Shedding light on the subject: the Sunlight Foundation Blog

The Sunlight Foundation, a D.C. established organization, has named its mission to create transparency about the government to its citizens.  By making the decisions of congress more available and understandable, this foundation serves to make a more informed nation of people.  A blog is an essential tool in this objective. In order to be an effective channel for users to receive information, the site should be interactive and have a simple structure; nothing too complex.  The whole point of this foundation and its blog is to make government issues understood.  The nature and content the blog contains already has the potential to confuse and overwhelm its viewers.  So the less chaotic the site design is, the better.  The Sunlight Foundation blog has successfully done just that; simple and to the point.

Q:  Who writes the blogs? What are they writing about?

A:  The blog authors are the staff of the foundation and often times also one of its founders, Ellen Miller.  She keeps very involved with the blog, as many of the posts are written by her.  This is an important component of the blog as said before, the purpose of this foundation, is to inform.  Both the staff and the founders should be involved and capable of explaining the process. The posts contain updates about federal government decisions, its voting process, and the background information about each new proposal.  The posts also give possible future implications based on the current situation.  Press releases, such as this one, are available through another page directly from this site.

Q:  What tools does the blog use to increase interactivity among its viewers?

A:  This blog is an excellent example of how to use interactive tools appropriately.  The posts allow comments, an RSS feed, recent projects and document links.  The site also encourages followers on twitter, facebook and myspace.  More specifically, a new application I’ve seen only on this site so far, is the option to retweet a certain blog post.  The tool is direct and simplifies the process of retweeting information.  This is an important implementation because it encourages users to distribute the blogs information elsewhere, among other websites and users.  It’s also extremely relevant in the fact that twitter has become a popular source for information exchange among various demographics.  This opportunity, for any foundation, could produce the positive interest and feedback it seeks.  It almost seems foolish to not use this tool.

Sunlight Foundation Announces $4 Million Investment from Omidyar Network.

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