"Thank a Govie" Today

At Socrata, we love our hard-working, forward-thinking, passionate customers.

These open data advocates truly are changing the way governments interact with their citizens, increasing public trust and building the framework for the next generation of government. They’re putting in the extra hours, taking risks, and pushing their organizations to change because they believe it’s the right thing to do.

There’s one problem, though. We don’t thank them enough.

This oversight became apparent in one of the sessions at Seattle Open Data Day. We in the open data community don’t take nearly enough time to thank our government counterparts for the amazing work they do. Most of our energy is spent on pushing for new datasets, complaining when things aren’t released, or griping about data being incomplete or wrong.

Gifts, money, and big public shows of affection were ruled out, and the idea that was determined to have the biggest and most personal impact on them seemed to be simple hand-written thank you notes.

So, we’re proud to announce a personal project I’ve been working on for the last couple of weeks - the “Thank a Govie” program.

If you mail your thank-you notes to “Thank a Govie”, c/o Socrata, we’ll forward them on to the individuals that made them happen. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know who exactly was responsible - just let us know the government, dataset, and/or project, and we’ll make sure your note gets to the right person.

If this idea warms your heart as much as it warms mine, go check out thank-a-govie.com and send your love today!