Three of our friends in the Government tech community were recently listed on TechCrunch’s 20 Most Innovative People in Democracy 2012 list. Congrats to all that made the list (except Snooki, for obvious reasons), and thanks for working tirelessly to help make the United States government more open and transparent.

We wanted to showcase a few of the great tech projects Issa, Kraft and Lira have worked on in 2012.

Congressman Issa was the driving force behind Project Madison and pushed to help KeeptheWebOpen. He live-streams every Oversight hearing and includes a live Twitter dialogue alongside many of the streams. Most notably, he also introduced the DATA Act to require all federal spending data be accessible online. His vision: to give developers the tools to make government more transparent.

Here are a few articles from around the web showcasing Congressman Issa’s tech work:

• Beyond SOPA: Rep. Darrell Issa’s Big Plans for Digitizing Democracy
• Congressman Darrell Issa’s Call to the Internet’s Right Side
• Inside Anti-SOPA Darrell Issa’s Laboratory for Digital Democracy

Seamus Kraft is Congressman Issa’s Director of Digital Media. He is a leader inside the halls of Congress and has helped staffers all over Capitol Hill better leverage technology to communicate with their constituents. Seamus has spearheaded the launch of micro-sites specific to Oversight investigations and heads up the OpenGov Foundation, which promotes opening up government data.

Here are a few Oversight projects Seamus worked on in 2012:

• Fast and Furious Investigation
• Saving the Postal Service
• Protecting Worker Rights

Matt Lira is Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s senior advisor. He pushes for direct democracy through programs like YouCut and organized the first U.S. House of Representatives Hackathon. Matt has helped bridge the gap between DC and Silicon Valley and is frequently quoted in major publications about technology in government.

Here are a few projects/stories that Matt was involved with in 2012:

• AmericanJobCreators.com
• Citizen CoSponsor
• Docs.House.Gov

Again, congrats to the full list. And a special congrats to Issa, Kraft and Lira whom we’ve have the honor to work with.

With Election Day less than a week away, it’s always interesting to hear the critical feedback that the media and general public have of the non-political elements of each candidate’s campaign. inSourceCode was hired to create the brand, website and new media strategy for Indiana Gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence.

Note: We have since worked to transition the Pence Campaign’s website and ongoing new media strategy to a firm dedicated to helping Republicans get elected. We made a strategic decision to move our focus away from campaigns and towards WordPress VIP. Our friends at the Prosper Group have done a fantastic job with Congressman Pence’s online presence. We continue to support Pence’s graphic design needs.

One recent blog had two of its in-house designers review each of Indiana’s local political candidate’s sites. Here’s what they had to say about Mike Pence:

Melissa: This site is colorful, inviting, and easy to navigate. Social media icons and subscribe fields are located prominently at the top. I think this was a good choice because that is a key way for people to stay current with the campaign. The videos, live Twitter feed and Facebook fans makes it even easier to stay connected. Also, the branding is consistent across other media (signage, commercials, apparel, etc.) which is great for recognition. However the execution of the “mike” type treatment falls short.

Joshua: Pence does a nice job of associating himself with Indiana’s color palette. The use of blue and yellow are pulled directly from the Indiana state flag, and the yellow dot of the “i” speaks to the Indiana torch. The colors come across as bright and fresh. The decision to go with a hand-drawn type treatment is interesting. I assume the reason was to convey Mike as a more personal and approachable guy. Although I can appreciate its ambition, I think using a script font to prove you’re “personal” or “relatable” is almost cliche.

Special thanks to Tommy Rector of Rector Communications for working with us on this project for print and promotional materials and for sending us this link!

Do you agree with Melissa and Joshua? What are your favorite things about the Pence design (personal political opinions aside)? What would you change?

Last night, we celebrated the grand opening of our new office in Noblesville. We were blessed to spend time with friends, family and colleagues.

A big thank you to Jamie Nichole and the Parlours for the awesome concert!

Here are some photos taken by Brady Whitesel of imavex.

