One of the most interesting Startups I’ve come across recently on KillerStartups is Governmentdocs.org. The idea of the site is simple, to provide a database of government docs obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and other sunshine laws. People register for the community and gain access to all the documents in the database and also serve as reviewers of the documents in the database. Reviewers of the documents review it by entering some important data and also by rating its importance. The reason Governmentdocs.org does this is to provide more accountability for government by allowing the general citizen more access to the government accountability process.

Not only can individuals act as reviewers, but every document in the system has a unique URL allowing individuals to easily share the documents in the database with others. Each document also contains the ability to comment on it, even if one is not reviewing the document.

Finally! A Startup with the Web 2.0 politics junkie in mind. This site is great for anyone curious about the inner workings of government and provides access to documents that would otherwise be hard for the general citizen to obtain, even after they had been released through a FOIA request.

True, it doesn’t have the general appeal of a Facebook or a MySpace, but the site does allow people to have the kind of access only available to a handful of non-profit organizations, and also to help those same organizations that don’t have the resources to review all the documents that they request through the FOIA. I encourage anyone interested in politics who has some time to spare to check it out.

That being said, the database is still in its infinacy. The database currently contains 363 documents. That may sound like a lot, but by comparison the federal government received 53,992 in fiscal year 2006 and 52,010 requests in fiscal year 2005. Now it is true that not all requests ultimately result in a document being obtained, but even still, the documents in the database most likely represent a very small fraction of all documents obtained in FOIA requests. Now this may be by design, with only certain documents deemed to be the most important being entered into the database, but that would seem counter to the very idea of the project, which seems review of documents to determine their import. What seems more likely, however, is that this program is in its beginnings and based on the public response will see an upscaling with time. I certainly hope so, as the value of this website is sure to be great.

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