>For instance: I work for a company called Azavea that, among many noble efforts, maintains Cicero. It’s a database of elected officials and legislative districts in several countries around the world that gets updated daily. You can imagine that this should be a public good — like, doesn’t the government already have this information? Turns out…nah. Cicero requires ceaseless, grueling work to keep updated, and that means serious investment of time and money.

FWIW there is a crowd-sourced database of politicians on WikiData,[0] if anyone wants to take part in that project.

[0] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_every_pol...