It’s a proud day at inSourceCode. Today we launched the Madison Project live to the world on GitHub. This is a project we’ve been working on with Congressman Darrell Issa and the OpenGov Foundation since the days of SOPA. You know, that bill that caused a near revolt among web companies and caused the Internet to go dark for an entire day.

Congressman Issa presented Madison at the First Congressional Hackathon back in December and we’ve been working to get it into a format for open-source. He described it as a starting point for collaborative bill authoring, editing and versioning. To borrow a more concrete description from the about section on KeeptheWebOPEN.com (the first site powered by Madison):

You have a right to an open government that works for you. You pay for it. You live with it. And you deserve an equal voice in what government does every day. KeepTheWebOPEN.com exists to power your participation in government, and hold it accountable.

KeeptheWebOPEN.com was built to fight a few misguided technology bills going through Congress by empowering the engineers and the tech-nerds to participate in the discussion. Users could for the first time provide suggestions and recommendations to make bills better before they became law. The platform behind KeeptheWebOPEN, Madison, has been a work-in-progress since.

Today, we crossed the finish line (really just the starting line) and released the code live to the world on Github. We hope that others that are interested in open and transparent government jump in and help us make it better.

Here are a few stories about Madison and the OpenGov Foundation that we are fond of:

• The Atlantic Wire
• CNN
• Fast Company
• TechCrunch
• TechPresident

Throughout these few short months, we’ve been linked to from the homepages of Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and others. The technology has been featured in most major political/tech publications and we’ve been blessed to work with some of the pioneers of open-source. We are humbled to be a small part of a big project, and hope that you might head over to Github and help us change the way laws are made.

INSOURCECODE NAMED WORDPRESS.COM VIP FEATURED PARTNER AGENCY

Local Indianapolis Tech Firm Becomes One of Nine WordPress-Vetted Agencies

INDIANAPOLIS, August 2, 2012 – inSourceCode was named one of Automattic’s VIP Featured Partners in a national press release today. This puts inSourceCode on a short list of vetted partners that can promote their WordPress services and features to large-scale sites that are part of the WordPress.com VIP program (which includes top media companies, sports leagues, and Fortune 500 companies that generate billions of page views in total each month).

inSourceCode began operating in Fishers, Indiana in February of 2011 with two co-founders, Matt Turow and Jayson Manship. Now with 11 full-time employees, inSourceCode builds WordPress sites for enterprises that require their site to always be “on” and who need the peace of mind that their website can withstand a million page views in a day.

“We’re proud of the work we’ve been able to provide to our clients. We treat them like family and have seen extreme growth from our team’s ability to scale WordPress in a way that makes the world’s best Content Management System work for a site with 5 million visitors,” said Jayson Manship. “When WordPress VIP asked us to join the ranks of Facebook, Flipboard, and others, we were thrilled for the recognition. We look forward to the opportunity to continue to work closely with WordPress.com’s VIP team to build great things for our clients and theirs.”

In 2011, inSourceCode launched the first-ever WordPress site in the U.S. House of Representatives. They have been hired to manage hundreds of WordPress sites ranging from Indianapolis-based organizations, like LocalLisa.com and MikePence.com, to national sites like HumanEvents.com and Blog.Heritage.org.

About WordPress VIP
Currently 16.7% of the top million websites run on WordPress. WordPress VIP is run by Automattic, which offers a network of web services for online publishers including WordPress.com (approximately 2.5 billion page views a month – see stats), VIP hosting and support, and more. For more information, visit http://automattic.com.

About inSourceCode
inSourceCode is an Indianapolis-based web development company that builds big things with WordPress. Hired by enterprise companies to scale WordPress to handle millions of visitors a month, inSourceCode also works in Search Engine Optimization and builds “Software as a Service” products for the web. In April of 2012, inSourceCode launched ProofSEO to aid small businesses in getting found online, and in June of 2012, the company launched VolunteerYourVoice.com as a web-based phone banking application. inSourceCode has offices in Noblesville, IN and Washington, DC, and works with clients throughout the United States. For more information, visit http://insourcecode.com.