Sunlight Labs

Entering digital age an expensive proposition for GOP

The Republican National Committee shelled out $1.4 million dollars over the last six months for Web sites and services, much of which was spent on GOP.com, the party's major Web presence that was unveiled this month, new Federal Election Commission expense reports show.

The figure is far higher than what experts estimate it should have cost, and five times the amount its Democratic counterpart spent to host and maintain Democrats.org.

The biggest disparity seems to be bandwidth costs--the RNC paid Smartech Corp., a Republican-focused hosting firm, more than a million dollars, plus $22,000 to Eloqua, compared to the DNC's $203,000 to Sprint, Switch and Data and Servint Corp.--despite the fact that the two sites' traffic, which determines bandwidth usage and, largely, hosting costs, was the same.

But the design of the site itself was costly, too. In the months prior to the October 13 launch of GOP.com, the committee paid $328,000 to 11 firms for Web development. (The Democrats, which did not completely overhaul their site during that time period, spent $45,000 on Web development.)

Read the rest at Sunlight's Real Time Investigations

Praise for a labor app, and the promise of more great work from our community

The final honorable mention among our Apps for America 2 contest entries, Employment Market Explorer, helps users assess the labor market in a region, watching unemployment over time at the city, county and state level. It contains only two measures—employment and unemployment—so it falls short of providing a more drilled-down look at the labor markets, including sectors, and I'd like to be able to compare regions or states head-to-head. There is a lot of potential here, and as the financial turmoil continues, employment issues will be important to watch. Perhaps a future app will mine the data for some interesting conclusions on the national scale, or highlight areas where change has been particularly notable.

Thanks to everyone who helped make our second Apps for America contest a success, and remember, the fun doesn't end with the competition. Our volunteer community of civic-minded developers—which we hope contest entrants, as well as everyone else, will join--is always hard at work on new projects, and it would be great to see a more in-depth look at labor issues in the future.

Mapps for America

Two simple maps making environmental hazard data more meaningful round out our list of Apps for America 2 honorable mentions. GreenSpaceMap highlights six categories of sites identified by the Environmental Protection Agency on a Google Maps overlay within a slick Java applet, including Superfund sites and Toxic Release Inventory flags.