Today Alex, Jeff, and I had the opportunity to talk with some of the DC government’s leading technology officers about open data at the Apps for Democracy press conference. Washington, DC is emerging as a leader in opening up government data, and I have to say we’re proud. The city opened up more than 200 real time data streams as part of the Apps for Democracy contest, a competition they sponsored that asks local web developers to take this data, analyze it, and put it on a website in a way that DC residents will find useful, and rumor has it that they’ll open more data streams up in the near future.

Here’s a photo of Alex, Jeff, and I with Mayor Fenty at the press conference. We’re psyched to have a mayor who encourages innovation in technology and comes out to give awards for it.

The fact that DC seems to be firmly behind open data is pretty revolutionary – they’re one of the first governments in the United States to do something like this. We spoke with Chief Technology Officer Vivek Kundra and City Administrator Dan Tangherlini and they both see that it’s not only the citizens who benefit from open data and the more information that comes with it, but also city governments who benefit from all the tools that are made with this data too. There was even talk about how our entry Stumble Safely could be repurposed as a tool for police officers to better identify crime hot spots around bars : )

The Apps for Democracy contest was a great way for the DC government to open up the dialogue on the data it’s made available, and we’re looking forward to keeping the discussions going. Jeff and Alex are working on some recommendations for how the city can improve its data and make it easier to work with right now : )

Here’s a photo of us with CTO Vivek Kundra:

We submitted two entries in the contest that we built Drupal and Mapnik. Both websites are 100% open source – we even used the shape files the DC government provides to make the maps. StumbleSafely, our late entry that helps people find the best bars and a safe route to stumble home on, won silver, and DC Bikes, an online guide that makes it easy to find bike routes, bike theft hot spots, and local bike shops, won bronze. Congrats to the two gold winners – DC Historic Tours and iLive.at – and to all the winners.

Here’s a photo of the winners from today: