http://blog.google.org/2013/01/promoting-civic-innovation-through.html
http://www.mysociety.org/2013/01/16/a-big-thankyou-to-google-org-fabulous-funding-news/
http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2013/01/18/sunlight-goes-local/
Getting local, going deep, sharing across communities ... I like it!
Congrats to Sunlight and mySociety, I look forward to how your investments
in civic technology will help local communities everywhere. My measure will
be when I see an impact on my hometown of Minneapolis not just those big
cities that get all the cool stuff! :-) - Steven Clift, E-Democracy.org
P.S. On that note, the big big *simple* idea Phil Ashlock and others are
working on at the intersection of local open data and empowering civic apps
that scale down to extreme locality and local democracy is:
http://democracymap.org - Join the online working group:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/democracymap
Google.org's announcement:
http://blog.google.org/2013/01/promoting-civic-innovation-through.html
Promoting civic innovation through
technology<http://blog.google.org/2013/01/promoting-civic-innovation-through.html>Wednesday
1/16/2013 08:00:00 AM
The Internet is redefining citizenship in the 21st century. Technology is
helping people to connect, engage, and contribute to society and each other
like never before.
Weve seen developers use our Civic Information
API<https://developers.google.com/civic-information/>to bring election
data to citizens in new and exciting ways. Our live
election results maps have been viewed by billions around the world,
bringing real-time transparency to elections in Egypt, Mexico, Ghana, and
more. Last week, we launched the Kenya Elections
Hub<http://www.google.co.ke/elections/ed/ke>for citizens to access the
latest news and resources for the countrys
presidential election.
Beyond elections, technology can improve everyday civic life: the way we
connect, engage, access and act on critical government information.
Worldwide, organizations are developing new ways to encourage more open and
innovative societies. Google.org is supporting two of these
leaders--the Sunlight
Foundation <http://sunlightfoundation.com/> and
mySociety<http://www.mysociety.org/>--and
their work on tech solutions for civic innovation.
We are providing $2.1 million to the Sunlight Foundation to grow their
programs for open government data, with a focus on making civic information
for U.S. cities transparent, available, and useable. By opening up
information at the city level for developers as well as citizens, Sunlight
is creating opportunity for new ideas that can have an impact in local
markets.
We are also supporting mySociety, providing $1.6 million to build a global
platform to equip developers with tools and resources--such as open source
code--to more easily and quickly launch new civic apps and services. This
initiative can promote collaboration between civic-minded technologists,
regardless of geography. For example, a civic app created in Finland might
be easily replicated 9,000 miles away by a developer in Chile.
Both organizations are working to bring together a larger
community--governments, developers, companies, nonprofits, and
citizens--with an interest in improving societies. By creating these open
platforms today, we can open doors to ambitious new solutions in the future.
*Posted by Matthew Stepka, VP, Google.org*
mySociety response:
http://www.mysociety.org/2013/01/16/a-big-thankyou-to-google-org-fabulous-funding-news/
A big thankyou to Google.org fabulous funding
news<http://www.mysociety.org/2013/01/16/a-big-thankyou-to-google-org-fabulous-funding-news/>
Written by Myfanwy <http://www.mysociety.org/author/myfnixon/> on January
16th, 2013 in
Components<http://www.mysociety.org/category/projects/components/>
, News <http://www.mysociety.org/category/news/>