Mashups and Remixes for Government Information

By Cassandra Harper, ASRC Management Services at the Office of Water Resource Center

Karen Huffman of National Geographic Society and Dan Newman of MAPLight.org presented innovative strategies on creating and accessing government information using mashups during this lively session.  Web 2.0 has brought about a tremendous growth in collaborative communities and mashups on the Internet.  It allows new ways to deliver information with customized content.  Librarians are fast to catching onto this trend by combining and remixing existing, and sometimes unrelated, data available on the internet to create new consolidated and customized applications.  The creation of mashups can present legal issues when combining commercial information.  However, government information is in the public domain and can be used without fear of copyright violations.

Mashups are part of service-oriented architecture with internet resources.  Mashups reach into the Application Program Interface (API) for a given application, then extract information and webpage elements to launch a new application that adds value.  In the past, mash-ups focused heavily on connecting and mixing information with pinpoints on maps.  Some mashups connected information on crime statistics, or real estate with Google or Yahoo maps to add value for users.

National Geographic Society (NGS) library made innovative strides to enhance and add value to information, improve productivity and corporate growth.  Mashups have enhanced their existing library services. Presently, the library is working on a redesign of its Earth Currents newsletter.  The staff added Google gadgets that enhanced the newsletter with images of the day from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) website and earthquake data from United States Geological Survey (USGS).  Google provides scripts that can be added to your webpage and allows users to create their own gadgets.  The creation of the website for the joint BioBlitz project between NGS and the National Park Service included a merger of data about additional bio-blitzes using KML standard with Google maps to pinpoint locations on the map.  Additional features included the addition of podcasts, RSS feeds and embedded links from search results in USA.gov, the official portal for the federal government.

Newman presented the features of the award winning MAPLight.org.  MAPLight.org tracks the relationships between campaign contributions and votes on legislation by election officials.  It is a nonpartisan and nonprofit service that was featured in Wired magazine in April 2007.  MAPLight.org mashes-up data from three sources: funding information from the Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics and voting information from Thomas.gov.  MAPLight.org combines this data to provide a graphical interface that demonstrates a connection between monetary contributions and votes on key legislation.  Users have access to data that combines campaign contributions to a specific politician and their voting records.  It provides details on funds from interest supporting legislative issues and not supporting legislative issues and its ultimate passage or defeat.  In the future, MAPLight.org plans to include mashups of regional and demographic data on contributions from citizens with pinpoints of key areas on maps and a legislative bill tracking service.

Getting Started

There are many factors to consider before creating a mashup.  First, develop your ideas on paper.  Important considerations include the purpose of the mashup, methods for measuring usage, users, and cost.  Collaborate with a team to assess your organization's issues and needs.  Also, look for resources on building mashups.  Programmableweb.com is a good resource for information about creating your own mashups.  It also provides free API tools for mapping to government data and other content.