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The simple summary is that geo2gov is a spatial search engine. The longer version is that geo2gov takes a location in a variety of different formats (address, postcode, suburb, place name, ip address, etc) and converts them to a GPS location, then drills that point through half a dozen spatial layers to identify federal, state, local and ward level locations, as well as your statistical location within the most recent census.

we announce TileMill, a project that brings map design to new audiences and pushes a modular, open source stack that's fast, easy to use, and intelligent

Open Municipal Geodata

Goals

To develop an open technical standard for the structuring and sharing of public geodata

You can build it but they won’t come. All successful open source projects build communities of supportive engaged developers who identify with the project and keep it productive and useful.

Ongoing maintenance and distribution of the data hasn’t been budgeted for almost all the data sets we have today. This attitude has to change, and new projects give us the chance to get it right, but most existing datasets are unfunded for maintenance and release.

there are at least five different types of Open Data groupie: low-polling governments who want to see a PR win from opening their data, transparency advocates who want a more efficient and honest government, citizen advocates who want services and information to make their lives better, open advocates who believe that governments act for the people therefore government data should be available for free to the people, and wonks who are hoping that releasing datasets of public toilets will deliver the same economic benefits to the country as did opening the TIGER geo/census dataset.