OpenCivic is a movement and a set of open standards and APIs to liberate civic participation related data in a machine readable and re-mixable form that will allow developers and visualizers to interact with this critical data and build engaging applications over it in India.
Few days back I stumbled upon a very interesting visualizer for 2009 election data. Although, OpenCivic.in would power the backend of civic participation related mashups over the years I have realized the power of visualization. Having a small engine which allows people to experience the power of the API first hand goes a long way than writing an essay on it. Eg: Facebook API test console. With this in mind, I pinged Murali, the founder of YesToPolitics.com and discussed briefly about various possibilities and areas of collaboration to which he got back with a favorable reply. We are really looking forward use his flex app to visualize parts of the OpenCivic API very soon.
Today in India, we celebrate our Republic Day which commemorates the date on which the Constitution of India came into force replacing the Government of India Act 1935 as the governing document of India on January 26, 1950.
Could we have missed such an auspicious day to launch? No! Pavan and me put in an all-nighter to ensure that we at-least get in the data for General elections from 1998 onwards. The initial results look good and we are happy with the quality of the data. There is a lot of modeling still left to do.
If you are very curious to browse through the data (and you are a hacker at heart; it’s still not ready for consumption by anyone else) do give it a check at api.opencivic.in.
In the coming months (march onwards), we would be documenting the API in the wiki, sharing the preliminary ETL code through github and inviting all collaborators on the mailing list. If you would like to get involved, share thoughts or ideas please feel free to get in touch through email or mention us on twitter.
While working on the test API release for OpenCivic I thought it would be great to search for API design guidelines online and then I stumbled upon this talk by Joshua Bloc, Pricipal Software Engineer in Google. I think it is a very insightful talk on various common sense principals.
You can also read a summary of his talk here. Do you have any recommended reading materials to read about API design principles?
We just received an email confirmation from Knight News Challenge 2009 organizers that OpenCivic has been shortlisted in the first round and is invited to submit a full proposal.
Everyone at OpenCivic is thrilled with this news and we would like to thank all of you to review, rate and comment on our application. Also, thank you for taking out time to reading our application because even that counts. We would love to hear from you and seek ideas to grow the OpenCivic collective.
In the last couple of months we have not only been able to get a fabulous group of people to join the initiative but also made significant progress on releasing a initial API. In the coming month we would be not only releasing the initial API but also make progress in involving everyone in the collective through online collaboration tools; so watch out – blog, twitter, wiki, code repository and mailing list.
For the Knight News Challenge 2009 we would need to submit a full proposal by Jan 31. We would love to hear from you on how we can make the application better – so please get in touch.
Just stumbled upon the Knight News Challenge initiative. Their tag line got me interested, “You invent it, We fund it.”
More about the Knight News Challenge from their website:
Knight News Challenge
Getting the news and information we need to improve our communities is more important than ever. Send us your project. We seek innovations that use new or available technology to distribute content in local communities. Take part in the $5 million annual Knight News Challenge contest. Anybody worldwide can apply.
There are three rules to follow to apply to the 2010 Knight News Challenge:
Use digital, open-source technology.
Distribute news in the public interest.
Test your project in a local community.
I also happened to browse through previous winners and was pleasantly surprised to read about EveryBlock founded by Adrian Holovaty. Adrian is the co-creator of the Django project.
Considering our synergies match with that of the Knight News Challenge – OpenCivic has sent an application for it. Please take out time to read, evaluate and comment on it here.
Rishabh Manocha is the developer behind govcheck.net. Rishabh started govcheck.net to answer a simple question – ‘What are my elected representatives doing?’ While data existed on various websites published by Government as well as third parties he noticed that none of its is directly consumable by the people.
Through govcheck.net he was bringing data about the work being done by your elected representatives, from various sources such as the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and the Election Commission of India websites. By doing this, we hopes to allow our users to view data from a broader perspective, pick up on trends, analyse the direction the country is taking and much more. As and when he adds additional data (from the Census Beaureau of India’s website, for example) he hopes to increase users’ ability to find out more about their government and elected representatives and make a better decision the next time they step into a polling booth.
Rishabh feels that OpenCivic will go a long way to increase civic participation which is seriously lacking in India.
We are really excited to have Rishabh with us and more importantly his expertise from building govcheck.net. He is fairly active on twitter and you can follow him @rmanocha
Yesterday, at BarCampPune I met up with Shardul Mohite the co-founder of WeboniseLab who are working on AskNeta.com (a politician is called a ‘Neta’ in hindi language). Speaking to him on how they were collecting data for AskNeta.com I could instantly connect with their vows of visiting several government websites and scraping content through automated scripts. Many a times the data is available as an MS Excel files which again needs to be downloaded and formated for usage.
Next I shared the vision for OpenCivic with them and he instantly connected with it. Not only did he offer his unconditional support but wanted to use the OpenCivic API. So, as of now AskNet.com would become the first web service to consume data from the OpenCivic API.
We at OpenCivic are really happy that we could get together startups and people who have felt the same ‘itch’. You can follow Shardul on twitter @shardulmohite
India is currently the largest democracy. In the 2004 election to the Lower house of Parliament (national) alone there were 5435 candidates. Add to this candidates standing for the election to various state assemblies in the 28 states of India. Thus, elections in India are events involving political mobilisation and organisational complexity on an amazing scale. Although, the Election Commission of India does its due by publishing a lot of this data on its website in the form of PDF’s and download able MS Excel files – the people are largely untouched as the only consumable information that reaches them is through TV and print media which in India could be influenced.
OpenCivic Logo
OpenCivic is a movement and a set of open standards and APIs to liberate this civic participation related data in a machine readable and re-mixable form that will allow developers and visualizers to interact with this critical data and build engaging applications over it in India.
OpenCivic will manifest itself in the form of locally flavored websites like TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow from mysociety.org which will consume the services of the OpenCivic API to post local targeted updates to users based on their preferences through web and mobile.
OpenCivic liberates critical civic participation related data and makes it usable for developers and visualizers to build locally targeted applications. Through the OpenCivic API we can build social applications that leverage the geo-targeting to update users on their preferred channels of update.
Eg 1: A mobile application that updates users whenever a bill is introduced in the Parliament that affects their neighborhood.
Eg 2: A website that allows users to find information of their local representative and raise issues or concerns.
Eg 3: A website that allows users to read the profile and historical background of candidates standing for the election and make an informed choice.
By making this critical data accessible to developers and visualizers through a uniform RESTful API, OpenCivic crowd-sources the building of consumable civic participation related web and mobile applications for the people.
This is the customary blog post to announce our first steps as we take on this journey. We look forward to blog extensively about our mission, vision, endeavors and learnings along the way.
For now we leave you with the thought that binds us all together:
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
OpenCivic is a movement and a set of open standards and APIs to liberate civic participation related data in a machine readable and re-mixable form that will allow developers and visualizers to interact with this critical data and build engaging applications over it in India.
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Today in India, we celebrate our Republic Day which commemorates the date on which the Constitution of India came into force replacing the Government of India Act 1935 as the governing document of India on January 26, 1950.
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