Bio Of An Ogre
This past Thursday, Data.gov finally launched. This is the ambitious effort of our new CIO, Vivek Kundra, to start collecting all government agency data in one place, and to provide it in as many machine-friendly formats as possible. This launch has been anticipated for a long time, and is a huge piece of the new administration’s commitment to an open, participatory government.
If you’re not a techie, it may be hard to understand why this is so important, but if you’ve ever subscribed to an RSS feed, you can think of Data.gov as a one-stop shop for RSS feeds for maps, surveys, and reports from all around the government. In fact, many can be imported directly into Google Maps. Data.gov launched with only 47 feeds, which has subject it to some criticism, especially as people point out the more inane ones, such as the locations of the world’s copper smelters. It will grow, though.
In fact, Sunlight hopes to prove its potential by launching a second contest in tandem, Apps for America 2, this time centered around Data.gov. Build an application (web, iPhone, Facebook, whatever) that makes use of one of the data feeds on Data.gov, and submit it for judging by the panel, and the community at large. Once again, there are cash prizes, with 1st place receiving $10,000. We’re sponsored by Google and O’Reilly, and the winners will get airfare and a hotel in Washington DC so they can attend the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase, demo their app, and receive their awards.
And wouldn’t you know, we received our first submission within less than 24 hours of announcing the contest! FBI Fugitive Concentration uses the FBI‘s Most Wanted Widget to pull in photos that create an interactive card game of Concentration. At first, this seemed like a purely whimsical choice, until I realized that after trying to briefly memorize everyone’s faces, I was now far better equipped to recognize serious threats to American lives if I saw them out on the street.
Even cooler, FBI Fugitive Concentration was written by my friend Bertrand Fan, a coworker of mine at Blue State Digital in the fall. His quick response and creative work is now getting some nice press mentions.
I am confident that Data.gov is going to become a Big Deal For America, and that this will be another successful contest for Sunlight. I’d say just wait and see, but I’d rather you spend the time writing an app and proving me right!