

$15k Open Source Contest to make Government more Transparent - cjoh
http://sunlightlabs.com/contest

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indiejade
Wow; this is a very cool idea.

A few months ago, when the "financial crisis" was really spiraling out of
control, I purchased the domain name transparentaccounting.org -- not entirely
sure why, but thinking that one of the trends of the coming decade will indeed
be transparency in accounting standards and government.

So this would be a great way to make use of that domain. I imagine that a
project of this scope would require collaboration of some savvy business
people & some savvy programmers. So if you're interested, please send me an
email -- address found on my profile.

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Dilpil
Is this real? If so why is the guy from Heroes there?

~~~
jcarbaugh
Yeah, this is real. We put Hiro up as a joke, but I'll take him down now.

~~~
Harkins
You typo'd Adrian's last name.

In any case, dang neat stuff. I would definitely enter if it wasn't my day job
to do these same sorts of things at the Post.

~~~
cjoh
Whoops! We fixed it.

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joshwa
See also-- NYTimes Congress API:

[http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/introducing-the-
con...](http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/introducing-the-congress-
api/)

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cjoh
Forgot to mention here. Adrian Holovarty is a judge.

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tphyahoo
If you're doing this, there are some operational risks.

People make money off intransparency. Billions.

If they perceive transparency efforts as a thread, they may simply invest some
of their winnings in having you and your transparency efforts destroyed.

Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. But you need to need to be aware that this
kind of stuff does go on.

[http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/09.05.02/fitts-0236...](http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/09.05.02/fitts-0236.html)

solari.com

whereisthemoney.com

from the metroactive article:

"Starting in 1994, Hamilton Securities Group began building an easy-to-operate
computer software system to track the money flows in any given region. The
program, Community Wizard, provided the kind of transparency needed to expose
cooked books. Former Hamilton employee Carolyn Betts remembers the power of
Community Wizard, even in its infancy.

"It was in the beta stage, so it was not complete, but with each piece of
information it became more and more powerful," recalls Betts. "The HUD field
office people went absolutely crazy when they saw it. You could go in with a
pointer on a map and get to information on expenditures by each HUD program.
It was a pretty beautiful program and would have become unbelievably
powerful."

Community wizard was dismantled in 1997 as part of a legal hatchet job, the
servers confiscated, and the backups with source code wiped.

