The Ingenuity of the American People
Posted by on September 09, 2009 at 01:39 PM EDT
On May 21, 2009 the Administration launched data.gov to drive transparency and innovation by making federal data easily accessible. This was immediately followed by the Apps for America contest, challenging the American people to develop innovative solutions using data.gov. The contest was run by the Sunlight Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on "using the revolutionary power of the Internet to make information about Congress and the federal government more meaningfully accessible to citizens."
Today, we celebrate the ingenuity of the American people with the announcement of Datamasher.org as the winner of the Apps for America contest. Datamasher.org provides the public with a simple interface to mash up government datasets to analyze and visualize the data in innovative ways.Datamasher allows you to take two different public data sources and mash them up with an operator (+ - * /). Then you can share them with your friends and comment on the mashups of others. Some of the interesting mashups currently posted on the site: Political party contribution ratio, Most reproductive states, Federal spending by population, and People per US Representative.
Initiatives such as Apps for America are just the beginning. Data transparency can spur economic, scientific, and educational innovation—as well as civic engagement—by making it easier to build applications, conduct analysis, and perform research. The Administration is leading a national movement towards data transparency with subsequent initiatives launching in San Francisco and New York City.
In the contest, we see the principles of transparency and public engagement working to deliver real solutions. The government doesn’t have a monopoly on the best ideas. We look forward to unleashing the creativity of the American people to show us what is possible and help us find the innovative path forward.
Before you click away, check out these other great ideas that rose to the final round of the competition:
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