Sunlight Foundation seeks techies to make government more transparent
The Sunlight Foundation’s chief, Ellen Miller, took the stage at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today to ask technical people to help with the nonprofit’s goal of making government more transparent and open.
Founded a couple of years ago, the non-profit group is trying to make public information available online in as short a time as possible. “[Data that is] six months old is useful to the academics,” Miller said in conversation with O’Reilly Media chief Tim O’Reilly. “We want to put this information in the hands of citizens.”
One of Sunlight’s goals is to provide ways to visualize data so that it’s easy, for instance, to see where federal earmark funding is being allocated.
While Sunlight is nonpartisan, its goals fit with President Obama’s pledge to make government more transparent. Miller said government officials have been very responsive to the Sunlight’s work and are responding within hours of when the foundation sets up new web sites. Sunlight-backed sites include OpenCongress.org, Congresspedia.org, FedSpending.org, OpenSecrets.org, EarmarkWatch.org and LOUISdb.org.
The foundation has established Sunlight Labs to enlist the help of web developers and other technical people. It’s also staging a “Hackathon” at the Web 2.0 Expo to enlist programmer help on state government projects underway around the country. Miller said the foundation wants to create a “data commons,” where you can combine data from state and federal campaign finance contribution data.
“It’s the revenge of the nerds,” she said. “You’re seeing this bubble up inside government and outside government to show government what can be done.”
Sunlight still has a long way to go. Miller said she had heard unconfirmed reports that the Obama administration’s Recovery.gov web site has cost $86 million to build — a figure she said was astounding and way too high.
The foundation recently received a $4 million grant from the Omidyar Network, a foundation created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Next Story: Public market buys ChangYou’s virtual goods model, stock up after IPO
Previous Story: Direct2Silicon nabs $9M to lower cost of chip production
About the Author, Dean Takahashi
Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.
-
Richard Ault