Hello, we're mySociety
MySociety makes useful web sites that help people get involved with real life. We want to make civic participation easier and more rewarding for everyone, by making use of the smart stuff we can do these days on the web.
Here are some of the things we've done so far.
WriteToThem.com
Some Members of Parliament have never been terribly easy to get hold of. Partly because they tend to be very busy, and partly because they tend to be in London rather than in their constituencies.
The traditional method was to write to your local MP at the House of Commons, but in this age of text messaging and the internet, that is not something a lot of people will even consider doing. Our plan was to make contacting your MP as easy as shopping online. Easier, actually.
That's what WriteToThem is for. It's a smart database on the web, designed to connect ordinary people to their elected representatives. Throw in a UK postcode, and WriteToThem instantly provides a list of local councillors, MPs and MEPs, with the option to send any one of them a message.
The message system is designed to be very easy to use. Just write a letter and click the send button - all the work of filling in the correct address, and actually sending the message, is done by WriteToThem.
A handful of MPs have declined to accept messages sent to them via the site, but the vast majority accept them and many have told us what a useful service they think it is. Cite this???SS
HearFromYourMP.com
HearFromYourMP is also about connecting people and their politicians, but works the other way round.
The idea is to encourage individual MPs to engage in conversations with local people using the web and email. If at least 25 people in any constituency sign up saying they're interested, the site automatically invites that MP to join an online discussion forum.
It works like this: the MP sends an email about any topic worth discussing, and it is copied to everyone who signed up. They see the MP's comments, and at the bottom a link to a web page, where they can add their own opinions.
We made it this way because it cuts down on junk mail and keeps the signal/noise ratio high (which is a geeky way of saying the quality of the conversation tends to be pretty good).
So far over 17,000 people in all 646 constituencies have signed up expressing some interest; and 46 MPs have started online discussions as a result.
TheyWorkForYou.com
Probably our best-known site, this is also our longest-running project and for many of us, our pride and joy.
Hansard, the official record of everything that is said in Parliament, has been published online for many years now. Unfortunately, it is, and always has been, a dog of a site to navigate around. Finding something specific, spoken by a certain person during a certain debate, was troublesome. Viewing it in context alongside information about the person or debate was impossible. And you couldn't make your own comments about it either.
TheyWorkForYou fixes all those problems. It takes everything published by Hansard and re-formats it in a friendly way, automatically creating links between each MP's name and their online profiles along the way.
Anything said by anybody can be commented upon; individual speeches can be bookmarked; MP's interests, voting records, performance and expenses examined; and the whole lot is searchable.
We're rather proud of it.
Pledgebank.com
Make a promise to yourself and you might simply forget about it, or ignore it. Make a promise in public, and not only are you more likely to remember it, but you also might get some people offering some support.
That's what Pledgebank is all about. This hugely successful site makes it very easy to make some sort of pledge or promise. You get to say: "I'll do it, but only if some other people will help me do it."
Each promise becomes a web page, where the pledge maker can explain their position and provide more detail about the issues. By filling in a box on the same page, people can add their support, anonymously if they wish to.
Every pledge has a target number of supporters and a pre-defined time limit, both chosen by the creator of the pledge. If the target isn't met or time runs out, no-one is obliged to do anything. But if it is met within the time limit, everyone who signed up is duty bound to fulfill their promise.
Cynics might assume that the anonymous nature of the internet makes this a fruitless exercise, but in reality we've found it well supported. Even Tony Blair's been using it.
NotApathetic.com
It's true: some people don't vote because they're apathetic.
But *others* don't vote for all sorts of reasons; political, practical and personal. We wanted to give those people a voice, a means of telling the rest of the world why they didn't vote.
It's surprising what people will share if you just give them a voice. The site attracted some impassioned commentary on the state of modern democracy, and insightful views about UK politics.
Built for the UK General Election in May 2005, the site is no longer open for new submissions, but the comments and conversations it attracted will be online indefinitely.