simpler/gov
- App URL
- http://www.simplergov.org/
- Source URL
- http://www.simplergov.org/source.html
- Description
The White House recently launched data.gov, a focal point for federal, state and local government data published on the web.
Data.gov represents a big change in the attitude of the Federal Government. Why the change? In a word, transparency. Transparency is a state of openness that permits the full, accurate, and timely disclosure of information. Access to raw data is a building block of transparency. A transparent government is an accountable government. A transparent government is a better government.
Data.gov is as much about local data as it is about federal data. But, if you look at the map of state and local data on data.gov, it's essentially blank. There are over 39,000 state and local government entities in the US but data.gov only has links to three. The fundamental purpose of simplergov.org is provide a platform to every local government that wants to share data, connect with the public and help data.gov reach its full potential.
The simplergov.org vision has three components:
(1) Local government data is interesting and useful in and of itself. Simplergov.org departs from a commonly held notion that data needs an application on top of it to make sense. The simplergov.org design philosophy is that an application should get you to the data and then get out of the way.
(2) Making raw data accessible on the web should be as simple as possible. It should not involve complex data transformations, nor should it require an application developer to build a user interface.
(3) The community should be able to create useful ways to interact with raw data and then be able to share those interactions with other users.
Join our mission: collaborate by contributing your own data and links and improve the quality of your government. It's easy to do and it benefits everyone.
This application was submitted by Simpler Systems on August 7, 2009