February Policypitch roundup

The Policypitch team accomplished a lot in February.  We advanced in the Tulane Business Plan Competition, our members pitched new policy ideas, and development of our state legislative tracking and public markup continued!  Please sign up for our Beta 2.0 Launch!

Thanks,

Zach

New pitched ideas:

• Lower traffic camera ticket fines; New Orleans, LA
• Open a full service grocery in downtown New Orleans; New Orleans, LA
• Build an express train between Baton Rouge and Downtown New Orleans; Louisiana
• Student Loan Bailout; New Orleans, LA
• See them all…

February Web stats:

• 822 unique visitors
• 2,220 visits
• Almost 17,000 page views

Other important info:

• Policypitch is one step closer to a $20,000 investment; we made it into the semi final round of the Tulane Business Plan Competition! We are still waiting to hear whether we made it to the final round…
• 7 new blog posts
• Lots of progress on the development of legislative tracking for all 50 states
• Development of real time wiki-style editor for public bill markup began
• Twitter account reached 350 followers.  Check us out @policypitch.com
• Our partner, SocialActions, launched their Change the Web Challenge

Top 5 Internet Priorities for the Next Government

Guest Post by Tom Steinberg on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at MySociety.org

To: Anyone thinking of running any reasonably developed country, any time soon.

Preamble

The most scary thing about the Internet for your government is not pedophiles, terrorists or viruses, whatever you may have read in the papers. It is the danger of your administration being silently obsoleted by the lightening pace at which the Internet changes expectations. I’m not going to give examples of this change, others can do this far better than I. But you don’t need experts’ advice to tell which way the wind blows – if you can’t find any examples of changing expectations in your own life, driven by the internet, I can’t help you anyway: please point me to your successor.

The List

This is a list of the top 5 major things any government of any developed nation should be doing in relation to the Internet, as I see it at the start of 2009. They are not in any order, and do not lack ambition – they are for the Next Government, after all.

Social Actions’ Change the Web Challenge

Our friends at Social Actions have worked long and hard putting together their Change the Web Challenge.  The contest, which began February 23, awards $5,000 to best web-based application created that makes use of the Social Actions open API.   Second and third place also receive $3,000 and $2,000 respectively.

Social Actions currently aggregates opportunities to make a difference from over 40 online platforms such as VolunteerMatch, Kiva.org, Policypitch.com, Idealist.org, and Change.org.   They are looking for applications that will share these opportunities to take action on the websites, blogs, and social networks that people visit each day.  Anyone got any ideas specific to Policypitch?  We’d love to hear em!

Signup for the Beta 2.0 Launch!

We are making tons of changes to the existing platform and will be adding some great features in the near future. Our community portal is undergoing maintenance at this time. Please sign up below for the new beta site. We will send you an email when we launch.

Some of the new features we have been secretly working on:

• Bill tracking and analysis for state legislatures (for free!)
• Real time wiki-style editor that gives you the ability to edit proposed bills!
• Enhanced promotional tools

Enter your email!