What problem are you solving?:

In Hungary people do not have easily accessible and digestible information on how their MPs work. Although the website of the Hungarian parliament contains all important information, it is not at all user-friendly and citizens seeking for information must go through hundreds of pages of Word documents if they seek information on a given subject.

Contacting one’s MP is a possibility but there is no publicity of such correspondence: citizens are unaware if their MPs answer questions or suggestions.

A number of MPs are very passive – they rarely attend the sessions, they do not give speeches, they are out of touch with their constituency.
As parliamentary elections are coming up in April 2010, we are planning to launch the beta-version of a websiteby the end of February to provide information to voters about current MPs who are also candidates in the next elections. By the time the elections are over we plan to become a reliable resource for journalists.

Describe your idea:

We adapt UK website TheyWorkForYou for the Hungarian conditions. On the Hungarian site the emails sent to the MPs and the responses will appear for everyone to read. We’ll also publish MPs’ voting record (currently available only as a mass of data on the Parliament site)highlighting the hottest topics of H. politics, numbers on participation (and active participation separately), register of MPs’ business interest,expenses,
other positions they have (local governments, businesses etc.)
The main difference between the UK and the Hungarian version is that as the Hungarian parliament does not provide data in XML format, we have to use human workpower to transform HTML into XML. However, as we are planning to launch a campaign for easily accessible and user-friendly data this website might be the most important factor in our arguments.
We give the opportunity to our users to give us feedback on the information we provide so we can adapt the site to the users’ needs.

What country will this operate in?: Hungary

Who are you?:

We are an informal group of IT professionals, Freedom of Information activists and journalists. We have experience with online media and we are interested in transparency and accountability projects.