mySociety.org - What’s it all about then, eh?

mySociety is many things!

• mySociety is a non-profit based on a charity.
• mySociety is a community of volunteers and (paid) open source coders.
• mySociety runs most of the best-known democracy and transparency websites in the UK, sites like TheyWorkForYou and WriteToThem (which way back in the dawn of time was called FaxYourMP).
• mySociety is a not-for-profit company that builds websites of a democratic bent for other people, such as the No 10 Downing Street Petitions Website, for the Prime Minister’s Office.

What are mySociety’s goals?

mySociety has two missions. The first is to be a charitable project which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. The second is to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to use the internet most efficiently to improve lives.

How do I get in contact with you in person?

All the info is right here.

What are you doing at the moment?

The best way to get a feel for this is to keep an eye on our news blog. In general, though, we do two sorts of things:

• Upgrade our pre-existing sites and make them ever better and more useful.
• Contract for media companies, bits of government and NGOs, building democratic and citizen-focussed sites.

Can you give us any examples of the types of project you’re on about?

TheyWorkForYou, WriteToThem (which used to be called FaxYourMP) and FixMyStreet are all examples of the type of service that we aim to foster. But it is exactly the rarity of such really useful, effective, cheap civic sites that led to mySociety’s creation.

What have you been doing for the last few years?

mySociety was founded in September 2003. We spent the first year raising money and soliciting the public and each other for ideas. Our first funding arrived in September 2004, at which point we started working furiously, launching WriteToThem, PledgeBank and HearFromYourMP all before the end of 2005. In 2006 we built and launched the No 10 Downing Street Petitions Website and FixMyStreet. In 2008, we’ve launched WhatDoTheyKnow and started the FreeOurBills campaign.

Who are you lot?

Tom Steinberg is mySociety’s founder and director. He’s joined by three full-time developers, Angie Ahl, Francis Irving and Matthew Somerville, plus Keith our sysadmin and Karl our commercial director. On top of this we are lucky to have a whole bunch of super fine volunteers, who do everything from contribute tiny amounts of time and a few clicks to build and run entire sites as part of the mySociety community, like the incomparable Richard Pope and his PlanningAlerts website (which has a volunteer community of its own). Read about how you can be involved here.

Are you a registered charity?

mySociety is the project of a registered charity (donate!). The charity is called UK Citizens Online Democracy and is charity number 1076346. You can read more about how UKCOD is governed, and its finances, on UKCOD’s website. UKCOD runs mySociety as a project, and also wholly owns a company called mySociety Ltd. If you do commercial work with mySociety, it is the Ltd company you’ll be dealing with. Any profits it makes goes into running the charity’s projects, like TheyWorkForYou.

Where did the idea for mySociety come from?

mySociety represents the crystallisation of a lot of widely shared thoughts and concerns about the problems facing democracy, government and technology in the UK at the moment. James Crabtree first gave the idea formal shape in an OpenDemocracy article, suggesting that the UK government should set up a civic hacking fund to do things like mySociety does now. Then Tom took the idea, gave it a polish, and set up mySociety outside of government (with a little help from about 50 people). Many of the core people in mySociety were hacking on projects that fitted into the vision (some long before there was a mySociety) and so we’re really a rich mix of influences.

What are the hallmarks of your sites?

mySociety is keen to build sites which embody certain core principles, such as cheap scalability, really tangible outputs, and high usability. Often people use the word ‘minimalism’ when describing our interfaces, and that’s not something we’d deny. We’re not a web agency, and won’t build anything we don’t believe is worthwhile, but if you have an idea and you think we might be able to help, please get in touch.

Are the projects open source?

Nearly all of our code is open source: you can find our CVS repository here. Even the No 10 petitions website is all open source - have at it. We’ve got a private repository as well, with server configuration stuff in it.

Do end users pay for services?

No. There would have to be a very unusual and compelling basis for charging to become part of a project’s structure. Sometimes partners who want to syndicate our sites will be asked to contribute.

I’m not in Britain - does any of this matter to me?

Yes! Whilst our home country is the UK, we do not see ourselves as limited to it in any way. We gladly speak to and work with people from outside the UK. People around the world can use and adopt our open source tools and services for use in their own countries. PledgeBank, for example, is a truly international project. We will consider developing projects based in other countries, if appropriate funding can be found.

Do you have a political agenda?

No, we are not party political, and this project is neither left nor right wing. It is about building useful digital tools for anyone who wants to use them. And unlike most think tanks that say they’re non-partisan, we really are – none of that ‘It’s not official, but everybody knows they’re really close to party X’ nonsense here.

Who built this website, www.mysociety.org?

Angie Ahl and Richard Pope. Read a blog post about it.

Where do you work?

Physically, we all work from home, scattered as near as London, Cambridge,  Birmingham and Cumbria. But really we work online - come and say hello in our public Internet chat room.

How can I be kept up to date with the projects?

Please join our email news list, or keep an eye on our news blog. All normal no-moronic-spamming policies apply.

How can I contact you?
See our contact page.