There are more than 3,100 counties and 35,000 cities and towns across the United States. Together, these agencies represent our "government" - our protector of freedom, liberty, and equality. Our taxes pay for infrastructure, education, security, and social programs. Despite the uniqueness of needs, our public agencies share common challenges, needs, requirements, and missions. The ability to browse between state and hyper-local services, based on civic need will enable people to directly obtain quality sources of public information and enable others to disseminate such information.

An informed public builds a culture of public accountability, but furthermore, a culture of cooperation.

About An equal playing field: Self-interest will always occur. People interested will be familiar, intimate, and associated with problems - being in on bids, visionaries of projects well or ill-conceived.

Increasing visibility into local government, where people have the greatest proximity to participating directly in civic affairs.

The notion of government is often singular, as evidenced by phrases like “big government”, “government waste”, “state budget issues”, “federal budget woes”. Yet, the reality is that there are more than 38,000 jurisdictions in the United States, operating in one of 50 states, 3100+ counties, 16,000+ cities, and 18,000+ towns. DemocracyMap will provide information from officially-sourced government URL’s as well as user-contributed content providing both official and commentary. There is a market failure in terms of providing bulk-access to essential civic information including public agencies, public officials, and governing bodies. DemocracyMap provides access to fundamental information for citizens to effectively become and stay informed about public affairs. DemocracyMap fits within the Mobile, Authenticity, and Community categories quite naturally. DemocracyMap is a unique technology project as well. Success and sustainability is dependent on using open-source philosophies and software, API’s, crowd-sourcing, and cross-section organizational collaborations and standard setting. Given the scope of mapping the entire United States, it does make sense to initially focus on specific geographic areas. Additionally, several thousand jurisdictions do not have websites from which to find such information.

DemocracyMap and the The Knight Foundation News Challenge

Did you know that there are more than 513,000 elected public officials in the United States? These are the board members and elected posts like Sheriff, District Attorney, and Auditor-Controller, Treasurer, Judges, and several others, depending on where you live.

There are more than 3,100 counties and 35,000 cities and towns across the United States. Together, these agencies represent our "government" - our protector of freedom, liberty, and equality. Our taxes pay for infrastructure, education, security, and social programs. Despite the uniqueness of needs, our public agencies share common challenges, needs, requirements, and missions. The ability to browse between state and hyper-local services, based on civic need will enable people to directly obtain quality sources of public information and enable others to disseminate such information.

An informed public builds a culture of public accountability, but furthermore, a culture of cooperation.

About An equal playing field: Self-interest will always occur. People interested will be familiar, intimate, and associated with problems - being in on bids, visionaries of projects well or ill-conceived.

Increasing visibility into local government, where people have the greatest proximity to participating directly in civic affairs. Cu

https://docs4.google.com/document/d/1z9TK3bhRI2PX4bbmLWXrC4-2fEZIrc8EVh8USeAa35I/edit?hl=en#