1. Running a site like FixMyTransport

    Note: We are no longer looking for a new owner for FixMyTransport. However, the post below may be of help if you are thinking of setting up/running a similar site.

    As we announced in our last blog post, we’ll be shutting down a number of our sites in the near future.

    This post is to help people who are thinking of using the FixMyTransport code to do something similar.

    The FixMyTransport concept

    fmtWe launched FixMyTransport in 2011. We hoped it would do for public transport what FixMyStreet had done for potholes: put conversations (in this case between passengers and transport operators) in public, and get problems fixed. And, like FixMyStreet, it lets you contact the authority responsible for your problem, even if you don’t know who that is.

    FixMyTransport’s structure enables it to go one step further than FixMyStreet, though: it contains a mechanism that helps users identify people with the same problem, and encourages them to get together and do something about it.

    Scope and performance

    It’s an ambitious site which indexes all public transport across Britain, with a page for every bus stop, train station, and route in the country. It also holds contact details of every operator, council and Public Transport Executive, and it elegantly links all these together.

    In many ways, it’s a success. To date, FixMyTransport users have sent more than 10,000 issues to operators. It gets up to 250,000 visitors, and over 650,000 page views per month, and performs very well in Google for any search term based on a route as defined by its starting point and destination, or based on bus numbers and the areas they operate in.

    And that’s good, because (really as a side effect to the site’s core purpose of making it easy to report problems), FixMyTransport also shows transport routes really clearly, in a way that hadn’t previously been so easy to find online. So, for example, it is great for people wondering where exactly a bus stops along its route, or where to find a bus stop in an unfamiliar location.

    If you’re thinking about running a site like FixMyTransport, all this is important. It works, and people visit it. There’s potential to use it as we did—a service for contacting operators in public—or for uncoupling that part of the mechanism, and using it instead as an information resource.

    So, if FixMyTransport performs so well, why did mySociety get rid of it?

    We worked long and hard on the site, but there was one thing we didn’t predict: the technical resource required to keep the transport data current. At the site’s launch, we imported the vast National Public Transport Access Nodes (NaPTAN), National Public Transport Gazetteer (NPTG) and the National Public Transport Data Repository (NPTDR) datasets, not foreseeing how quickly they would date.

    Bus routes, in particular, change hands and alter routes frequently, and reflecting that requires frequent data refreshes. That’s not currently automated, and would need considerable changes to the source code that, given mySociety’s core mission and our limited resources, we just couldn’t justify.

    If you want to create a site like FixMyTransport, we hope you’ll consider the decision carefully. Unfortunately, it’s not a project we’d recommend for keen enthusiasts: you really will require some technical knowledge.

    We reckon you’ll need the following resource:

    • Ten to twenty minutes per day answering user support queries and performing site admin
    • A developer who is proficient in Ruby on Rails and has dedicated time to alter the code to allow the transport data to be updated regularly from the currently available data sources
    • The will and the wherewithal to support your site as a long term project

    Good luck!

    Our FixMyTransport site is now closed, but the code is Open Source and you are welcome to pick it up and adapt it to your needs. We’d be delighted if anyone’s interested in running something similar: drop us a line and tell us about it if you do.

  2. Goodbye to some old friends

    That's All Folks by William MurphyWe recently shared news of some substantial funding from Omidyar Network, and the goals which that funding will help us to achieve.

    Those goals are quite ambitious, and we’re going to have to focus hard on a number of core projects to meet them. Consequently, we’ve made the hard decision to let go of a few of our other sites; sites which need time and attention, but which won’t help us towards meeting those key aims.

    A bit of background

    mySociety has built loads of websites during its time: it’s the way we’ve historically worked. When we started up, we just wanted to make cool civic sites that would do useful things; if we could get the funding, and someone was willing to build them, we’d go for it.

    All of the projects we launched were based on pretty sound ideas; all of them strove to empower people and open up democracy in one way or another.

    But, as we’ve become a more mature organisation, with responsibilities towards our partners and funders, that scattergun approach doesn’t fly any more. Running a website, no matter how small and self-sufficient it is, requires some investment, in terms of maintenance, user support, and updating, and sadly, right now we can’t maintain everything to a level that keeps it useful and functional for users.

