Evaluating the Dev Experience with the Fair Political Practices Commission

Data about money and politics is available from many different sources. Some platforms are better than others and the California Fair Political Practices Commission (http://www.fppc.ca.gov/) (FPPC) is interested in hearing from the developer community about what works and what doesn’t in this space.

How might civic technologists build interfaces that help voters better understand how money is used in elections? Are existing application programming interfaces (APIs) usable or does the State of California need a new platform?

The FPPC is the state’s political watchdog agency, and Code for Sacramento (http://codeforsacramento.org) and Hacker Lab (http://hackerlab.org) have teamed up to help the FPPC get answers to these questions from web developers who can offer a critical perspective. After hearing from Jodi Remke, Chair of the FPPC, we’ll provide a technical overview of five existing platforms:

• Power Search (http://powersearch.sos.ca.gov/) by MapLight in partnership with the California Secretary of State

• Django CAL-ACCESS (http://www.californiacivicdata.org/) by the California Civic Data Coalition

• followthemoney.org (http://www.followthemoney.org/) by the National Institute on Money in State Politics

• OpenFEC API (https://api.open.fec.gov/developers) by 18F

• Civic Information API (https://developers.google.com/civic-information/?hl=en) by Google

After the overview, we’ll breakout into groups to evaluate and test the usability of each platform from the developer perspective. If you are interested in the concept of government-as-a-platform, this is a meetup for you!

Civic Hack Night is a free, monthly event in Sacramento to build, share and learn about tools to create, support, and serve the public good.

We're volunteer designers, academic researchers, data journalists, activists, policy wonks, web developers, and curious citizens who want to make our region more delightful to live in through data, design, and technology.

You don't have to be a coder to get involved with Code for Sacramento (http://codeforsacramento.org/). Anyone passionate about using technology to solve public problems and improve the citizen experience should attend this meetup.