Describe your idea:

A clubcard for a community that uses networking to leverage value between customers and organisations. Rewards are used to motivate good behaviour. People volunteer their personal info onto a platform. Organisations can only use this “people platform” if they can demonstrate that they make people healthier wealthier or happier.

Hper-local website would be the town portal and rewards delivered through smartcards, before migrating onto the mobile. Platform owned by the community.

Do this get rewarded. Dont do this, don’t get a reward.

One to one rewards, and no marketing waste.

What problem does it solve?:

Community.
Trust.
Local economics.
Inefficient tax system.
Community champion.
Shotgun marketing approach.

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

People are less inclined to report problems, particularly littering, on main, as opposed to residential, roads and they go unreported.

My idea is that each stretch of main road be adopted by a volunteer typically a commuter who drives past each day.

He or she would report problems via a FixMyStreet type site which is then relayed to the appropriate organisation responsible for keeping the road clean. This may be a local authority, the Highways Agency or Transport For London.

What problem does it solve?:

Hopefully this would keep the responsible bodies on their toes and the standard of cleanliness of our main roads should start to approach those in France and Germany.

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

A new delicious tagging plugin that also harnesses the power of location services — so that it bookmarks where people find things interesting.

It could use triple tags to simply add a geo-attention “point” to each item bookmarked.

This tagging could then be used by anyone to see where bookmarks were interesting.

What problem does it solve?:

All attempts to collate and distribute local information are stymied by the fact that placing most information “on a map” is complex (council decisions, govt dept decisions affect discreet boundaried areas, news either has a “spot” and fade in influence or something more esoteric). People don’t do it, or the tech isn’t there for them to.

Coming at it from the other angle would give a sort of heatmap of influence which could prove useful for all sorts of projects — particularly those interested in local news and democracy.

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

How much does your MP know about the legality of the war(s) s/he voted for (and defence & security issues in general)?

Without being a legal expert, you can use this site to help:

* find out what they know

* teach them what they need to know

* build better legal FAQs for MPs.

You just send one letter picking up where the previous writer left off.

The letter:

* politely asks for explanation of one difference between your MP’s views and neutrally-edited ‘FAQs’

* offers to change the FAQs if wrong (and if supporting evidence is supplied).

The site later asks you how helpful your MP’s reply was, and awards brownie points to helpful MPs (notified to local media).

What problem does it solve?:

SOCIETY’S PROBLEM: Wars, policies and methods of armed conflict which are of doubtful legality.

THE MPs’ PROBLEM: Before I vote, I want independent legal advice: everything I need to know, on one side of A4.

THE CITIZEN’S PROBLEMS (see www.YourMPandWar.pbworks.com)

I’m isolated. I want to meet others writing to MPs on the same topic.

Each MP has different assumptions, needs tailored FAQs.

My MP fobs me off with stock replies, does not answer my points and ends with ‘I hope this is helpful’.

The site could also be used for correspondence with officials and other decision-makers.

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

Each user will be able to add one or more beliefs that they hold. They will also be able to search for a belief that has already been added and “subscribe” to it.

Users will be encouraged to provide their postcode. A user will be able to search for others that share a belief by postcode/constituency/town/city/county. A user will also be able to view the beliefs of all users within a given location.

Users will be able to contact other users if they share a belief in common.

Each user will be able to rate the strength of each of their beliefs.

A user will be able to change their mind by unsubscribing from beliefs they no longer hold, or by changing the strength of the belief.

What problem does it solve?:

There are two aims:

– Encourage political activism.

A user will be able to find and contact other people that live in their area and share the same beliefs as they do. The hope is that this will encourage people with similar beliefs to group together to act on an issue that they all believe to be important.

– Provide information to elected representatives/prospective candidates.

Like any other user, an elected representative or candidate for local or national government will be able to view the beliefs of the people within a given location (e.g. their constituency), as will those that work in the media. This should give the electorate a better chance of having their views represented.

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

Enables people to become social correspondents reporting on news issues from all angles. It will be the equivalent of BBC News but with news content created, edited and submitted by everyone.

My idea is to give everyone a platform to write, produce, edit and submit online news content created by them. It will be about issues related to them, their community and things that are of importance to their area and people.

The idea is to create a network of social correspondents that cover various news topics. It will be impartial and will give a clearer snapshot of society and its issues.

