[open-government] Thumbs up. DemocracyMap submitted to Knight News Challenge

Mon Jun 25 11:47:32 UTC 2012

I wanted to add, that if you would like to connect with 87 people
interested in this idea, we have a well established online working
group:

    http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/democracymap

And you can gather additional information here:

    http://www.democracymap.org

There is a lot of meat.

Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
  Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.org
  Twitter: http://twitter.com/democracy
  Tel/Text: +1.612.234.7072

On Mon, Jun 25, 2012 at 6:44 AM, Steven Clift <clift at e-democracy.org> wrote:
> Thanks to the hard work of Phil Ashlock (OpenPlans), David Stein
> (E-Democracy volunteer), Ryan Wold (Granicus) and many others, a very
> collaborative DemocracyMap submission was made to the Knight News
> Challenge.
>
> Please give it your thumbs up, add a comment, etc.:
>
>    http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/25577590335/democracymap
>
> This challenge is about data. While DemocracyMap has made it past
> round one in previous rounds, it fits squarely with the goals of this
> round. While some countries have comprehensive basic data sources on
> ALL government bodies, their websites, and representatives, many do
> not including the United States. The simple inability to reliably
> look-up who governs/serves/represents you right down to the _most
> local of levels_ is a huge hole. Put simply, while it is getting
> easier to look-up who is on your ballot, you don't have access to who
> won in past elections and still represents you today and where is the
> website for that government body. State legislatures on up are covered
> fine by the market, but finding really local "who represents me?"
> information pin pointed to you with exact results across government
> jurisdictions is a huge core democratic information failure.
>
> Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
>   Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.org
>   Twitter: http://twitter.com/democracy
>   Tel/Text: +1.612.234.7072