Five Gov 2.0 Award Winners Announced at Inaugural Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Today the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase, an inaugural one-day event featuring government projects that leverage the Web as a platform, announced the first Gov 2.0 Award winners. The following presenters were chosen by a live mobile text poll and received awards for new thinking, demonstrating the value of Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 principles, and making an impact on government and the citizens it serves. They accepted their Gov 2.0 Awards during an awards reception at the Washington Convention Center.

The Gov 2.0 Awards were determined via live vote by audiences at Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase who texted in their favorite projects after seeing the presentations from the stage. From over 200 initial submissions, conference organizers chose a select 20 projects that were presented at the event today.

The winners by category are:

Government as a Process: Peter Koht, "City of Santa Cruz Offers Blueprint for Solving CA Budget Crisis with Social Media"

Government as a Provider: Merrick Schaefer, "txts 4 Africa"

Government as a Protector: Jeff Nigbur, "Utah Department of Public Safety Media Portal"

Government as a Peacekeeper: Rita King, "Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds"

Government as Partner: Melissa Jordan, "Transit 2.0 at BART.gov"

"The quality of the submissions we received for the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase is indicative of the level of innovation in government today," said Laurel Ruma, co-chair of the event. "Each of the category winners have demonstrated the value of government as a platform and the innovation that is needed to make that concept a reality. We congratulate the winners for their contributions to the future of our nation."

In addition, the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase hosted the winners of Apps for America 2.0, a program of the Sunlight Foundation. This program challenged the public to build applications based on data.gov, and demonstrated the creativity of developers in designing compelling applications that provide easy access and understanding for the public. The winners of Apps for America 2.0 are DataMasher, govpulse.us, ThisWeKnow.org and the Visualization Prize went to QuakeSpotter.org.

Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase previewed the larger Gov 2.0 Expo scheduled for May 2010. The Gov 2.0 Expo is a companion event to the inaugural Gov 2.0 Summit, an invitation-only gathering of technology and government leadership, taking place September 9th and 10th. Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase (like the Gov 2.0 Expo in 2010) is open to all interested parties, and is intended to bring the wider community of Gov 2.0 advocates and practitioners together.

More information on Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase can be found at http://www.gov2expo.com/gov2expo2009.

Founding sponsors of the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase include Jive and Microsoft; Premier Sponsors: Google, Igloo, Siteworx and Supporting Sponsors: Craig Newmark and pTracker.

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