$5K Design for America Data Visualization Contest - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education
$5K Design for America Data Visualization Contest
March 30, 2010, 10:00 am
The Sunlight Foundation has announced a new contest: Design for America, which offers $5000 to the best visualizations of open-access government data in several categories: Visualization of Sunlight Community Data; Visualization of Data from the Budget; Visualization of Recovery.gov Data; Visualization of How a Bill Becomes a Law; Visualization of Congressional Procedures; Redesign of a Government Form; Redesign of a .Gov Website.
From the announcement:
Sunlight Labs is pleased to announce our latest contest — “Design for America.” This 10 week long design and data visualization extravaganza is focused on connecting the talents of art and design communities throughout the country to the wealth of government data now available through bulk data access and APIs, and to help nurture the field of information visualization. Our goal is simple and straightforward — to make government data more accessible and comprehensible to the American public. We hope to enliven and engage new communities — just as we did with Apps for America 1 and 2 — as partners and participants in making government information more engaging to the American public. Our contest will end with a public announcement of the winners at Gov 2.0 Expo here in Washington, DC in May, in partnership with O’Reilly and TechWeb, and with a public gallery showing of the winners.
. . .
There’s an “artist” inside all of us so we’re creating multiple entry categories so that contestants have an opportunity to show off their skills wherever they are most comfortable. There’s room for all kinds of folks to participate — artists, data visualizers, specialists in info graphs and usability experts — to name a few.
I’m pretty sure this contest falls within the skill set/research interests of some ProfHacker readers, so–good luck!
Parenthetically, I’ll admit to being increasingly ambivalent about the will-to-transparency. On the one hand, it goes almost without saying that citizens should be able to grasp how their government works and for whom. On the other hand, some of the loudest voices clamoring for budget transparency are those interested in slash-and-burn approaches to government expenditures–that is, it’s a form of union-busting. I live in a state that where the public discourse takes as read the notion that state workers all have gold-plated pensions (nope) and elaborate health insurance (HMO-city! And new employees pay 3% of their salary into a fund for retirement healthcare). No amount of “transparency” seems able to overcome the prejudice against state workers–which college faculty and staff often are! Anyway.
(Contest announcement via Jen Serventi on Twitter.)
Image by Flickr user jalalspages / Creative Commons licensed
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Lots going on in public sector (US & UK) wrt Data visualisation...going to tap my contacts.
