2010 Gov 2.0 Year in Review

from O'Reilly Radar:

While the progress of the White House Open Government Directive at federal agencies is important, as is action in Congress, there's a long road yet ahead in the United States and abroad. As John Wonderlich pointed out in his own look at 2010:

Obama’s Open Government Directive is at a crossroads (like other similar policies), and the changing majority in the House brings new opportunities for change (a 72 Hour Rule!), just as the outgoing majority brought their own new opportunities for transparency.

We're still very much in open government's beta period. Some efforts, like the State Department's Text Haiti program for the Red Cross or the "do-it-ourselves" platforms from groups like CrisisCommons, made a difference. Other efforts, partially represented by many open government plans in the throes of implementation, won't mature for months to come.

Read the rest here.

Round-up of the Sunlight Foundation's TransparencyCamp

The second annual TransparencyCamp highlighted several hot ways to mine government data. Check out these some of the websites discussed at the "unconference" for techie types and activists:

• OpenCongress.org - the group tries to bring transparency to Capitol Hill
• LittleSis.org - the answer to Big Brother, attempts to show ties between business and politics by serving as an "involuntary Facebook" where the public can post information
• TheVoterGuideorg - builds "hyperlocal" online election guides
• Data.gov and Recovery.gov - the sites try to make federal data about the Recovery Act accessible

Read more about the event here.

Very cool...

The Sunlight Foundation continues to push the envelope in thinking up new ways to harness the Internet for the public good. Their latest tool: Public Markup.

After preparing and drafting a comprehensive piece of legislation, Sunlight decided that public input and scrutiny would refine the bill and improve its chances of garnering lawmakers' support. Rather than immediately looking for legislators who might sponsor the bill, Sunlight, therefore, created PublicMarkup.org as a place to post the bill, and to allow you to comment on and suggest edits to the substance of the legislation.

This project is not intended to be the ultimate technical solution to the challenge of drafting legislation online, but an experiment in online collaboration. By collecting legislation, summaries, resources and commentary in a single linkable location, PublicMarkup.org provides a simple, blog-like framework for soliciting feedback on this legislation.

In addition to drawing on bills that have already been introduced, several provisions of the Transparency in Government Act of 2008 are the result of the collaborative work of the Open House Project.