Give the gift of open data of local elected officials to your community
this holiday season! :-)
This is a big big deal if it finally creates and open data set ACROSS
jurisdictions at the LOCAL level and covers suburbs, towns, and rural
areas. - Steve
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Steven Clift" <<email obscured>>
Date: Nov 24, 2014 11:50 AM
Subject: Sunlight: Help liberate your town's info with the Open Civic Data
project!
To: <<email obscured>>
Cc:
<http://ift.tt/1d9b6We>
This Thanksgiving holiday, we're asking you to join Sunlight in helping
create open data about your local government. Over the last year and a
half, we have been working hard to architect and implement new tools and
data specifications to work with state and municipal data; ultimately, we
want to make it easier for you to better know how your local-level elected
officials are creating laws that will affect you in your hometown. This is
all part of our new Open Civic Data <http://ift.tt/1d9b6We> project.
Imagine getting a push notification letting you know when your city council
is taking up legislation to improve bike lanes in your neighborhood, and
then being able to easily call or email your council member to weigh in on
the ordinance. Or being able to enter your zip code on a website to find
out who your representatives are β from your town to state capitol to
Congress β and seeing what bills theyβre voting on and how you can get in
touch to have your voice be heard?
This can all soon be a reality β but we need your help to make it happen.
We're asking all of you (yes, you!) to try Open Civic Data's spreadsheet
collection tool <http://ift.tt/1pfzBOu> to bring your hometown online. It's
very easy to do, and we hope you'll also consider recruiting three friends
and/or family members to do the same when you get together for
Thanksgiving. The best way to get started is to download our template
<http://ift.tt/1pfzBOz>, read the guide <http://ift.tt/1pfzC4O> and replace
the example data with real information for your city. After the sheet is
all filled out, you can send us the data by uploading it through our brand
new upload tool <http://ift.tt/1pfzBOu>.
In the spirit of ensuring that we end up with a tool that fits the actual
use of those who are interested in data collection, we're asking that folks
take a look at this tool before we're actually finished with it, so please
report any issues you have with the tool to us as soon as you find them. As
a result of releasing this early in the process without extensive user
testing, you may find bugs β this is normal, and not your fault. Reporting
bugs as you encounter them is one of the best ways to ensure we end up with
something that becomes as easy as we want it to be, so be sure to report
them!
We're also asking interested technical folks to consider trying out the Open
Civic Data API <http://ift.tt/1pfzzWF>, utilizing the API directly, or with
our new python-opencivicdata-api <http://ift.tt/1pfzzWH> bindings. Your
existing Sunlight API key (if you don't have one, now's a great time to
register <http://ift.tt/1mEQNHz>!) will work against this API, so feel free
to get started today! Documentation on the endpoints is available as part
of our Open Civic Data documentation <http://ift.tt/1pfzC4S>, and a list
for folks interested in new features and development announcements should
join our Open Civic Data Google group <http://ift.tt/1ogSlcU>.
Our state and municipal team took the lessons learned from the development
of the Open States <http://openstates.org> specifications, along with
existing work from Open North <http://opennorth.ca/> Popolo
<http://ift.tt/1zkPhQz> project, and developed tools to create, curate and
distribute the data in a common and flexible way. This has taken the form
of scraper infrastructure <http://ift.tt/1zkPhQD>, an API
<http://ift.tt/1zkPiUD> and a tool to upload spreadsheets of data
<http://ift.tt/1pfzBOu> to the Open Civic Data database.
One of our biggest focuses was to create a system where non-technical users
are able to contribute to the data collection effort in an easy and
effective way. In particular, we wanted to enable the collection of
municipal data in a format that was easy to understand, and build tools to
translate this into the full Open Civic Data format.
We sincerely appreciate your help to ensure we all have access to free and
open data about our representatives from the local level on up. Together,
we can create more ways to hold our government accountable.
