Just a great article to bring everyone up to speed on latest technology efforts re-democratize our democracy.
Though it may not be obvious, the road marks in this amorphous thing called Web 2.0 are political: grassroots participation, forging new connections, and empowering from the ground up. The ideal democratic process is participatory and the Web 2.0 phenomenon is about democratizing digital technology.
http://www.wired.com/...
For example, tagging information about federal expenditures, unpaved highways or toxic waste sites with GeoRSS would let citizens easily cross-reference the data with other information, including campaign donations. Data feeds that use Ajax, JSON and OpenGIS Web Map Service can incorporate externally hosted geospatial capabilities into mashups that weave data together into a single, multifeatured map.
These capabilities would make publicly accessible information publicly comprehensible, for a multitude of uses and applications, incorporating a variety of data.
Citizens should be able to see which districts receive infrastructure improvement and which are left out in the cold; which have true public health, and which only have subsidies for health plans that their residents and businesses can't afford.
Better-synthesized information can reveal the dynamics of cause and effect, chart the money trail and lay bare the profit motive.