    The keepers

    Over a decade since mySociety first started, some of those early sites have proved their worth. They’ve grown and matured with us. Here in the UK, our Freedom of Information site WhatDoTheyKnow has over 400,000 visitors a month, and sites like TheyWorkForYou, FixMyStreet and WriteToThem have become UK institutions in their own right.

    Alaveteli, the software which underpins WhatDoTheyKnow, has been adopted in 21 countries; the FixMyStreet Platform is being used in 11, with both set to increase as we concentrate on reaching out to international partners over the next few years.

    Additionally, we’ll be continuing to strengthen our international work with the Poplus federation, developing and supporting the use of Poplus Components and the Pombola platform.

    These projects are core to our Omidyar Network funding and the results we’ve promised to deliver from it.

    Goodbye to these

    Along the way, though, there have been some projects which, for one reason or another, have not gained quite as much traction.

    You might say they were before their time: Pledgebank, for example, predates Groupon, Kickstarter and similar pledging concepts.

    In some cases, the world moved on: most MPs now have their own channels for contacting constituents online, so HearFromYourMP isn’t quite as vital.

    In others, we simply don’t have the necessary resources that the project needs: FixMyTransport is a good example of that.

    It’s been a difficult decision, but if we are to focus on our targets for the coming years, we can no longer afford to dedicate ourselves to these sites. To that end, we’ll shortly be retiring:

    Pledgebank

    In February, Pledgebank will stop accepting new pledges, although users will still be able to sign up for existing ones until the end of June. We’ll be emailing all owners of pledges to let them know that the site will close at that time.

    FixMyTransport

    From the 1st of March, you’ll no longer be able to create a report on FixMyTransport. If you are running an active campaign or problem report, we’ll email to let you know of the site’s closure, which is planned for the end of June.

    HearFromYourMP

    MPs can continue to use HearFromYourMP to send newsletters to their constituents, but we’ll be letting them know that the service will be retired before the General Election.

    ScenicOrNot

    In February, ScenicOrNot will be mothballed so that users can no longer rate photographs. We’ll be keeping the leaderboard intact and developers will still be able to use the site’s data.

    The future?

    It’s not without regret that we’ll be saying goodbye to these sites – each and every one of them is based on a sound idea that fell well within mySociety’s remit to provide civic and democratic digital tools.

    Like most mySociety sites, the code of all of the above is Open Source and you are welcome to pick it up and adapt it to your needs. We’d be delighted if there was interest, from other individuals or groups, in running something similar, based on our code.

    Image credit: William Murphy (CC)

  3. FixMyTransport one year on: the operators who won’t play ball

    Image by Magnus Franklin

    Exactly one year ago today, we quietly put FixMyTransport.com live. We’d built it as a place where you could contact transport operators, and receive their responses, in public. But would it work?

    That depended, of course, on the transport companies, and how they would rise to the challenge. A year on, we’re in a position to see how things have panned out.

    As you will know if you have submitted a message to them, there are a handful of operators who refuse to engage via FixMyTransport, even though this requires less effort for them than holding the conversation in private. Worst offenders include Northern Rail, Scotrail, Arriva Trains Wales and South West Trains.

    These operators are starting to look as if they might have some customer service secrets to hide. You can see some of their excuses in our archive of correspondence, and frankly, they aren’t all that persuasive:

    Scotrail: “We encourage our customers to contact us directly to help give them the service they expect and deserve.”
    South West Trains: “In order to guarantee a full and consistent response to the concerns raised, would you please advise our customer to use one of our established methods of contact.”
    Arriva Trains Wales: “Receiving feedback from our customers is important to us, and I am grateful for you taking time to report these issues. However, we would ask any customer wishing to log an issue with us to make direct contact with us, rather than submit it to us via a third party.”

    Meanwhile, Northern Rail – perhaps not coincidentally one of our most-contacted operators – has a policy of sending a one-liner to say that comments have been ‘passed on to the relevant teams’. That does not comfort those who submit some of their more upsetting or important complaints.

    While we are disappointed by this lack of communication, we still think it’s worthwhile using FixMyTransport to make initial contact with such companies.

    Why? Because you gain the benefit of comments, advice and support from other users – and your complaint is in public for everyone to see. Even if the operator doesn’t respond, that has to make a difference. Plus, FixMyTransport users will often suggest next steps, such as contacting pressure groups or passenger watchdogs.