If you need help, have feedback or otherwise want to say hi, please send
mail to <email obscured>. Thanks for your help and have
a happy Thanksgiving!
from Sunlight Foundation Blog http://ift.tt/1pfzzWM
via IFTTT <http://ift.tt/1bODNcb>
this holiday season! :-)
This is a big big deal if it finally creates and open data set ACROSS
jurisdictions at the LOCAL level and covers suburbs, towns, and rural
areas. - Steve
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Steven Clift" <<email obscured>>
Date: Nov 24, 2014 11:50 AM
Subject: Sunlight: Help liberate your town's info with the Open Civic Data
project!
To: <<email obscured>>
Cc:
<http://ift.tt/1d9b6We>
This Thanksgiving holiday, we're asking you to join Sunlight in helping
create open data about your local government. Over the last year and a
half, we have been working hard to architect and implement new tools and
data specifications to work with state and municipal data; ultimately, we
want to make it easier for you to better know how your local-level elected
officials are creating laws that will affect you in your hometown. This is
all part of our new Open Civic Data <http://ift.tt/1d9b6We> project.
Imagine getting a push notification letting you know when your city council
is taking up legislation to improve bike lanes in your neighborhood, and
then being able to easily call or email your council member to weigh in on
the ordinance. Or being able to enter your zip code on a website to find
out who your representatives are β from your town to state capitol to
Congress β and seeing what bills theyβre voting on and how you can get in
touch to have your voice be heard?
This can all soon be a reality β but we need your help to make it happen.
We're asking all of you (yes, you!) to try Open Civic Data's spreadsheet
collection tool <http://ift.tt/1pfzBOu> to bring your hometown online. It's
very easy to do, and we hope you'll also consider recruiting three friends
and/or family members to do the same when you get together for
Thanksgiving. The best way to get started is to download our template
<http://ift.tt/1pfzBOz>, read the guide <http://ift.tt/1pfzC4O> and replace
the example data with real information for your city. After the sheet is
all filled out, you can send us the data by uploading it through our brand
new upload tool <http://ift.tt/1pfzBOu>.
In the spirit of ensuring that we end up with a tool that fits the actual
use of those who are interested in data collection, we're asking that folks
take a look at this tool before we're actually finished with it, so please
report any issues you have with the tool to us as soon as you find them. As
a result of releasing this early in the process without extensive user
testing, you may find bugs β this is normal, and not your fault. Reporting
bugs as you encounter them is one of the best ways to ensure we end up with
something that becomes as easy as we want it to be, so be sure to report
them!
We're also asking interested technical folks to consider trying out the Open
Civic Data API <http://ift.tt/1pfzzWF>, utilizing the API directly, or with
our new python-opencivicdata-api <http://ift.tt/1pfzzWH> bindings. Your
existing Sunlight API key (if you don't have one, now's a great time to
register <http://ift.tt/1mEQNHz>!) will work against this API, so feel free
to get started today! Documentation on the endpoints is available as part
of our Open Civic Data documentation <http://ift.tt/1pfzC4S>, and a list
for folks interested in new features and development announcements should
join our Open Civic Data Google group <http://ift.tt/1ogSlcU>.
Our state and municipal team took the lessons learned from the development
of the Open States <http://openstates.org> specifications, along with
existing work from Open North <http://opennorth.ca/> Popolo
<http://ift.tt/1zkPhQz> project, and developed tools to create, curate and
distribute the data in a common and flexible way. This has taken the form
of scraper infrastructure <http://ift.tt/1zkPhQD>, an API
<http://ift.tt/1zkPiUD> and a tool to upload spreadsheets of data
<http://ift.tt/1pfzBOu> to the Open Civic Data database.
One of our biggest focuses was to create a system where non-technical users
are able to contribute to the data collection effort in an easy and
effective way. In particular, we wanted to enable the collection of
municipal data in a format that was easy to understand, and build tools to
translate this into the full Open Civic Data format.
We sincerely appreciate your help to ensure we all have access to free and
open data about our representatives from the local level on up. Together,
we can create more ways to hold our government accountable.
If you need help, have feedback or otherwise want to say hi, please send
mail to <email obscured>. Thanks for your help and have
a happy Thanksgiving!
from Sunlight Foundation Blog http://ift.tt/1pfzzWM
via IFTTT <http://ift.tt/1bODNcb>
