BillTrack50 provides convenient and user-friendly 50-state legislative data to both citizens and those with a professional interest.
NationBuilder brings community software to government
Vice President of Community Adriel Hampton pitches NationBuilder Government, a unified web, communications and CRM database solution.
GovFresh Q&A: Neighbor.ly
Neighbor.ly is a civic crowdfunding platform for U.S. cities and civic-minded organizations.
Raise Your Voice wants to help citizens better engage with legislators
Raise Your Voice founder Dan Busse shares how his new civic venture wants to change the way citizens and legislators engage with one another.
Give us the 140-character elevator pitch.
We are a tool, placed in online news and blogs, that promotes open dialogue between citizens and legislators in response to current issues.
What problem does Raise Your Voice solve for government?
By enabling average people to quickly and easily voice their opinions to their elected officials – from the news, when they’re most inspired – officials get a larger sampling and a better, unfiltered understanding of how their constituents feel.
What’s the story behind starting Raise Your Voice?
I conceived Raise Your Voice during the debates on health care reform. As an Emergency Physician, I grew increasingly frustrated watching the town hall meetings, well meaning attempts at open dialogue, were hijacked by special interests and degenerated into shouting matches. It became clear to me that there were too many layers – pundits, interest groups, and media, between people and their elected officials, so I designed Raise Your Voice to give the average citizen direct and easy access. I placed it in online news, because that’s where people are most inspired to act. We got some small funding and launched in November 2011.
What are its key features?
Our main attribute is that, in being placed in online news and blogs, we make ourselves available when people are the most inspired about current issues (who hasn’t yelled at the news?).
Other key features include:
- an address book that includes federal, state, local, and county officials (since all politics is local)
- a “widget configurator” that allows people to generate and download the javascript code to place our button on their sites
- the ability to share their communications throughout their social networks
- we are working on integrating an advocacy platform, so people writing about an issue can see other groups working in their area (i.e. I write about logging and the spotted owl then see links to the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society sites)
- we have a multitude of features we are working on to make interaction easier; all aimed at opening up government.
What are the costs, pricing plans?
We are free.
How can those interested connect with you?
CivicSponsor helps citizens crowdfund their public spaces
CivicSponsor wants to disrupt the traditional way we fund our public spaces. Here, its three co-founders outline how their new venture aims to help citizens and public servants think outside the taxpayer box.
For GovHub, all politics is personal
When no one in Nick Gaines’ UC Berkeley freshman political science class could answer the question “Who is your state senator?,” he tuned in, dropped out and started GovHub with co-founder Adam Becker.
Voter ID and Civic Innovation
Since 2008, there has been a wave of voting law changes that impose barriers to the ballot box. Georgia Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of “Bloody Sunday,” called the new laws “the most concerted effort to restrict the right to vote since before the Voting Rights Act.”
The right to vote is being chiseled away by voter ID laws that require voters to show government-issued photo ID in order to vote.
In December, the Department of Justice blocked South Carolina’s voter ID law on the grounds it would make it harder for minorities to vote in violation of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Mississippi and Texas voting ID laws also must be pre-cleared but Texas is not waiting. The Lone Star State filed a federal lawsuit in an effort to speed up a decision.
Strict photo ID requirements will be in place in at least five states – Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin — In November. With Election Day less than nine months away, voters without an official photo ID cannot wait for the challenges to play out at the Justice Department and in the courts.
In Wisconsin, for instance, voters must navigate “The 4 Proofs.”
I am a founding member of the Election Protection Coalition. Still, looking at the infographic makes my head hurt. More worrisome, it discourages voters from completing the application process. So I presented the problem of TMI (read: disenfranchisement by design) at Random Hacks of Kindness and the Hackathon for Social Good. Citizen programmers developed solutions to quickly provide voters with information on how to get a voter ID.
During Social Week Washington, DC, I gave a demo of the Cost of Freedom web-based app developed by Kin Lane, API Evangelist for CityGrid.
Users in Wisconsin can forget about “The 4 Proofs.” Instead, in four clicks or less, they will be able to access information about the state’s voter ID requirements, how to obtain a certified copy of their birth certificate (the document that’s typically produced to establish one’s identity), and the location, hours and directions to the Office of Vital Records using public transit.
I also gave a live demo of the Cost of Freedom text-based app developed by Jack Aboutboul, Twilio’s API Evangelist. Twilio is making an in-contribution of text message services to promote voter education.
To commemorate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we plan to launch the Cost of Freedom App on April 4, 2012.
I will post regular updates about the Cost of Freedom Project and other initiatives that are using civic innovation to protect the right to vote. The conversation about voter ID also gives us an opportunity to raise awareness about disruptive technologies in the public sector beyond election administration.
For more information, please visit us at Facebook.com/CostofFreedom. You can sign up to receive notice when the Cost of Freedom App is launched. Continue reading
Open Town Hall aims to keep online public forums civil
In 2007, Robert Vogel and Mike Alvarez Cohen started Peak Democracy to “build public trust in government through online public comment forums that are civil yet meet government freedom-of-speech and transparency laws.”
GSA launches USA.gov re-design
The General Services Administration has launched a re-design of USA.gov that includes easier access to mobile applications, government performance dashboards, citizen engagement contests and a simpler navigation structure. USA.gov is the U.S. government’s official information and services site. More on the new design from GSA.
Spigit launches CitizenSpigit, government crowdsourcing, engagement platform
Idea management software developer Spigit announced the launch of CitizenSpigit, ‘a platform that enables government agencies to engage citizens and employees to improve efficiency and operations, as well as to generate actionable ideas.’ The City of Manor, Texas, is the first municipality to deploy the platform, which it uses to power Manor Labs.
FedSpace answers, more questions, recommendations
The General Services Administration recently announced it will create FedSpace, a ‘new social intranet for federal employees and contractors.’ The project will be managed by the agency’s Office of Citizen Services and the initial version is expected to launch late summer.
PageFreezer: Flash frozen government websites
Government websites, in accordance with the Public Records Law, are considered an official government publication. Information on these sites influences decisions of citizens and businesses. Governments can be held accountable for the information they publish on the web. Tracking changes on Websites with PageFreezer offers governments trusted, non-refutable evidence in case of liability claims.
You go gURL: GSA turns on URL shortener Go.USA.gov
GSA announced it has officially opened up its URL shortener Go.USA.gov to anyone with a .mil, .gov, .fed.us or .si.edu email address. The site lets users create trustworthy short .gov URLs on Twitter and other online services with character restrictions and was developed by the team behind USA.gov along with members of the Drupal community.
Meet the hackers behind OpenGov Tracker
The federal government may have closed during #snowmageddon 2010, but Jessy Cowan-Sharp and Robbie Schingler didn’t. They created OpenGov Tracker, a Website that tracks citizen ideas for federal agencies related to the Open Government Directive.
Cowan-Sharp shares what inspired them and how they did it.
Get the 311 with SeeClickFix
SeeClickFix lets citizens report public works issues such as potholes, graffiti, and wayward trash directly from their iPhones, the SeeClickFix Website or other sites using its embeddable widget. Citizens can create watch lists to follow what’s being reported in a particular area, comment and vote up or down other issue reports and get ‘Civic Points’ for their participation. Governments can use the service as a 311 work order management system and media outlets can integrate the reporting widget and map into their Websites for enhanced reader interaction.