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The Open Government Partnership is a multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. In the spirit of multi-stakeholder collaboration, OGP is overseen by a Steering Committee including representatives of governments and civil society organizations.

OpenGovernment is a free and open-source public resource website for government transparency and civic engagement at the state and local levels. The site is a non-partisan joint project of two 501(c)3 non-profit organizations, the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation. OpenGovernment is independent from any government entity, candidate for office, or political party. The information contained on OpenGovernment pages, wherever applicable, is cited to a primary source-- while we aggregate many different data sources, we do not edit or manipulate government data in any way before presenting it here.

Today, Global Integrity plays the unique role of innovator for the transparency and accountability community: working with a global community of local contributors, we produce innovative research and technologies to ensure that the field continues to evolve with better data and research tools. We believe that accountable, transparent, and honest government is a fundamental right of every citizen.

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that uses the power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency, and provides new tools and resources for media and citizens, alike. We are committed to improving access to government information by making it available online, indeed redefining "public" information as meaning "online," and by creating new tools and websites to enable individuals and communities to better access that information and put it to use.

Government transparency is an important issue to many in today's political environment. The recent controversy in the US over health care reform is just one example of how hard it can be to see the realities behind the rhetoric. As researchers, we believe we can help by giving people the right tools to understand, explore, and communicate about government data.

Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity was founded in 2009 to address falling standards in the media as well as a steep falloff in reporting on state government and provides professional training; research, editorial, multimedia and technical support; and assistance with marketing and promoting the work of a nationwide network of nonprofit reporters. Supplementing these efforts is our newly launched Citizen Watchdog program that trains ordinary citizens to report from local communities.

The Center for Priority Based Budgeting™ (CPBB), a Denver, Colorado-based, mission driven, organization established in 2010, provides technical and advisory services to assist local governments, school districts and other non-profit agencies achieve Fiscal Health and Wellness through Priority Based Budgeting. This creative and innovative process, developed by CPBB, enables communities to reassess their priorities in order to make sound, long-term funding decisions. Establishing a non-profit solidifies CPBB's mission of being a trusted advisor and a dependable, objective resource, assisting local government leaders who are seeking service excellence, transparency to their stakeholders and a strong desire to achieve the Results that are important to their community.

Imagine a world in which ordinary citizens are invested in their governments and take ownership of them by virtue of actually knowing a) how government works and b) how their tax dollars are used for public services. We at CACS see that world vividly and are guided by the vision that solutions to major local and state problems will stem from the marriage of transparency and engagement. The innovative technologies we use open up government, expose its excesses, draw its shareholders-particularly young people-into the political process, and improve the efficacy of services on which citizens rely.

What is the OpenGov Hub? The OpenGov Hub is an attempt to physically collocate historically distinct but like-minded communities of practice under a single shared physical workspace in downtown Washington, DC. The OpenGov Hub aspires to be the day-to-day home to a range of people and organizations working on the open government agenda while also serving as a community gathering point for open government learning and networking activities in the Washington area.

California Common Sense is a Stanford-based nonprofit using Silicon Valley technologies to open government finances to the public, engage citizens in data-driven discourse, and catalyze a grassroots movement for more effective and efficient governance.

Our Policy and Citizen Engagement Unit works to enhance the legislative process and its outcomes by promoting representative, transparent and accountable governance. By improving the interface between citizens and decision-makers we aim at increasing civil society's input in policy-making. Because Democracy is not only about votes, it's also about deliberation.

This book is the culmination of several years of thinking about the principles behind the open government data movement in the United

Organisations all over the world are holding governments to account, challenging corruption, and demanding the right to transparency, and they are using digital technologies to do so. Why should every organisation have to write their software from scratch? By sharing code, we can make things quicker and easier, freeing up time for the important things. More about Poplus

Code for America helps city governments become more transparent, connected and efficient by connecting the talents of cutting-edge web developers with people who deliver city services and want to embrace the transformative power of the web.

MapLight is a nonpartisan research organization that reveals money's influence on politics. We research and compile data about the sources of campaign contributions in U.S. presidential, congressional, state, and local ballot and candidate elections. We provide journalists and citizens with transparency tools that connect data on campaign contributions, politicians, legislative votes, industries, companies, and more to show patterns of influence never before possible to see. These tools allow users to gain unique insights into how campaign contributions affect policy so they can draw their own conclusions about how money influences our political system. MapLight was founded in 2005 by Thomas Layton, Jaleh Bisharat, and Daniel G. Newman. Daniel, MapLight's President, was recognized as one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2010 for his work at MapLight.

CACS is the first organization in history to mine California's vast records and successfully construct an organizational mapping of the several thousand agencies, departments, councils, committees, branches, sections, divisions, and subdivisions-many of them redundant-within California's executive branch. This research base and user-friendly online map will enable CACS to create the clearest case for establishing better governance.