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Loco for Local: Regional Examples of Open Government

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Submitted by Colleen Gray on 2 April 2010
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Transparency CampI recently attended Transparency Camp, a two-day event organized by the Sunlight Foundation. The event convened almost 300 passionate people, all coming together for a common goal: to share knowledge on how to use new technologies to make our government transparent, accountable and meaningfully accessible to the public.

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people interested or involved in local open government projects. In fact, the sessions Neighborhood Networking, Local Government Transparency, and Empowering Democratic Deliberation at the Local Level with Social Media all explored technologies, ideas, and best practices for local government transparency and citizen engagement.
 
This is a promising trend. Ever since I began hearing about Open 311, SeeClickFix, FixMyStreet, and other projects with a local focus, I became interested in how the principles of open government would look for municipalities. I am especially interested in projects that connect citizens with data that improves their everyday lives.
 
Unfortunately, these aren’t the types of projects that attract media attention. Rather, most attention goes to large government transformations, and many of the projects labeled "wins" have been those that operate on a national scale. While these big projects are important, the local initiatives are the ones that impact people's lives most directly.
 
The remainder of this post focuses on the less glamorous wins, the local and state initiatives that represent small, but meaningful, steps toward our larger vision.
 
Unfortunately, this list is by now means exhaustive or complete. If you have any to add, please share them in the comments section below.
 
Also, I encourage you to check out Open Muni Wiki and E-democracy site, as there are some additional resources there.

My Favorites:

  Model Projects, Grouped by Type

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