announcing new Knight Foundation grant - #tech4engage

[David Moore :: OpenGovernment]

Good Morning OpenGovernment.org Group, 

The team at the Participatory Politics Foundation is very pleased to announce that we’ve received a charitable grant from the Knight Foundation to take OpenGovernment.org down to the local level as a free & open-source public resource. 

We’re starting in two Knight Foundation communities over the next six months: Philadelphia, PA; San Jose, CA; as well as a third city, Washington, D.C.

Looking forward to extending the popular OpenCongress model of government transparency and civic engagement down to the city & local level. 

• Check the Knight press release for more interesting info on the Technology for Engagement initiative :: http://goo.gl/e5PwU

• My OC Blog post today with lots more info on the goals of this next phase of OG development & links to allies / data partners :: http://goo.gl/7HKGl

• Here's a handy micropublishing update to RT, to help spread the word please :: @open_gov :: http://goo.gl/XMdvT

• Don't miss Knight's Digital Citizenship report, w/ nice video intro: http://goo.gl/XiL5S

• ... last, be sure to follow Damian Thorman, Knight's National Program Director -- dthorman on Twitter -- who helped PPF obtain this support and is steering the #tech4engage effort in Knight Communities - Knight is really at the cutting-edge of informed & engaged communities, tech-for-democracy. Free & open-source for everyone. Big thank you to Damian and everyone at Knight. We're so glad to be part of the team.

We're currently seeking Rails programmers to ramp-back-up open-source development on OpenGovernment, so feel free to spread the job announce. As we staff up we'll post regular project updates here on development needs & our tech leads will introduce themselves. 

Questions and input welcome - as I mention in my blog post this morning :: 

We believe there’s a massive opportunity to not only display local government data in standardized formats on the open Web, but also provide accessible context and innovative online participation tools to walk citizens up what I call the  ‘ chain of engagement ’ towards “public accountability with teeth”... Our primary goal – aside from getting OG back in active open-source development as quickly as possible – is to provide free, user-friendly Web tools for people to contact their elected officials and connect with fellow constituents over local issues. 

...excited to be building again with Knight National Program and three fellow grant recipients. 

Thank you for reading, ping me anytime with ideas, feel free to forward. 

-David

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David Moore

Participatory Politics Foundation

m: (917) 753-3462

AIM / Skype :: davidmooreppf

http://twitter.com/ppolitics

http://participatorypolitics.org