Strengthening Youth Voices in an Open-Source Democracy

the urban poor people reporting demolition, hunger and poverty and human rights in the Philippines

PublicStuff’s vision is to enable people to connect directly with their local government in order to keep our elected leaders responsible and accountable to the needs in our local communities. Our mobile application will enable people to submit and check statuses on service requests, gather community and geospatial data, and make meaningful connections with their leaders, community organizations and neighbors 24 hours a day--- not just from 9-5, Monday-Friday.By providing a meaningful connection we are focused on increasing transparency, accountability and civic participation.

“My OpenCongress” already offers ways to track and comment on any bill, issue, or Member of Congress, as well as social networking and more. These changes will create new ways for users to customize the stream of updates they view and share on their profiles. First, Open Calais makes it possible to access rich metadata about tracked items. For example, if a user is tracking a Senator, data from the Open Calais API can inform you by automatically displaying associated organizations, facts, and events – “This Senator was appointed the Chairman of this committee on this date, click here to view more connections”. Second, Daylife makes it possible to access professionally-moderated news coverage of tracked items. For the example of a tracked Senator, the Daylife API can suggest related stories, articles, images, and topics – “Daylife Editors selected four news articles about this Senator in the past month, click here to view them”. Instead of following every news mention of a bill or issue (higher-volume), users could choose to receive only featured content (lower-volume). Our open-source development team welcomes input on these two API's, especially from their programmers, and suggestions on other data sources to consider. (Obviously, there are lots of viable options out there.)

As a one-stop shop for voting-day logistical information, MyPollingPlace will allow people to interact with the following information: Where to vote Polling place data from secretaries of states' polling-place databases, county election boards, and third-party databases of polling place informationHow to get there GoogleMaps mashup with polling place data What they'll need to bring State requirements for voter identification How to cast their vote For each state, information on what kind of voting machines or ballots are used and instructions on how to use them