“From the dawn of time, man has tried to make sense of the information presented to him, usually by telling stories. Nowadays, overwhelmed with information, we look to new ways to tell our story; to make sense of the world around us and communicate it to others. This presentation tells a story about our storytelling.”

Take this presentation, steal it, give it wherever you can. It is time for us to open up our government. Developers and designers, we’re the only ones who can do it! http://sunlightlabs.com
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VoteReport went from concept to implementation of a large-scale, open-source web-based and mobile platform within 10-days of the 2009 November elections in the United States.

It started with a concept after monitoring the use of Twitter to mobilize information and activists during the Republican National Convention and how new technologies could be leveraged to engage citizens and raise awareness around issues that may occur during the election.

In such a short time-frame, and building a system to predict what would happen during a single day, there were many lessons learned that made the project a success. Additionally, the platform and lessons learned can apply to a broader range of field reporting, crisis response, and citizen engagement.

There’s a problem with the way government content is published. First, much of it requires a third party application to open. Second, content can be changed without accountability. Solving these problems requires a few simple steps. First, all content should be browser-accessible, and not locked in formats like PDF. Second, all pages should be permalinked. Third: Every version of every page should be saved, and a permalink for every version should be created.

This was part of Silona’s open government session at SXSW.