Politics & Elections Blog: July 2009

Apps for America and Routers in Ammo Shells: Open Source and the Public Sector at OSCON 2009

Friday, July 24, 2009

This is our final post from OSCON 2009 highlighting how open source is being used to improve the public sector. If you're interested in our other posts from the convention, take a look here.OSCON wrapped up today, but we couldn't leave San Jose without sharing some of the exciting open source initiatives in the public sector that we haven't mentioned yet this week.On Thursday, Clay Johnson of Sunlight Labs, who won a Google O'Reilly Open Source Award earlier in the week, started the day with a keynote about Apps for America, a challenge for open source developers to create innovative apps using Data.gov. Sunlight Labs wants Apps for America to show that open source developers can work just as well as huge government contractors, eventually letting small developers compete with contractors on federal projects.

Clay said that while "government is more open to transparency than it's ever been," the window is closing as politics and elections will soon start to take over the landscape. He challenged open source developers to "step up not just in their projects but in changing their country," and we agree - we hope you'll participate in Apps for America this summer.Friday featured a talk by Gunnar Hellekson from Red Hat Government about how individuals in government have used open source principles in their work. He described how the Navy worked with IBM and Raytheon to modify the Linux kernel to support their real-time needs, and then contributed these changes back to the community, where they're now being used in other fields. Gunnar also spoke about a soldier in Iraq who was stuck with radios that couldn't reach the distance between watchtowers in a base. To solve the problem, the soldier built WiFi routers inside ammo shells and used open source software to set up a VOIP network betweeen the towers, increasing the range of his communication tools without waiting months to go through military procurement.Gunnar concluded, "The government is made of people. They're not lazy and they're not stupid, they're just constrained by a broken system." He, along with the other participants in Open Source for America, are working to fix this system by encouraging government and private sector to collaborate using open source software.
Government 2.0 was a major focus of the convention this year, and we can't wait to continue this important conversation over the coming months and at the Gov 2.0 Summit in DC this September.Posted by Eric Hysen, Public Sector Team

Election Audits, Voting Systems and more: Open Source and the Public Sector at OSCON 2009

Thursday, July 23, 2009

This is the second post from OSCON 2009 highlighting how open source is being used to improve the public sector. Check back this week for more from San Jose, CA.Tim O'ReillyGovernment 2.0Open Source for America

Neal McBurnettopen source election auditingElectionAuditsproject sitethe Elections by the People FoundationspokeElection Markup LanguageHacking the Open GovernmentDebra BowenLeague of Technical VotersCitabilityThey Work for You.comPosted by Eric Hysen, Public Sector Team

Open Source and the Public Sector: All for Good

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

We're in San Jose, CA this week for OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source Convention. Over the next few days, we're going to be bringing you posts highlighting how the open source community is working to improve the public sector. There are some really incredible things taking shape, and we're excited to share them with you this week. To start, though, we want to highlight an open source project the Google Public Sector Team is working on, All for Good, which makes it easy to find and share volunteer opportunities from across the web.

We've written about All for Good on this blog in the past, but today we're focusing on one aspect that makes it such an interesting project - All for Good is entirely open source. While All for Good started as a collaboration between Google and partners including the Craigslist Foundation and the Corporation for National Service, it's not owned exclusively by any one of them. Our source code is publicly available using Google Code, and we've provided documentation on how to get up and running using the code to contribute to the project. That means that anyone, anywhere can browse the issues list, find and fix problems, and improve the site for everyone.

Making All for Good open source

has helped it grow far faster than if it were controlled by one organization. As you're reading this, independent developers across the country and world are working alongside Googlers and other members of the team to implement new features including allowing users to post new volunteer opportunities directly to the site, formatting All for Good for mobile browsers, and driving adoption of the FPXML feed format. If you want to get involved, head over to the code site and get started!

We're excited to be a part of the growing open source movement in the public sector, and are looking forward to highlighting what others are doing this week. For a preview, check out the Open Government track at the OSCON site, and stop by the Google booth if you're at the convention.Posted by Eric Hysen, Public Sector Team

All-star cast stars in All-Star game promotion for serve.gov

Thursday, July 16, 2009

CitizentubeYouTube channelServe.govAll for Goodyoutube.com/videovolunteers

All for Good gets Better

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

All for Goodlaunchedopen sourcesubmitting volunteer listingsusing the APIAllforGood.orgYouTube videoAll for Good gadgetthe most requested improvementUserVoicethe feedback sitePosted by Daniel Berlin, Engineering Co-Lead

A New View of Data.Gov

Friday, July 10, 2009

These are just a few of the ways you can use Fusion Tables to visualize data from Data.gov, and from other data sources. Come up with any other cool uses of Fusion Tables or other Google products to use public data? Let us know in the comments.

Posted by Eric Hysen, Public Sector Team

Data.govGoogle Fusion TablesGoogle LabsGoogle Research BlogData.gov Raw Data Catalog

Once you've conducted your search, locate the data you want to use. Right click on the green "CSV" button and use "Save File As..." to download the file to your computer. Make sure to name it with a .csv extension.

Another option is to visualize as an "Intensity Map". By selecting "Magnitude" as the Value and to plot Markers, we get a map where the markers have sizes relative to the weights of the earthquakes.

Finally, let's look at some of the more advanced options. Clicking "Show options" exposes powerful tools to filter and aggregate the data Fusion Tables is displaying. Click "Aggregate" and check the boxes to aggregate the Eqid field by Region, as shown below:

Click Apply, and visualize the data as a pie chart. Select "Region" as the entity and "Count" as the value, and you'll see a chart that represents the share of recent earthquakes in each region. You could also view this as an intensity map or in other forms. Clicking "Get Embeddable Code" below the chart gives you code you can use to embed the chart into your web site or blog, like we've done below.

These are just a few of the ways you can use Fusion Tables to visualize data from Data.gov, and from other data sources. Come up with any other cool uses of Fusion Tables or other Google products to use public data? Let us know in the comments.
Posted by Eric Hysen, Public Sector Team