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