Vizzing the Sunlight Design for America Contest

Take a look at the visualizations we created for the Sunlight Foundations Design for America contest. Best of luck to all of our fellow contestants - there are some very cool interactive apps and vizzes that have already been submitted. Sorry, our vizzes are way too big to fit in our blog, so you have to click out the old fashioned way!

• State Campaign Contributions - See who received the most campaign contributions... and from who! This viz takes a look at state level campaign contributions for 2009, using data compiled by Transparencydata.org.

• National Obesity Comparison Tool - Obesity is perhaps the most pressing of all American health concerns. This app uses CDC data to allow anyone with internet access to see how their community compares to their state and the nation as a whole across several important metrics related to obesity.

• Stimulus Efficiency Tool - Ever driven by a road sign that says "This Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act"? The stimulus at work. However, if you are anything like me, you occasionally wonder how many people are being put to work by those projects and how much the government spent to do it. Use this tool to search for the most job inefficient projects by state (the projects that created the fewest jobs per dollar spent). Visit Recovery.gov to get the data.

• Government contracts without competition - Competition in government contracts is an essential part of any functioning democracy. Without it, waste and cronyism multiply exponentially. This tool has several uses. Citizens can look for the agencies that are distributing an excessive amount of non-competitive contracts and encourage their elected representatives to combat it. Corporations can use the "Select Category" tool to narrow down the list to their industry and find jobs that they might have missed out on. When they come up again, they will know to bid! Last but not least, this is a report card for government workers and elected representatives who should encourage competitive bidding so that this viz has no purpose. See USA Spending for the data.