Gov 2.0: Government Design Winners Announced

IRS.gov and infographics related to the Senate, U.S. legislation, and the White House were among the winners of the Sunlight Foundation's "Design for America" awards.

The foundation, a nonprofit focused on the digitization and better accessibility of government data, unveiled 2010 winners of the awards at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington Tuesday night.

Design for America was a 10-week contest that challenged the design community to find innovative ways for the public to engage with government data. There were eight categories and each winner received a $5,000 prize.

IRS.gov won the award for best redesign of a government Web site, according to a slide presentation of winners available on the Gov 2.0 Expo Web site. The new IRS.gov site provided taxpayers with new features such as an easy-to-read graph that visualized a breakdown of their income tax information.

There was a tie for the award for Best Use of Sunlight Data. One winner was Cool Kids @ the White House, a project that provided the names of and information about people who visit the White House. Who Paid Them, a site that encouraged people to play a game to compare their knowledge of political funding with reality, won the other.

An infographic called What is the Senate? won the award for Best Visualization of Senate Floor Procedures. The graphic visualizes how the Senate works in full color and easy-to-understand language.

The Best Visualization of How a Bill Becomes a Law went to How Our Laws are Made, a multicolored infographic that shows the comprehensive, start-to-finish process for how a bill becomes law.

The U.S. passport form, known as Form DS-11, won the Design for America award for Best Redesign of a Government Form. The new form used color and graphics to be more visually attractive than a standard government form.

The Best Visualization of Community Health Data went to a tongue-in-cheek sited called the County Sin Rankings. The site lets people enter the name or ZIP code of the county of the state they live in to see how much people are committing sins in that region.

A more serious project called Which Congressional Districts Are Getting the Money? won the award for Best Visualization of Recovery.gov Data. The project provided a breakdown on how people can view data on Recovery.gov and shows which congressional districts are getting government funding to bolster local economies.

A graphic called the U.S. Federal Spending Compared to Media Coverage of Each Agency won the award for Best Visualization of USAspending.gov Data. The graphic showed how U.S. federal spending compares to the media coverage each federal agency garners.