    You see, while we may have faced difficulties with some operators, there were no such issues with the general public. You came to the site, and you quickly understood what FixMyTransport was trying to achieve. And you chose to use it in preference to the transport companies’ own channels. Perhaps the operators might like to think about why that is.

    But let’s not dwell on the negatives. We have to give kudos to East Midlands Trains, First Capital Connect, First Great Western, London Midland, Southern and Virgin, all of whom stepped up to the mark and had no problems whatsoever replying to you via FixMyTransport. Equally, praise is due to Transport for London who act as the central contact for a variety of operators across the city, and Stagecoach Buses’ many subsidiaries.

    These companies, along with many other smaller outfits, have consistently responded to your complaints via the site. As a result they have created a large public archive of their good customer service.

    A helpful, friendly community has grown, too, aided by our team of volunteers. Over 3,500 people have sent messages through FixMyTransport, and with monthly visitors to the site now coming in at over 180,000, each of those messages has had an average of 50 readers.

    This is our first year of many. We’re certainly here for the long haul, and confident that eventually, even the most reluctant operators will come on board. If they don’t, increasingly, their customers are going to be asking why. The last year has shown that there is a demand for our service, and we see ourselves as part of a wider shift towards holding companies to account in public. Think how often you’ve seen a disgruntled customer tweeting or blogging their experience.

    Meanwhile, we hope you’ll keep using the site, and telling others about it. You might even consider telling your local transport operators how FixMyTransport can work for them.

    We hope, too, that you’ll carry on telling us what works or doesn’t work, via the feedback button at the top of every FixMyTransport page. We’re still in active development, and every suggestion is discussed and considered.

    Thanks for helping make FixMyTransport what it is. Now, have a piece of birthday cake.

     

    Image credit: Magnus Franklin

    This post is cross-posted from the FixMyTransport blog.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  4. Explore new areas with mySociety websites

    This post was written by mySociety volunteer Peter Dixon, who is part of the FixMyTransport team.

    Checking the Map by Shaun Dunmall

    There are many reasons nowadays for you to travel across the UK for business, with meetings and relocations being a key reason. Both have affected my personal circumstances within the past few months, so I felt it would be beneficial for me to show how I had used FixMyTransport and FixMyStreet to see more of the areas I am visiting or relocating to.

    One of the biggest frustrations when arriving at a hotel on business is that you can be stranded in a strange town or city with no idea about what is in the area. Once you have factored in dinner, the rest of the time is spare and very few people enjoy being stranded in a hotel with only a few TV channels to entertain.

    To discover an area, you need to have a look round and a purpose for making a journey can make it easier to undertake a gentle stroll.

    When faced with this on a recent trip to the West Midlands, I used FixMyStreet and FixMyTransport to locate issues that were in the area around the hotel and planned a quick walk that allowed me to look at issues that had not been marked as fixed.

    As a result of this walk, I was able to mark a couple of the reports as fixed and update some of the others. This doesn’t just limit you to walking, a cycle or a drive can be a great stress reliever for some and a reason to do them makes it so much easier.

    I have recently moved house too, and both of the websites provided a great opportunity to explore my new local area. To relieve the boredom of endless housing estates, I used the two websites to find something to look at when having an explore and added new issues as I looked for the existing issues. It’s great to see things getting fixed and know that you have already added to your new community.

    So when you are next in a new area and looking for something to do, log on to FixMyStreet or FixMyTransport and see what you can add to the local community.

     

    Image credit: Checking the map by Shaun Dunmall.

  5. Google Summer of Code

    A Day Spent Lying in the Grass, Watching the Clouds, by Elaine Millan

    Ah, summer: walks in the park, lazing in the long grass, and the sound of chirping crickets – all overlaid with the clatter of a thousand keyboards.

    That may not be your idea of summer, but it’s certainly the ways ours is shaping up. We’re participating in Google’s Summer of Code, which aims to put bright young programmers in touch with Open Source organisations, for mutual benefit.

    What do the students get from it? Apart from a small stipend, they have a mentored project to get their teeth into over the long summer hols, and hopefully learn a lot in the process. We, of course, see our code being used, improved and adapted – and a whole new perspective on our own work.

    Candidates come from all over the world – they’re mentored remotely – so for an organisation like mySociety, this offers a great chance to get insight into the background, politics and technical landscape of another culture. Ideas for projects that may seem startlingly obvious in, say, Latin America or India would simply never have occurred to our UK-based team.

