Citizens make society

What’s in a name? Well for mySociety, quite a lot actually.

Which is why we’re excited to announce that mySociety will now be known as… mySociety.

Confused? Let me explain.

mySociety was founded on the belief that things are better when we work together, when people understand how decisions are made, and how they might contribute to better decisions leading to better lives for all of us.

We believe in helping people be active citizens, able to contribute to their communities and hold their elected officials to account – all in all we believe in society, and the role of citizens to participate and have their voices heard. Put that all together, and the name mySociety makes perfect sense.

Just as we help people be active citizens, so do those citizens together make society.

mySociety logo

Those of you with a keen sense of civic tech history may know that our charity until recently wasn’t in fact legally known as mySociety – rather its registered name was UK Citizens Online Democracy (UKCOD), whose sole project was mySociety.

This has been the case since the original group was formed way back in 1996, and later reformed after a dormant period in 2003 by a new generation of trustees and volunteers, many of whom had previously worked together on independent online democratic projects such as FaxYourMP.

Over the last 17 years mySociety has continued to operate and improve our core UK services; TheyWorkForYou, WriteToThem, WhatDoTheyKnow and FixMyStreet. We’ve vastly expanded our international reach with versions of our services running in at least 40 countries and we help better understand how technology can benefit civil society through our original research and our international TICTeC events.

The next few years will see us continue to help active citizens play their role in combatting the biggest challenges facing society: the climate crisis needs active citizens, recovering from the pandemic needs active citizens, being anti-racist needs active citizens.

So goodbye UKCOD, hello mySociety. Which leaves one more name change and an important handover to announce.

Image: Gaurav Dhwaj Khadka