This TIPS on the politicians site is a bit slow,
but the information from just
a bit of browsing (I used Santorum) seemed to
provide quite a bit of data
(contributions, background, etc.) with little
mouse clicking. Well worth the
visit. Hopefully, the Government Information
Awareness Site
(http://opengov.media.mit.edu/) will stay up and
running. One of the lates articles from CNN
pasted below:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/06/gover
nment.google.ap/
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (AP) -- Its creators
hope it will become a Google of
government, a massive Internet clearinghouse of
information to help citizens
track their leaders as effectively as their
leaders track them.
On Friday, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Media Lab debuted a Web site
called "Government Information Awareness," that
aspires to be far more than
just another, dime-a-dozen assemblage of
government documents and resources.
Instead, GIA hopes to create a self-sustaining
community where, as occurs with
popular Web sites eBay and Google, the users
keep it running and credible.
Its creators at Media Lab -- a research center
whose eclectic projects bridge
technology, the arts and media -- view the
project as a way to pool the wisdom
of government watchdogs and counter new
government technologies that are
consolidating information about citizens.
Sifting through data
GIA's name and mission are a kind of reverse
version of "Terrorism Information
Awareness," a $20 million Pentagon project to
help sift through electronic
information with the goal of preventing
terrorist attacks.
"It seemed very odd that the same level of
effort isn't spent working on
technologies that help citizens understand the
government's links, networking
and influences," said Ryan McKinley, a graduate
student behind the project.
McKinley hopes it will offer new ways to pull
together information, helping
users, for instance, identify politicians who
belonged to the same fraternity,
then cross-referencing the list to their voting
records or campaign
contributions.
McKinley has "seeded" the site with politics-
related databases but beginning
Friday its content will be contributed largely
by users. For example: posting
an environmental group's ranking of a senator's
voting record.
Solid info will rise to the top?
Some information will prove unwieldy, not to
mention inaccurate or unfair.
But GIA hopes useful, fair information will
dominate just as useful Web sites
rise to the top on the search engine Google
(which ranks sites by popularity)
and as dishonest sellers are rooted out of the
auction site eBay. Users will
rank postings for credibility, and balanced
postings are essential.
And someone looking simply for reliable numbers
could limit a search to
official government documents.
Attempts to use the Internet to revolutionize
how citizens interact with
government have largely flopped. But Steven
Johnson, author of the book
"Emergence," likes McKinley's idea because
there's no obvious way to pool
watchdog information and the endless data the
government itself produces.
"What I love about this idea is, it says, this
is an information design problem
that the government is not going to solve on its
own," he said. "It's almost
like we're being informally subcontracted out by
the government about how to
make this useful."
http://members.aol.com/hydratwo
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/paenvironment/