    This year, mySociety were one of the 180 organisations participating. We had almost 100 enquiries, from countries including Lithuania, India, Peru, Georgia, and many other places. It’s a shame that we were only able to take on a couple of the many excellent applicants.

    We made suggestions for several possible projects to whet the applicants’ appetite. Mobile apps were popular, in particular an app for FixMyTransport. Reworking WriteToThem, and creating components to complement MapIt and PopIt also ranked highly.

    It was exciting to see so many ideas, and of course, hard to narrow them down.

    In the end we chose two people who wanted to help improve our nascent PopIt service. PopIt will allow people to very quickly create a public database of politicians or other figures. No technical knowledge will be needed – where in the past our code has been “Just add developers”, this one is “Just add data”. We’ll host the sites for others to build on.

    Our two successful applicants both had ideas for new websites that would use PopIt for their datastore, exactly the sort of advanced usage we hope to encourage. As well as making sure that PopIt actually works by using it they’ll both be creating transparency sites that will continue after their placements ends. They’ll also have the knowledge of how to set up such a site, and in our opinion that is a very good thing.

    We hope to bring you more details as their projects progress, throughout the long, hot (or indeed short and wet) summer.

    PS: There is a separate micro-blog where we’re currently noting some of the nitty gritty thoughts and decisions that go into building something like PopIt. If you want to see how the project goes please do subscribe!

    Google Summer of Code

    Top image by Elaine Millan, used with thanks under the Creative Commons licence.

  6. Advent calendar

    mySociety Christmas countdown

    December 23rd

     

    Santa's Chocolate Coin Mint by Johnathan_W

    If you haven’t got a penny,

    A ha’penny will do,

    If you haven’t got a ha’penny,

    Then God bless you.

    We wish you all a merry and prosperous Christmas – and for those of you who are already feeling quite prosperous enough, may we point you in the direction of our charitable donations page?

    mySociety’s work is made possible by donations of all sizes and from all sorts of people. Those donations help fund all the online projects we create; projects that give easy access to your civic and democratic rights. If that’s important to you, show your appreciation, and we promise we’ll make the best use of every penny.

    Thank you for sticking with us through this month-long post. We hope you’ve found it interesting and we wish you the very merriest of Christmases.

    We hope you’ll continue to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ – see our Contacts page to find individual projects’ social media links.

    December 22nd

    Santa Watching by LadyDragonflyCC

    What’s behind the door? A letter to Santa.

    Dear Santa,

    We think we’ve been pretty good this year. We’ve tried to keep our local neighbourhood clean, help with problems, and aid those in need, so we’re hoping there are a few presents coming our way.

    If you can fit them down the chimney, here’s what we’re dreaming of:

    More publicly available data Of course, we were delighted to hear in Mr Osborne’s autumn statement that all sorts of previously-inaccessible data will be opened up.

    We’re wondering whether this new era will also answer any of our FixMyStreet geodata wishes. Santa, if you could allocate an elf to this one, we’d be ever so pleased.

    Globalisation …in the nicest possible way, of course. This year has seen us work in places previously untouched by the hand of mySociety, including Kenya and the Philippines. And we continue to give help to those who wish to replicate our projects in their own countries, from FixMyStreet in Norway to WhatDoTheyKnow in Germany.

    Santa, please could you fix it for us to continue working with dedicated and motivated people all around the world?

    A mySociety Masters degree We’re lucky enough to have a team of talented and knowledgeable developers, and we hope we will be recruiting more in the coming year. It’s not always an easy task to find the kind of people we need – after all, mySociety is not your average workplace – so we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s probably easiest to make our own.

    Back in February, Tom started thinking about a Masters in Public Technology. It’s still something we’re very much hoping for. Santa, is it true you have friends in academic circles?

    FixMyTransport buy-in – from everyone! Regular users of FixMyTransport will have noticed that there are different kinds of response from the transport operators: lovely, fulsome, helpful ones, and formulaic ones. Or, worse still, complete refusal to engage.

    Santa, if you get the chance, please could you tell the operators a little secret? Just tell them what those savvier ones already know – that FixMyTransport represents a chance to show off some fantastic customer service. And with 25,000 visitors to the site every week, that message is soon spread far and wide.

    (more…)

  7. I used FixMyTransport – now what?

    Transit Distress by Eric Parker - used with thanks under the Creative Commons licence

    FixMyTransport was launched a month ago. It is now well on its way to listing 1,000 individual complaints, suggestions and requests to the public transport operators of Great Britain.

