First of all, these organizations don't pop up or maintain themselves magically, it takes a leader to get this started and a smart team to keep it going. They deserve to be recognized for truly great work.

Second, I think having open government data in a truly ACCESSIBLE format is extremely important. If you've ever tried to look up data on the FEC site, you'll know what I mean. Not to take away from the FEC data site -- it's an incredible data resource, but tech companies certainly do a better job productizing these large amounts of data from the government.