Press Release
June 30, 2009, Montreal, Québec—VisibleGovernment.ca, a Canadian non-profit that promotes online tools for government transparency, today launched the Beers for Canada campaign to promote the development of web tools for open government.
“Canadians are thirsty for change in how they connect with their elected officials. This Canada Day, we’re challenging Canadians to put some of their beer money behind the move to open government,” said Jennifer Bell, VisibleGovernment.ca’s founder. “For the price of a beer, Canadians can help us build tools to promote transparency and encourage our leaders to share more information openly.”
All it takes is a visit to www.beersforcanada.com this Canada Day holiday to help connect public officials to the general public. The open government movement makes official data available to ordinary people, encouraging accountability and communication between citizens and government leaders.
Where will your beer money go?
The funds raised by the Beers for Canada effort will be used for:
• Creating new tools and websites that encourage more open communication between government and citizens.
• Launching the Code For Canada application design competition that awards prizes to people who build web, facebook, and iPhone apps that provide visualization, analysis, and access to federal government data sets.
• Working with other open government organizations like The Sunlight Foundation in the U.S. (www.sunlightfoundation.com) and MySociety in the U.K. (www.mysociety.org) to bring tools they’ve created to Canadian screens, and to share Canadian-made applications with others.
• Encouraging government openness in public forums, helping government organizations to share their data, showcasing examples of open government, and promoting the benefits of transparency in public office.
What we’ve built so far
VisibleGovernment.ca has already launched several sites and tools that are invaluable to researchers, reporters, and ordinary citizens. These include
• iBelieveInOpen (www.ibelieveinopen.ca), a campaign that encouraged candidates in last year’s elections to commit to a more transparent leadership.
• FixMyStreet (fixmystreet.ca), A site that lets you report potholes, bad lighting, unsafe pathways and more so your local government knows what to fix.
• Expense Visualizer, a soon-to-be-launched project that allows anyone to browse federal travel
and hospitality expenses. An invaluable tool for reporters or concerned citizens, it’s a quick way to compare government spending.
• Disclosed (disclosed.ca), a site that collects federal government contracts from over a hundred different websites, then makes them easily searchable.
About Visiblegovernment.ca
Visible Government is a Canadian non-profit organization whose mission is to improve civic participation and government accountability in Canada by promoting online tools for government transparency. You can learn more about us on the web at www.visiblegovernment.ca, or by calling Jennifer Bell, VisibleGovernment.ca’s Executive Director, at 514-513-0475.