Several teams of Harvard students submitted applications to be considered for the award. One Degree, a project led by Rey Faustino was one of the applicants. The project won second place for the Public Sector Innovation Award, at an awards assembly held in Cambridge, Massachusetts on March 29, 2012. One Degree’s main platform is a Yelp-like web and mobile application for social services that aims to increase citizen access to support services and increase awareness of available programs in local communities.

“I am from an immigrant community myself, so I understand the difficulty involved with accessing these programs,” Faustino explains. “Schools try to help, and their main task is to educate students. But often schools do not have enough resources themselves to overcome of all of the out-of-school poverty-related issues to make students successful. This is especially true in low-income schools.”

The web platform allows users to access, review, rate, and share information about local non-profit, government and community resources in much the same way that individuals share information about restaurants and other venues on Yelp. By allowing information to be spread by the users of these programs and benefits, Faustino hopes to shift power back to low-income and immigrant communities.

He is also working to build a network of organizations, schools and other community institutions in order to support information sharing both about the app itself and about services in the app. “There is a 1 to 420 counselor to student ratio in this country, both students and advocates need help to find the resources they need,” Faustino said.

To that end, he has interviewed with over 150 business, technology, government, philanthropy, and education professionals to gain their feedback about how the new One Degree platform could work within the context of their work and what kind of information should be included in One Degree. Faustino has also been successful in setting up early partnerships with several schools in the San Francisco, California area for the initial launch of the application.

“One Degree exemplifies the innovation the nation needs in human services, and I’m pleased they were the second-place winner of the Harvard Public Sector Innovation Award,” said David Wilson, Managing Director, State, Provincial & Local Government for Accenture – one of the sponsors of the award.

“Open data and citizen engagement is the next wave of innovation in human services, and One Degree will push this form of innovation forward,” said Antonio Oftelie, Fellow, Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard and competition judge.

The project is expected to launch officially in August 2012. Faustino is currently looking to add to his team of developers, volunteers and supporters. He can be reached directly at rey@1deg.org.

Taken together these plans signal big moves in both public and private sector to modernize and streamline technology infrastructure through cloud services. The shift to cloud is also making it easier for public and private organizations to manage and release big data thus increasing transparency and accelerating new information discovery.

According to the Alliance, by standardizing IT requirements There could be a reduction of as much as $25 billion in annual IT spend over the next five years and up to $50 billion in cloud services investment. Four of the usage models and an overview document target security, a leading concern for cloud adoption. The security usage models will drive interoperability between identity management and access management systems that will allow users to utilize resources in the cloud as if they were located within the organization. The fifth usage model focuses on long distance virtual machine migration which provides information about enterprises’ expectations for availability, scalability and extendibility of their data via seamless data migration.

The federal government along with other private sector groups have been working on standards as part of a cloud first strategy deployed by the Obama administration to help modernize government IT systems while keeping costs low. The strategy is further supported by a multi-agency effort to support research and development into big data projects leveraging the massive amount of public data to innovate and solve problems.

NASA is one such agency managing both cloud and big data to innovate and provide more transparency to the public about its activity. The agency has been working on its own cloud for a number of years and now manages a directory of more than 100 participatory, collaborative and transparent projects, offering citizens opportunities to understand, support and engage with the agency.

NASA’s Open Government efforts launched two years ago in response to the December 2009 Open Government Directive, which called on executive agencies to become more open and accountable. Since then, the agency has worked to implement 147 goals addressing policy, technology and culture throughout its centers and offices. The agency has created an infographic to highlight its progress available here.

Creators of the database point to recent public protests such as those over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the presidential election as catalysts for BillTrack50. They note that by having access to legislation happening across the nation, individuals can see trends and take action in their own localities.

Visitors to the website will be able to search via keyword through state bills. The searches do include full text scanning, not just bill name or headline. Bills can also be shared through social media outlets or contact bill authors.

“The time for voters to be informed and act on state legislation is now- this is the year for participation,” said Karen Suhaka, president of LegiNation. “Recent events have damaged the American public’s trust and people are realizing that they must help keep organizations accountable.”

Last year, following an investigative report from the Las Vegas Sun, Nevada Governor Bill Sandoval signed into law a package of bills designed to provide more transparency around hospital quality. Since then, the legislature has been looking at ways to extend similar reporting to legislative proceedings including requiring the legislature to be subject to state Open Meetings Rules. However, some lawmakers have said the time lines for posting information to the public may be unrealistic for legislative activities.

Reno assemblyman Pat Hickey is proposing a measure that would require interim committees to post agendas three days prior to meetings. If passed the bill would open up meetings held outside of the normal session. Many interim committees already post such information to the public, the measure would create a single standard for all interim committees.

Ohio, received a D- grade during Sunshine Week, leading state Democrats to call for a bi-partisan task force that would make recommendations on measures to improve ethics rules and increase transparency.

Lawmakers are asking for renewed consideration of a bill that would provide more transparency on expenditures. Another bill would create public financing for judicial elections. And a third bill seeks to make the details of public-private partnerships available to the public.

“This Governor is determined to operate this state in the dark. We can never let that happen. If you have nothing to hide you should always want the process to be as open as possible,” said Rep. Lundy at a news conference held to discuss the task force and proposed bills. “As legislators we must take action to correct these problems immediately.”

