On Nov. 5, 2010, Social Capital Review became the blog of Public Eye Northwest (PEN), now a 501c3 public charity and a registered Washington state non-profit corporation. PEN works to advance digital civic literacy across diverse communities, and foster voluntary government transparency. Social Capital Review sometimes reports on open government, digital democracy, civic engagement and Central Puget Sound non-profits. But mainly it serves as a mother site for PEN’s key project, Public Data Ferret.

Ferret digs up original, recent, high-news-value online government source materials to produce non-partisan articles about current issues and concerns. These articles always include a link to the source document(s) and are archived at the central Public Data Ferret hub, where they are searchable by jurisdiction and topic tags. Ferret serves as a knowledge base for stake-holders, a news source, and teaching tool. The founder and editor of Social Capital Review and Public Data Ferret is Matt Rosenberg of Seattle. (Public Data Ferret In The News).

Both sites were originally founded with the support of Countywide Community Forums, or CCF, a citizen engagement program in King County, Wash. The work of PEN and Public Data Ferret currently encompasses local and regional governments in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties; Washington state government; and the U.S. government. If you have questions, comments, a submission or link to share, would like a speaker for your group or class, or want to know more, you can reach Matt at matt (at) publiceyenorthwest (dot) org

We’re seeking interns and community volunteers interested in contributing writing, videos, audios or data visualizations related to our work. For writers, we’ll provide training in the Ferret method.

You can join the conversations in the comment sections of our articles, and feel free to email us. Civil disagreement and full, open dialog are welcome: we’d like to hear any and all insights you’d like to share. Are we getting it right, missing something, or just plain wrong?