The Sunlight Foundation's open source development team is offering $15,000 to the best "mash up" applications based on data from the government transparency watchdog and its partners that makes Congress more accountable, interactive and transparent. The Apps for America contest is also offering one second place award of $5,000, four third place awards of $1,000 each and 10 honorable mentions at $100 each, the organization said Monday. Submissions are due March 31 and winners should be announced on April 7.

Entries must be applications that use a host of government information APIs or datasets, including the Sunlight Labs API, OpenSecrets.org API, the FollowtheMoney.org API, the Capitol Words API and other Sunlight APIs and datasets. Apps for America entries will be judged by iStrategyLabs CEO Peter Corbett; EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty; technology journalist Xeni Jardin; Aaron Swartz, director of Watchdog.net; and Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs. The group received more than a dozen entries to its first mash-up contest in 2007.