If you’re in New York, or are interested in Open Government initiatives, you may be excited to know that the New York State Senate has opened up to the online community in a big way. They have put up a Free and Open-Source Software & Services website that provides and documents an API for all of their legislative data, feeds and widgets for that data, a browser for that data that even uses Disqus to allow you to comment on legislation, and open source software projects that help consume that data.
The cool thing for us is that they’ve put all their open source projects up on GitHub at github.com/nysenatecio for you to use and improve.
As a user of Open-Source software the New York Senate wants to help give back to the community that has given it so much – including this website. To meet its needs the Senate is constantly developing new code and fixing existing bugs. Not only does the Senate recognize that it has a responsibility to give back to the Open Source community, but public developments, made with public money should be public.
We are very happy that we can help them share these projects, and I hope more local and federal government efforts will open up to this degree. Congratulations to the New York Senate for moving forward with openness and accountability.
Yes, these guys are amazing. Congratulations to the NY Senate for pushing this forward, and setting an example I hope other states soon follow.