open government: an overview
DESCRIPTION
We know that the Internet can be used to donate to political candidates. Or make fun of them. But, with a little help from citizens, it can also make government work better. First, we’ll look at a handful of sites that aggregate government data and present it in useful ways. Then we’ll explore the process of distilling government data dumps and APIs to build our own sites.TRANSCRIPT
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Hackin’ onGovernment
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“How can the webmake government
better?”
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…what does “better”mean?
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My definition:
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More transparency
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Shorter feedback loops
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Better identificationof signal
within the noise
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What has the politicalblogosphere (ugh)
already donefor politics?
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What suitsthe web
to politics?
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It’s great at archiving
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It’s easy to reach
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It can supportgreater depth
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Examples:
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FactCheck.org
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PolitiFact: Truth-O-Meter
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PolitiFact: The Obameter
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OpenCongress
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Full text of bills(comment on individual paragraphs!)
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The world ofgovernment
can accommodatemore developers
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Open-source softwareadvocates
will feel at home with theideals
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The public sector doesn’t havethe talent or resources
to do it themselves
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You don’t need anyone’spermission
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So how do Ibuild my own?
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Getting data
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A vast amountof government data
is available…
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…but it’s sloppy
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THOMAS
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Enter GovTrack
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Makescongressional datamachine-readable
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XML data dumps
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open-sourceand
non-profit
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Sunlight Foundation
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Sunlight Labs
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Case study:
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Filibusted http://filibusted.us
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The U.S. Senate allowsfor a stall tactic
called the filibuster
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To end a filibuster,you need a successful
cloture vote
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The number of cloture votesis on a major upswing
in recent decades…
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…reflecting increasing useof the filibuster
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Methodology:
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Keep a list of current senators(using Sunlight Labs’
Congressional Data API)
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Every night, check GovTrackfor new Senate votes
(http://www.govtrack.us/data/us/111/votes.all.index.xml)
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Any new cloture votes? If so…
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Get information about the billand how each senator voted
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Put it all on a page
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Tweet about it!
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Keep stats on senators
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Keep stats on the 111th Congress
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Present interesting data views
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Ingredients:
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Rails, a tiny database,and a bit of Ruby for parsing
XML.
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Read the code:https://github.com/savetheclocktower/filibusted
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Now it’s your turn
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Data sources:
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GovTrack data dumps:http://govtrack.us/data/
The Drumbone API:http://services.sunlightlabs.com/docs/Drumbone_API/
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OpenCongress API:http://www.opencongress.org/api
Legislator information,bill trends,
most-blogged-about items
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Sunlight Labs APIs:http://services.sunlightlabs.com/
Legislator information,campaign contributions,
state-by-state legislative data
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New York Times Congress API:http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/congress_api
Legislator information,nominees, bills, votes
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data.gov
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Launched in May 2009
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Drinking from the firehose
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What aboutstate government?
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Things to consider:
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Is it OK to havea point of view?
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(of course)
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Everyone has bias
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Data-based methodologycan defend againstaccusations of bias
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Your conclusionsmay be opinionated,
but the underlying data isn’t
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Argue in good faithand play devil’s advocate
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User participation?
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sure, but be careful of:
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1. spam
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(you'll get spammed,even if you rel='nofollow',
and even if you escape HTML)
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Use Akismetor something like it
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2. sampling bias
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Who visits web sites aboutgovernment?
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OpenCongress’s pagefor the HCR bill:
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Don’t use data from your usersto draw conclusions
about the general public
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3. vitriol
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anonymity + political passion =angry rhetoric
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About the HCR bill:
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Be tolerant, butknow what you’re in for
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“ Politics is a strongand slow boringof hard boards. ”
— Max Weber