    As the sample size grows, we’re able to see just what provokes the country’s mild-mannered passengers into action. There are the diurnal irritations – the leaky station roof, constant announcements, smelly trains; there is the discomfort of overcrowding and overheated buses.

    All of which are important, of course. And in this, FixMyTransport is achieving its aim of allowing people to make their reports to the operators, while at the same time creating small bunches of people who read those reports and think, ‘Hey, me too!’.

    But FixMyTransport is not just for the little gripes. It’s uncovering some pretty big issues, too. Prime among these is the issue of accessibility: reports have come in of buses driving away rather than let a wheelchair user on; a disabled passenger who has surmised that it’s easier to invite friends to come to him rather than try to navigate London’s public transport system; a station from which those with restricted mobility can only travel in one direction.

    What next?

    The big question for us is, what happens now? Are these reports making anything better? In some cases, yes.

    There is the train that will now stop at intermediate stations, and the pedestrian crossings that are no longer blocked by buses. Little things that’ll make a big difference to the people who reported them. But the pay-off is not always so immediate. Bigger issues are obviously not going to be fixed overnight. And some problems won’t be fixed, for a multitude of reasons – they don’t fit in with the operators’ plans, or they’re not budgeted for, or they just aren’t seen as sufficiently important.

    How is FixMyTransport going to crack those? Well, it was set up so that you can show your operator that there is demand, that budgets need to be massaged, or that plans should change. If you’ve used the site, you may well have been on the receiving end of a comment from one of the team, nudging you to spread the word of your campaign, among friends, family, and fellow-passengers.

    The fact that people can sign up to your page helps make FixMyTransport different from just contacting the operator directly. We also reckon it’ll make a difference when it comes to getting changes. Consider, for example, the campaign to get increased cycle parking at Cambridge station – with 176 supporters (and still growing every day), our biggest yet. It’s been picked up by local press, talked about on Twitter – and eventually, National Express won’t be able to ignore the public demonstration of a palpable need.

    Well, that’s the plan. We know it’s early days, and that FixMyTransport represents a massive sea change for some operators who are not used to interacting openly and online.

    If you’ve written an impassioned, well-reasoned request, gathered supporters and spread the word far and wide, and still hit a brick wall, we have other suggestions. FixMyTransport allows us to get you writing to your local councillor, to the local paper, or to relevant groups like Passenger Focus, Transport for All, and the Campaign for Better Transport. These groups have been bashing away at the big problems like accessibility for far longer than we have, and it makes sense to tap into their expertise.

    We know that for some issues, it’ll be a long game – just as it’ll be a long game trying to get every operator fully signed-up to the notion of transparent online interaction. But we’ll keep trying, and we hope you will too.

  8. FixMyTransport: the praise button

    Bus Stop by Yi-tao 'Timo' Lee used with thanks under the Creative Commons licence

    Just like the famous Yellow Pages ad, FixMyTransport is not only there for the nasty things in life.

    Quite late in FixMyTransport’s development, we realised that praise is a form of feedback and that this channel ought to be open to our users, too – that’s why on every page for a stop or a route, you’ll see a stonking great button inviting you to ‘say something nice’ – here’s an example: a station manager giving the type of good service that gladdens the heart.

    There’s also a little love for Pulborough station, nice words for Brighton’s well-informed station staff, an example of a very accommodating bus driver, and a comment that makes me want to take the 37 bus to Clapham Junction right now.

    We haven’t really stressed this side of FixMyTransport, so we’re really glad to see people finding it for themselves and putting it to good use. If you encounter particularly excellent service on your next journey, and you want to spread the love too, just remember the big blue button. We’re sure the operators will be very glad to hear from you.

  9. FixMyTransport launches – mySociety’s biggest project since 2008

    Everyone at mySociety is quite bubbling with excitement at the news that we’re today officially launching FixMyTransport.com , mySociety’s first new core charitable website since WhatDoTheyKnow launched in 2008. We’ve never before launched a site that took so much work to build, or that contained so much data.

    What is it for?

    FixMyTransport has two goals – one in your face, and the other more subtle.

