1. Updated: One day left to stop MPs concealing their expenses

    Update: WE WON! [the following is now for historical interest]

    Uh oh.  Ministers are about to conceal MPs’ expenses, even though the public has just paid £1m to get them all ready for publication, and even though the tax man expects citizens to do what MPs don’t have to. They buried the news on the day of the Heathrow runway announcement. This is heading in the diametric wrong direction from government openness.

    You can help in the following three ways:

    1. Please write to your MP about this www.WriteToThem.com – ask them to lobby against this concealment, and tell them that TheyWorkForYou will be permanently and prominently noting those MPs who took the opportunity to fight against this regressive move. The millions of constituents who will check this site before the next election will doutbtless be interested.

    2. Join this facebook group and invite all your least political friends (plus your most political too). Send them personal mails, phone or text them. Encourage them to write to their politicians too.

    3. Write to your local paper to tell them you’re angry, and ask them to ask their readers to do the above. mySociety’s never-finished site http://news.mysociety.org might be able to help you here.

    NB. mySociety is strictly non-partisan, by mission and by ethics. However, when it looks like Parliament is about to take a huge step in the wrong direction on transparency, we’ve no problem at all with stepping up when changes happen that threaten both the public interest and the ongoing value of sites like  TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow.

    Update: Every page on TheyWorkForYou, our biggest site, is now strongly encouraging people to join the protest.

    Update: We’ve sailed past 1000 members to our Facebook group. Onward and upward!

    Update: And now past 3000 members! Also, some MPs are claiming that they need to vote for this Order to protect their addresses, even though they already changed to law to do this. Doh!

    Update: Now we’re past 6500, and our supporters have mailed their constituency MPs in over 90% of the constituencies in the UK. And rather helpfully, President Obama has just given us a concise explanation for MPs why this is a much bigger issue than some bits of paper and some minor embarrassment:

    “And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad  habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

  2. TheyWorkForYou upgrade request comes via Early Day Motion

    Bob Spink has written an Early Day Motion (EDM) that asks mySociety to add Early Day Motions to TheyWorkForYou. You can read it here.

    TheyWorkForYou doesn’t currently include EDMs for a couple of reasons:

    1. They’re clearly less important to what Parliament does than Bills and committees, and are way down the priorities list as a consequence. We’ve nearly finished the process of adding bill committees, but we need the help of everyone who can lend a hand to overcome the opposition of senior unelected officials to get Bills published in a way we and others can use. If you haven’t already, please join the Free Our Bills campaign.

    2. We are very tightly constrained by the amount of money we have, and we barely have enough to keep the site running, let alone add every new feature requested.

    3. We’re a bit wary about EDMs in general because they’re not tied to any actual power. But that’s a reason to warn and educate readers, not exclude them from the account of Parliament.

    So, if you really want EDMs on TheyWorkForYou, then, there are two things you can do. The first is donate to our parent charity, UKCOD. The second is to push in every way you can to get Bills published in the way we’ve asked for. That means writing to your MP, or if you are an MP, asking the modernisation committee and the Leader’s office what they’re doing to push past internal opposition to get Bills done right.

    NB. Interestingly, the internal opposition is so ill-informed that we have it in writing they they think that TheyWorkForYou already includes EDMs – doh!

  3. mySociety vs Obama – vote for us!

    We’re not actually running for president, but we are up against Mr Obama in this years Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics.

    Can you spare us a vote, guv? [link no longer viable]

  4. Make us a ‘How to Do FOI video’ and win a mySoc hoodie (and eternal fame)

    We’re going to be adding lots of features and major design improvements to our Freedom of Information site WhatDoTheyKnow.com in the next few weeks. One thing we want to add is little explanatory videos helping describe how to make the best request possible.

    Today we’re launching the hastily named WhatDoTheyKnow Video Challenge. We want you to make short videos (max 2 mins) in which you explain in a clear and friendly way how to file successful FOI requests. We’re not expecting Hollywood production values, just a friendly face and a good explanation would do fine. If you can do funny, splendid.

    Instructions:
    1. Record your vid
    2. Upload to your video hosting venue of choice
    3. Post the link as a comment to this post

    We’ll send out a coveted mySociety hoodie to anyone who makes anything we’d seriously consider using (unless bazillions of people enter, of course – do you want to bankrupt us?). We don’t sell our coveted mySociety hoodies, they’re only for people who’ve done something useful for mySociety so they’ll mark you out as a pillar of the community the first time you walk down the street.

  5. Please Donate to help us expand TheyWorkForYou

    Some lovely new volunteers have been working their socks off to add the Scottish Parliament to TheyWorkForYou. Yay!

    Unfortunately, the server that TheyWorkForYou sits on is almost full, so we can’t launch their hard work. Boo!

    TheyWorkForYou isn’t an externally funded project, and we need funding from other sources to keep it growing and improving. So if the season has filled you with generosity of spirit, why not drop us a few pennies to pay for some upgrades? Any extra beyond what we need will go into the general pot to keep mySociety running and the developers from starving.