What problem does it solve?:

Much of news content is controlled by a few organisations – the BBC, AP, Reuters, News International – leading to monopoly and risk of inaccuracy in coverage.

My idea means that clear, unbiased, non judgemental and effective viewpoints are expressed via daily updates, content and news output.

People can request a niche news to be reported upon and others can take this on and provide that coverage. This is where the other news agencies lack – not covering the tiny details and news that is important to people.

For example, if I lived in Wales and wanted to know about issues in Fulham, I could request someone to become a social correspondent and report from that angle.

It is about selective news made by others for others.

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

A clear way to understand public budgets in human terms. You can only have FOI if its understandable. Most budgetary information is hard to read and does not give the cost of individual services. Reports use gross figures (and are often wrong!). So a way to compare the typical cost of going to visit a local GP (£15?) or A&E (£1000?). Or if my council spends lots more on bin collection than another. How much goes on admin? If more people knew it typically costs £8,000 a week to keep a youth in prison, they might decide to invest in cheaper preventative youth work. Exactly how much does my local traffic warden cost? Is privatising a service really going to be cheaper? Where’s my tax going? Is it being well spent? I want to know!

What problem does it solve?:

We’re making decisions based on mis-reading the true cost of providing a service. Public consultation is useless if only trained accountants can understand the figures. Citizens, councilors and MPs are often left in the dark. Having a simple way of breaking down the gross figure into the ‘unit’ costs or ‘per resident’ is easy to understand, and easier to compare. It would bring more transparency to what is actually happening in public finance. So helps to reduce waste, empower citizens, expose corruption, and spot good practice! I think we’d spend more on preventing problems before they happen. Citizens could hold politicians and public officials ‘to account’ better if they had relevant useful comparative information.

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

There are now so many services available to us that finding the best one that meets our needs takes time. We could find it ourselves by chance, word of mouth, recommendation, advertisements etc.

People are looking to make their lives quicker, faster, cheap, expensive, value for money etc.

My idea enables people to contribute the many wide ranging alternatives available of a popular service.

This could be in areas such as health, travel, finance, social issues, education, community etc.

I could type in that I need a alternative school to place my child in and what are my best options within 5 miles ?

People would suggest best and alternatives options available to me.

What problem does it solve?:

The issue of monopoly – that there are many alternatives to a service. This could be options that are cheaper, quicker, faster, affordable, recommended, efficient, time saving etc.

It enables people to come together and share their recommendations of alternative options available to one another.

Also it gives people a choice knowing that if one route doesn’t work try these alternatives suggested by others.

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

Having just realised that I’ve managed to miss an idea similar to the one I submitted, I did see from comments on some ideas that quite a few ideas are on matters which apparently already have been covered, or are in fact being progressed (though not necessarily by MySociety).

How about a searchable database of “civic webby ideas/projects”, in one place? With links of course.

What problem does it solve?:

Avoid duplication/repetition; allow people interested in helping or getting help to find info easily on projects.

Don’t know if this idea is itself a duplication, already!

Type of idea: A brand new project

Describe your idea:

1. Programming: create open source version of Tasmania’s system (http://www.frlii.org/spip.php?article67) enabling legislation to be encoded so citizens can always view up to date legislation online (newer stuff references what’s to be amended, added to or repealed, so pre-existing legislation’s automatically updated), get snapshots as at a particular previous date. Use it for draft legislation to track changes. Maybe even adapt it for EU legislation.

2. Campaign/PR: persuade government to fund conversion of existing legislation to that format and draft new legislation in it, budgeting to train drafters too. Just a fraction of what’s been put into failed NHS IT projects or the ID card project would suffice.

What problem does it solve?:

Citizens must obey laws, often on pain of jail. So we ought to be able to find out, easily & for free, what those laws are. But part of law X gets changed by Y, another part by Z etc. To know what X requires of us we need to (1) know that Y, Z etc changed X, (2) get hold of Y, Z etc, & (3) consolidate all changes to X – because the government only publishes X, Y & Z. That’s so time consuming only law publishers do it and only those with expensive law publisher subscriptions can know with any confidence what legislation really says. Even judges get caught out http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2008/2467.html#para64

It seems OPSI are on it (Statute Law Database) but that’s taking time. Unless they sort it out soon, could MySociety take this on? (I’d volunteer to help).

Type of idea: A brand new project