Lawmakers will push for the bills to be taken up as soon as the legislature returns from its spring recess in a few weeks.

Under the terms of the proposed bill, members of the public would be allowed to request records of most statehouse meetings. A few types of records would be exempted including personnel records or caucus meetings. If a request is denied, a citizen can request an appeal to the legislative oversight committee which would then vote publicly on the issue.

The proposed bill is separate from the Open Records Act should any future legislatures decide to make changes to the bill they can do so without effecting the existing Open Records statute.

So far the measure has passed a committee vote and is expected to go to a floor vote next week. However, despite passing a committee vote, the measure is expected to face opposition from lawmakers in both parties that feel that this level of transparency may limit the legislative process.

The Georgia ruling, Cardinale v. the City of Atlanta was the result of a lawsuit filed by Matthew Cardinale, a local first Amendment activist, against the City of Atlanta over failure by city council members to record non-roll-call votes at a February 2010 retreat. The decision reverses a Court of Appeals ruling that existing open meetings rules which do not require meeting minutes to reflect non-roll call votes.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Carol Hunstein said, “While the act provides for public access to agency meetings, it also fosters openness by, among other things, requiring agencies to generate meeting minutes that are open to public inspection so that members of the public unable to attend a meeting nonetheless may learn what occurred. …To adopt a contrary holding that agencies possess discretion to decline to record the names of those voting against a proposal or abstaining in the case of a non-roll-call vote would potentially deny non-attending members of the public access to information available to those who attended a meeting.”

In New Mexico, the Senate has approved an amendment to the state’s “Sunshine Portal,” that will require the state to post the names and salaries of a state contractor’s employees. The bill is somewhat controversial, as opponents of the measure feel that it is unfair to require privately contracted employees to have their salaries disclosed on a public website, however the measure is largely supported by transparency advocates.

The bill is the latest move by state lawmakers to increase the transparency of state government. As CivSource reported recently, the state also asked for input on the state budget from citizens in an effort to increase civic engagement and create more awareness about state budget priorities.

The bills will allow anyone to make an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request. Previously OPRA request were limited to state residents only. The bill also allows for requests to be made through means other than the existing OPRA form, provided that the request contains the required information and indicates that it is an official OPRA request. Finally, the bills expand OPRA responsibilities to auxiliary governmental organizations like the League of Municipalities. The state would also be allowed to email records, cutting the administrative costs of responding to requests.

Weinberg wants to bring OPRA into the digital age in order to make the state more responsive to modern modes of information transfer.

“In this day and age, if I submit an OPRA request on a cocktail napkin, so long as it contains the necessary information, that should be enough,” Weinberg said in a local press account. “The guarantee of transparency under OPRA shouldn’t stop at our borders, nor should it be dependent on pro forma mechanics.”

New Jersey officials have been sending mixed signals on transparency over the last few years. Governor Chris Christie ran on promises of increased state transparency but has done little to support that. As CivSource reported previously, the state comptroller released a report noting that less than 10% of state governmental entities were transparent. At the end of 2011, state lawmakers went further and pulled law enforcement payroll information off the Attorney General’s website.

Maryland’s business development office has come under criticism recently for its lack of transparency. In response to that, they have released Maryland Finance Tracker which will let business owners see what financial incentives are available to them when they add new jobs or open new facilities.

There is also an interactive map – MDbizMap which shows visitors market data for their area of the state including employers, schools, local tax credits, and other incentives. Additional resources are expected to come online over the next several months.

The tools follow the release of the state’s first sustainable growth plan and several other interactive online tools designed to help residents and increase transparency. Governor O’Malley has made these types of initiatives central to his administration in effort to upgrade state government’s overall service delivery.

The bill is sponsored by Assemblywoman Amy Paulin who has a background in citizen activism through The League of Women Voters. She is sponsoring the bill out of frustration with the state’s lack of transparency in it’s public meetings.

Without the materials provided to public officials, Paulin said in a piece in WNED news. “It was very difficult to be an effective participant and I thought that was very unfair.”

The new law applies to all records, proposed resolutions, rules, policies and amendments discussed in public session. The bill pushes for agendas to be published in advanced but allows for them to be published as the meeting starts.

Paulin is a stonch transparency advocate and hopes that the bill will transform sunshine laws in New York.

Under current rules, elected officials are required to disclose their finances and some interactions with lobbyists. However, those records are only available by submitting a request. Individuals who submit a request must either purchase a copy of the records and have them sent or travel to the Secretary of State’s office and view them in the office. A bill proposed by Representative Yee calls for an electronic database of this information.

The measure calls for an appropriation from the state’s general fund to create the database. The database would not only be searchable but would also allow officials, lobbyists and companies to file their statements online. The Secretary of State supports the measure calling it necessary for state transparency.

State officials recently came under scrutiny for how they handled influence over the Fiesta Bowl, a situation which led to calls for easier access to the dealings of elected officials and Yee’s bill. The Secretary of State’s office began posting financial disclosure information on its own website several months ago but there is no overarching system in place to handle how this information is posted and the Secretary’s website was never constructed with that intent originally.