CIO MagazineCIO magazine released a new white paper and video yesterday (registration required) on the topic of data integration. Although the content is all about big, for-profit enterprises, a lot of the data and analysis applies to the nonprofit community, as well. It turns out that for-profits have too many databases full of out-dated information, and they're fixin' to do something about it. Some interesting tidbits:

• 73% of survey respondents say that Improvement of Business Intelligence is driving their data integration plans. In other words, they want a 360-degree view of their clients.
• 47% of respondents say that the biggest challenge is changing the culture of their organization. Getting that end-use buy-in for the new procedures and policies is tough.
• Most agree that a successful data integration initiative will have buy-in and support from the leadership and work across departments.

Sounds awfully familiar!

Maplight.org (the winners of the NetSquared project) have released two new projects today: a fundraising widget that lets you track presidential fundraising; and plans for an API that will let you tap into their vast array of FEC (Federal Elections Commission) data.

According to their press release, we have a lot more to look forward to:

The MAPLight.org presidential widget is the first of several more widgets that the organization will release. By September 15, MAPLight.org will release a widget for U.S. Congress, showing total campaign contributions for each candidate for Congress. By September30, MAPLight.org will release its "Money and Votes" widget, revealing correlations between campaign contributions and votes for any bill in U.S. Congress.

The widget is lots of fun, but it's the API I'm really excited about. I can't wait to see what the community is able to do with that data.