Astronauts testifying from Space

Now I can put a face and a voice to Mike Massimino’s Twitter account – Mike was twittering from Space: @Astro_Mike

“Show us a better way”, “Apps for democracy”, “Apps for America”

Two (not so new) initiatives in the area of democratizing data:

1. Show us a better way (UK)

“Show us a better way” is an initiative in the United Kingdom run by the “Power of Information Taskforce” with the mandate to:

“The Power of Information Taskforce is helping government become more open, transparent and effective through better use of published information. This competition is asking for your help in developing better ways to publish the vast swathes of non-personal information that the government collects & creates on your behalf. Public data is your data.”

2. Apps for democracy (Washington, DC)

Vivek Kundra has created a similar initiative in the city of Washington, DC called “Apps for democracy“. Raw data was provided and a call to programmers was launched in which they were asked to come up with innovative tools to use public data. In comparison to large expenses for “traditional” e-Government applications, this initiative only has $35,000 available to give to the award winners.

Here is the video with an overview.

3. Apps for America

After Apps for Democracy, Sunlight Labs has just launched the Apps for America contest using the Data.gov data.

Data.gov

Vivek Kundra – the new federal CIO – explains in this YouTube video and the accompanying Whitehouse.gov blog post how the federal government intends to publish data on Data.gov:

The general objective is to democratize government data not sensitive in nature for which citizens have already paid for with their tax dollars and use the innovativeness of the public to find ways to that will make the data more useful.