» Government 2.0

In 2008, DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer created a contest called Apps for Democracy. The purpose of the contest was to create innovative applications that would make information from the DC Data Catalog available to the public.

The contest cost the district $50,000, but the 47 iPhone, Facebook and other applications created for the contest are estimated to be worth $2.6 million.

Adam Boalt, the founder of BOALT Interactive Business, entered the 2008 contest and walked away with the Agency Gold Medal for DCHistoricTours.com. The website is a tourism site created by the people, for the people. Anyone can become a user and create a tour of Washington, DC. You can share your tours with the public or keep them private. The application pulls photographs from Flickr to highlight different parts of your tour or pulls entries from Wikipedia articles providing historical information about specific locations along your tour route. You can also find places to eat along your route with Yelp.

On Thursday, Rebekah Kenefick from DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer brought Jim Meyers with Government Technology Magazine, and a film crew to the BOALT office to interview Adam about the Apps for Democracy contest and to discuss the democratization of data or Open Data Democracy as we like to call it. Watch the video below of their visit to BOALT headquarters:

One of President Obama’s first actions when he took office was to sign the Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on Transparency and Open Government (a mouthful). The first sentence of the memo lays out his administration’s commitment to an open government.

From this bold beginning, Obama’s administration has created Data.gov and updated existing sites like USAspending.gov. All of this is part of a much broader agenda known as Government 2.0. Think Mac OS 10.5. The government is upgrading. Don’t get too excited. It doesn’t mean the government is actually changing, it just means that now they are finally grasping the power of the computer and information. They finally understand that the American people are tired of being kept in the dark and that we want to know what is going on with our elected officials. My soap box is high today, so you’ll have to excuse me.

One of the most notable aspects of the Government 2.0 initiative is what is called the democratization of data. Another mouthful. It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but we have to give the government a break; their job isn’t being clever like ours is. That’s why we’re calling it an Open Data Democracy. It sounds much better. It sounds official. I’ll go so far as to say it sounds presidential. I’ll even give Obama’s administration permission to use it, as long as he calls and asks personally. The goal of democratizing data is to make data more easily available to the public. We all know how difficult it is to find or get anything from the government, so the new push for a transparent and easily accessible government is an amazing advancement.

In honor of the founding of our very own Open Data Democracy, BOALT has created Sound Off to give a voice to the people. Sound Off searches Twitter to find out what people are saying about our government officials. We have the first couple, John McCain, Sarah Palin and several others. Some of it is good, some of it is bad but it’s all real and straight from the mouths of the people.

Here’s a screenshot below. But I’m not giving it all away. You have to visit the site to see everything. Most of you won’t be surprised to see who the more popular person is on Twitter right now. (Sorry Mrs. Palin, it’s not you.)