A big deal. - Steve ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Anthea Watson Strong" <[email protected]> Date: Nov 20, 2013 2:09 PM Subject: [open-civic-data] Open Civic Data Identifiers from the Google Civic Information API To: "open-civic-data" <[email protected]> Cc: "James McKinney" <[email protected]>, "James Turk" < [email protected]>, "Ellen Miller" < [email protected]>, "Tom Lee" <[email protected]>, "Philip Ashlock" <[email protected]>, "Ethan Roeder" < [email protected]>, "Tiana Eps-Johnson" <[email protected]>, "Donny Bridges" <[email protected]>, "Mike Jensen" < [email protected]>, "Aaron Strauss" <[email protected]>
Hi Open Civic Data Aficionados, Yesterday Google launched publicly<http://googlepolitics.blogspot.com/2013/11/civic-information-api-now-connecting-us.html> the expansion of the Google Civic Information API. The documentation<https://developers.google.com/civic-information/> is now available, and you no longer need to be white listed to get access to the API. In addition to the elected official and voting information we return, for US residential addresses we are also returning Open Civic Data Identifiers <https://github.com/opencivicdata/ocd-division-ids> for the political districts to which the address belongs. These identifiers help Google knit together the datasets we use to create the API, but they will also make the information we return interoperable with data from other providers. We are very excited about the role the identifiers will play in creating an organized, connected civic data layer, and we couldn't have done it without you. Google owes a* thank you* to everyone on this list who helped create the identifiers, but especially *James Turk* at Sunlight who acted as lead wrangler for the project. Thank you also to the leadership shown by *Tom Lee*, *Ellen Miller* and the rest of the *Sunlight Foundation*. We're always grateful to for your stewardship of the open data community, and this is just one example of the extremely important work you do. In addition, we are grateful to the* New Organizing Institute *including *Donny Bridges* and *Mike Jensen*, *James McKinney* at Open North and *Phil Ashlock* for contributing your time and attention to working out the details of the standard, providing valuable feedback and contributing to the repository. As always, I'd love to talk anytime about your work and how the Civic team at Google could help you scale and improve your products. Please keep in touch, and if you're ever in DC, I'd love to buy you a cup of coffee. Cheers, Anthea -- ____________________ Anthea Watson Strong Google Politics and Elections ----------------------------------------- Group home for Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire: http://groups.dowire.org/groups/newswire Replies go to members of Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire with all posts on this topic here: http://groups.dowire.org/r/topic/5zrUxElnwQxEm13MTLd0uK For digest version or to leave Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire, email [email protected] with "digest on" or "unsubscribe" in the *subject*. Newswire - Steven Clift's Democracies Online Newswire is hosted by Democracies Online - http://dowire.org.