    The first goal, as the site’s name suggests, is to help people get common public transport problems resolved. We’re talking broken ticket machines, gates that should be open and stations without stair-free access. We’ll help by dramatically lowering the barrier to working out who’s responsible, and getting a problem report sent to them – a task that would have been impossible without the help of volunteers who gathered a huge number of operator email addresses for us. Consequently the service works everywhere in Great Britain, our database has over 300,000 stops and routes for train, tube, tram, bus, coach and ferry.

    The second goal – the subtle one – is to see if it is possible to use the internet to coax non-activist, non-political people into their first taste of micro-activism. Whilst the site intentionally doesn’t contain any language about campaigning or democracy, we encourage and provide tools to facilitate the gathering of supporters, the emailing of local media, the posting of photos of problems, and the general application of pressure where it is needed. We also make problem reports and correspondence between operators and users public, which we have frequently seen create positive pressure when used on sister sites FixMyStreet and WhatDoTheyKnow.

    Who made it?

    FixMyTransport was largely built by one remarkable coder – Louise Crow, who started as a volunteer and who is now one of our longest serving core developers. She spent 18 months coding the site almost entirely by herself, wrestling with truly tortuous data problems and collaborating with Birmingham’s fantastic SuperCool design to make it look lovely (you should hire them, they’re great).  She also tolerated my ‘aspirational scattergun’ school of project management with remarkable good humour. She really is the king of transport coding.

    Credit must also go to mySociety core dev Dave Whiteland, who made the Facebook integration work, despite not having an account himself!

    Why is it dedicated to Angie Martin?

    Angie Martin was a mySociety coder for an all-too-brief period before she succumbed to cancer at a devastatingly early age. We’re dedicating this site to her in remembrance of a great, self taught perl monger who should still be here.

    We’ll be posting further blog posts about the development process, the data challenges, and the overall project philosophy. In the mean time, please keep arms and legs inside the carriage – FixMyTransport is just about to depart.

  10. FixMyTransport is close to launch – and we need your help to make it fantastic

    Photo of display board showing delayed trains, by Glenn Scott

    It’s been a while since we updated you on the progress of our next major project, FixMyTransport, but we’re still working hard behind the scenes. As you may recall, FixMyTransport will deal with public transport problems – delayed trains, vandalised stations, overcrowded buses, you name it. It’ll put problems in the public arena, while also reporting them directly to the relevant transport operator. Read more about the project here.

    We will shortly be arriving at our final destination

    Things are going to get exciting very soon. As launch date approaches, we’ll be starting a closed beta (mid July), rapidly followed by a full open public beta launch (end of July). During the closed beta we want to get as much feedback as possible from future users of the site, as well as pressure groups, transport operators, and anyone else who has anything valuable to contribute.

    If you would like to be invited to beta test, and weren’t one of our alpha testers, please email us on team@fixmytransport.com. Alpha testers will, of course, be invited to test again.

    Mind the (data) gaps

    We got extremely useful feedback from our alpha testers, and a wealth of crowdsourced data from our community. Thanks to their efforts we now have contact details for the operators of about 50% of the routes in the UK. However, this leaves a lot of operators where we don’t know how to get in touch.

    We really need your help to get them! If you can spare a few minutes, visit our spreadsheet and see if you can fill in any of the missing details.

    The more contact details we can get hold of, the better experience FixMyTransport will offer to our users. As well as publishing passengers’ reports on the site, FixMyTransport sends them directly to the operators too, helping to get the issue fixed.

    So, we especially need the email addresses for operators’ customer services departments. Finding these may be as simple as visiting the operators’ websites, or it may require a bit of sleuth-work on your part.  If advanced Googling gets you nowhere, we’ve found that simply phoning head office can get results.

    Incidentally, the main operators are near the top of the sheet – those are the ones that will benefit the most users, although obviously the nearer completion we get, the better.

    You’ll notice that the spreadsheet now includes a non-obligatory column for your name: this is to offer a small incentive. If you want to, tag your entries and at the end we’ll be offering goodies to the top contributors. Depending on your preference, this might be one of our highly sought-after mySociety hooded tops (they’re snuggly!), or a chance to become more involved in the project.

    Those who helped in the first iteration, please note that although this sheet looks different, your details have been retained and indeed have been extremely useful as we build the site. Also –  if  you have already been a major contributor during our previous rounds of testing and data collecting, please holler so that we can give you proper credit.

    Hold tight, please

    Not long now… we hope you’re as excited as we are.