We’re happy to announce that the the Civic Commons Marketplace is now open for public use. The Marketplace has been in development for the past few months as our team worked to resolve bugs and polish the interface. Though still in beta, we invite you to come check it out: marketplace.civiccommons.org.

At its core, the Marketplace is a collectively created wiki of civic software; a shopping mall of sorts for government personnel to search and find civic software that best fits their city’s needs. The hope is for the Marketplace to become aggregate of the nation’s municipal IT applications and a forum for sharing software solutions. For those of you who follow the startup scene, think “Crunchbase for civic tech.”

Come to the Marketplace and discover what’s being used in New York or San Francisco, and figure out what could work in your city.

Need a new transportation app? Find one here. How about citizen service or 311 application? Here are 24 suggestions. You can find applications for administration and for art. Currently the Marketplace is tracking 193 apps in 58 cities, and we’re just getting started – share your apps, write reviews, and help us create a more comprehensive Marketplace.

We’re happy to publicly launch the Marketplace in conjunction with the 2011 GovFresh Awards. The Awards honor the most innovative citizen and city and local government technology projects of the year. You can view the GovFresh Awards winning apps, here, and learn more about them here, in the Civic Commons Marketplace.

Help build the Marketplace. Add your apps, now.