Would you like to run a site like WhatDoTheyKnow or FixMyStreet in your own country, but have worries that you won’t be able to get them running and correctly adapted to your local situation?

If so, mySociety has some news of an offer that may interest you.

As of May 2013 we will be offering free technical time from mySociety’s developers to a limited number of people and organisations who want to get versions of Alaveteli (Freedom of Information requests) and FixMyStreet (street problem reports) working, anywhere in the world.

All you have to do to be considered is to send us a message expressing an interest in gaining our support, and telling us a bit about you and what you hope to achieve.

If you’re selected, we’ll help modify the software to make sense in relation to your own region’s laws or local authority’s systems, and we’ll even host the service if that is a problem.

More importantly, we’ll help to explain how the software works at a technical level, so you or a local developer can really understand how the open source code works, and how to make changes to it.

This service from mySociety is worth thousands of dollars a time. We are offering it because we think it is important to support people who have the enthusiasm, but perhaps not the means, to run a service like FixMyStreet or WhatDoTheyKnow.

In order to qualify, you must be a group or an individual who can show us that you have a desire to run online civic and democratic projects like FixMyStreet or WhatDoTheyKnow in the long term, and that you have access to some kind of web developer skills. You can be anywhere in the world.

What does commitment mean? Nothing impossible, but there are a couple of requirements.

You need long-lasting enthusiasm. We’ll be looking to make sure that you understand the ongoing time and energy commitments a project like this will involve. To put it frankly, we don’t want to invest in a project that may close down after a few months. So, we’ll want to have a chat to ensure that you really know what you’re getting into.

You need access to a web developer – at least sometimes. While these kinds of sites do, to some extent, run themselves, some work will always be necessary to keep them running smoothly*. And while our developers will help you get your site off the ground, you will need your own developer too, both at set-up, and as the site continues to run.

But don’t let that put you off – we also want to hear from you even if you haven’t yet got a group in place. The important thing is that you have the desire and the motivation to drive a project to completion.

Interested? Drop us a line now and let’s talk. Don’t forget to tell us what country, city or region you’re interested in covering, and what resources you can contribute to making your site into a success.

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* See the following resources to understand what sort of work is involved in running a civic or democratic website:

– Interview with David Cabo, who runs a Right To Know site in Spain on our Alaveteli platform

– Blog post by Richard Taylor, volunteer on WhatDoTheyKnow.

Photo by Ken Hawkins (CC)