Blog - Articles Tagged 'PPF'

As 2011 ends, the first session of the 112th U.S. Congress stumbles to a bad-faith curtain. The third branch of federal government in our representative democracy, Congress is down to a new record-low 11% approval rating, as per Gallup News this week. "This earns Congress a 17% yearly average for 2011, the lowest annual congressional approval rating in Gallup history," they report. USA #1 - we've hit a new bottom! These are the despised, fallible elected officials who write legislation shaping our laws, public policy priorities, & federal budget.

I'm pleased to have been asked to contribute a blog post on our work with OpenGovernment.org to VoxPopuLII, a legal research blog. Published today. Topics include the following: visceral contemporary public distrust of government; improved policy outcomes through deliberative democracy; mitigating systemic corruption through radical transparency; how researchers can use OpenGovernment to find & cite official bill text & legislative actions; OG's #opengov data partners & NGO allies; and our vision of making civic engagement as easy as using your favorite social networking service. Hope you'll read the post, click through for more info about it and a preview of what I think is its most share-able content.

We're very excited to announce that OpenGovernment was selected to be one of 8 finalists in the News category at South by Southwest Interactive's Accelerator contest, March 14-16th in the gem-of-a-town, Austin, TX. Looking forward to meeting & trading ideas w/ the other finalists & attending SxSW in general. We're honored to have been chosen and excited to show our work.

Read the full post at the OG Blog. We'll represent for radical transparency & comprehensive reform. Holler at us to say hi.

Yesterday's launch of OpenGovernment received a nice wave of reactions on the leading micro-blogging service. To highlight a few: Alex Howard of O'Reilly Radar (the wide-ranging @digiphile) placed it in the #opengov landscape (previously, as a civic org. to watch); Nick Judd of TechPresident held a nifty interview; and AFSCME's info center highlighted it as a new tool for their members.

Don't miss the blog post announcement from Ellen Miller, the Executive Director of our partners, the Sunlight Foundation; and another by Tom Lee, the Director of Sunlight Labs. (Image at right: a roll call visualization of a Louisiana bill, made uniquely user-friendly on OG.)

It's not too early to point out that the OpenGovernment web application is already generating unique info, in the form of the most-viewed bills & members (so far)... continue reading the full post (it gets pretty vocal) & check out more (and bigger) screenshots over at the new OpenGovernment Blog.