News Challenge On Open Gov Launches Feb. 12

The Knight News Challenge on open government will run from Feb. 12 to March 18. It’s an opportunity to win part of the $5 million we’ll use this year to support innovative projects. We expect the News Challenge to generate proposals to improve the way citizens and governments interact. Projects could help parents evaluate schools, make weather data more usable, identify best routes from one town to another, or identify pork in the federal budget.

Just as we do with “news,” we’re defining “open government” broadly. Wikipedia says it “holds that citizens have the right to access the documents and proceedings of the government to allow for effective public oversight.” The OpenGov Foundation says it’s about “making it easier for people to access and use as much government information as possible.” In their book Open Government, Daniel Lathrop and Laurel Ruma describe it even more broadly as “transparency, collaboration and participation.”...