meetings - A meta-site with on-demand public meeting video from over a dozen local government jurisdictions in and around Grand Rapids, MN
• Your Mapper - Interactive maps from city sources bringing your community high quality, local data.

Government Data Reused - State Examples

• Utah's Right to Know - A joint venture of The Salt Lake Tribune, Utah's largest newspaper, and MediaOne of Utah, the Tribune's advertising and production company
• Minneapolis StarTribune InfoCenter - Numerous examples of government data reuse

Related: Minnesota public data sets

Government Data Reused - National Examples

• Data.gov - How will the media use this? Here are the Apps for America contest winners:
  • DataMasher
  • GovPulse
  • ThisWeKnow
• Sunlight Foundation Tools - Dozens of nationally-oriented tools they host or fund including OpenCongress
• TheyWorkForYou.com - UK parliamentary info site from mySociety. Note their personalized e-alerts and notable MP scorecard of sorts. Their open source code is spreading to places like Australia, etc.
• TheyWorkForYou.co.nz - NZ parliamentary info site.

Related: Sunlight Foundation's meta-list of the Third party websites using government data

Submitted Sites To Review

• R8YourPolitician(UK, USA coming soon) - Rate Your Politician is a newly established reputation based E-Democracy rating platform for the public to rate and review Politicians. Increasing engagement between the public and politicians, real time rating and reviews of Politicians engagement with the community helping create a more transparent and accountable democratic system that engages everyone. Grass roots, bottom up, citizen reporting.