With the notable exception of the new WhiteHouse.gov, most governmental websites are notoriously exhausting, if not impossible, to navigate. Many times they are devoid of simple information, or just plain organization, for that matter.
Washington D.C.’s Chief Technical Officer, Vivek Kundra, decided to change his own city’s sad dot gov fate. He contacted iStrategyLabs, which was tagged with creating and running a series of applications that the city of Washington could use to make their website, and city, more accessible.
In the end, iStrategyLabs did a brilliant job, helping to create a whopping 47 applications for the city’s website. And, the kicker: the venture only cost iStrategyLabs $433.
How?
With a contest. The Apps for Democracy contest, which was publicized across social networks, rewarded the best application designers gold, silver, and bronze awards (reaching up to $2,000) for their open-source creations. It saved the city of Washington money by having others develop the applications essentially pro-bono, and in the process generated some fantastic online content for our nation’s capital. WOMM at its best.
The full story at Oh My Gov!:
http://ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2009/01/28/changing-the-government-contracting-game.aspx
