Real online democracy tools for Washington DC

The CTO for Washingon DC government ran an "Apps for Democracy" contest for online tools that really help people with getting help from the government and getting on with their lives. This is a crowd sourcing model that has real, useful results that can be generalized throughout the country and maybe beyond.

Normally, in real life, it would take far longer and been much more expensive to have developed these. Check out dps.dc.gov for the list. Here're a few good results from the contest.

Point About (iPhone app) Do you find yourself in a hurry, walking down Connecticut Avenue wondering where the closest Metro is, Dupont Circle or Farragut North, and what time the train is coming? Point About is a real-time, location-aware D.C. alerting tool for the iPhone, which includes crime reports, building permits and more, all from where you are standing.

DC Historic Tours, for folks ready to tour our nation's capital. You can create a custom map, for example Inauguration Route, identify the walking distance and points of interest. Planning for lunch on the way, you can research restaurants, etc, in the area, and save it and reference it later when you're ready to tour the city. DC Historic Tours is a Google Maps mashup that combines custom tour creation with Flickr photo feeds and Wikipedia entries.

iLive Enter your address and iLive.at will present you with information tailored to that exact location, cleanly organized into categories. The "Errands" category indicates how far the nearest shopping center, post office and convenience store are, among other things. "Crime" tabulates recently reported offenses in your area, and "The People" displays colorful pie charts giving demographic information that includes age range, ethnicity, and marital status.

Comments

[Judy-Anne]

How about a widget that lists state and national laws currently being written/considered/up for vote, based on your interests? (Options could include: Dogs, asthma, primary schools, homelessness, meat-packing, media, etc...).

[judy-Anne]

Part of my comment got lost! Wanted to include that I love the iLive app! Maybe the iVote widget could live there?

[Peter Corbett]

Craig, I'm glad you liked our contest! If you or anyone else reading this is interested in learning more, the full app directory with 47 apps (most with links to the source code) is here:

http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/application-directory/

and the case study:

http://www.istrategylabs.com/government-20-the-rise-of-citizen-innovation-through-open-data/

-Peter

[Gwynne Kostin]

Thanks for giving credit where it is due! DC has been doing a great job in making government accessible via the web. The dc.gov website is a terrific resource--one in which you can actually accomplish daily tasks. The next natural step is to figure out how to bring government services closer to its citizens. Slam dunk to the CTO Vivek Kundra and his team.

Thanks, Craig for highlighing! It gets tiresome hearing people outside of DC bemoaning the District government like we are a third world backwater. Innovation is alive and well in D.C.

[Daniel R. Odio]

Craig,

I'm glad you liked PointAbout in Apps for Democracy! (I'm a co-founder)

I made a 2 minute demo video of how we could do the same thing for CraigsList. What do you think? http://vimeo.com/2471989