The open federation for sharing civic tech, Poplus, is inviting YOU to get involved.

If you’re not sure what Poplus is, or how it works, there’s a great opportunity coming up to learn more.

On Wednesday February 18th there will be a Poplus live online Hangout which everyone is welcome to watch via Google Hangouts-on-Air. The specific aim of this Hangout is to invite new people and explain just what Poplus is. There will also be the opportunity to ask questions.

Steven Clift, Poplus’ Engagement Lead, writes:

Poplus is a global federation for the next generation of civic tech. We share knowledge and technology to help our organisations help citizens.

We do this through collaborative civic coding. We share reusable open source civic technology components. We leverage open government data or make our own across many countries.

This online video-based event specially invites those new to Poplus. Everyone is welcome.

RSVP here to watch live (13:00 UTC, see your local time) on Feb 18.

The presentation includes Tom Steinberg with mySociety and a few project participants from around the world on the Hangout-on-Air “stage.” Questions will be taken via comments on the Hangout event page. The video stream is one-way, commenting two-way.

About Poplus

Founded by CiudadnoInteligente.org based in Chile, and mySociety.org based in the UK, the international civic tech federation was launched at the first PoplusCon in April 2014.

Watch this short video to see civic tech collaboration in action! Visit Poplus.org (in English/en español) for full details.

How to get involved

• Share this event by forwarding this email or by sharing this hangout here.

• Join our friendly online group with 350+ members from over 60 nations and representing 200+ organisations.  Read the awesome participant introductions to see the amazing talent coming together. Add your introduction. Be part of what’s next with civic tech sharing.

• Check out the Poplus components – test them – explore the code  on GitHub – deploy them – enhance them – and learn about turning your open source code into a new Poplus Component for global sharing and impact.

• Follow the blog – Lightly follow this initiative and stay tuned for future events with occasional email updates.For questions about Poplus, post to our friendly online group or contact our engagement team.

Much of mySociety’s work is only possible thanks to generous funding from a number of philanthropic foundations.

Today, we are delighted to announce that we have been awarded a major strategic investment from Omidyar Network totalling up to $3.6m over three years.

This is the third time we’ve been supported by Omidyar Network, and this represents the biggest investment we’ve ever had. Alongside organisations like the Open Society Foundation, Google.org and the Indigo Trust, Omidyar has been central in our transformation from a tiny UK-focused non-profit, to a global social enterprise of nearly 30 staff.

Being supported by Omidyar Network means more than just vital financial support. It means access to their amazing networks of other investees, and advice and guidance from a range of sources. And, also crucial for an organisation that seeks technical excellence, it means the stamp of support from an organisation that ultimately traces its DNA back to the giant internet successes that are eBay and Paypal.

What is the money for?

mySociety’s main ambition, over the next three years, is to help a couple of dozen other organisations, spread around the world, to grow popular citizen empowerment tools that are big enough to really matter to the citizens of a wide range of countries. This means building and growing tools that help people to check up on politicians, demand information and answers, or report and track problems, in hugely varying contexts.

In addition to this, we will continue to maintain and grow the network of users of our technology and support the growing Poplus federation.

It’s a tough goal, and one that will require even more from the organisations we partner with, than from our own colleagues. But the very fact that we can even try to help groups at this scale, is because Omidyar Network enables us to imagine it.

 

Image: Hit ThatSwitch (CC)

We’re always quick to shout about it when we’ve added a major new feature to one of our projects, or we’re launching a whole new website.

All well and good, but mySociety’s developers don’t just roll out the big stuff. Smaller releases are happening all the time, and, as a bunch of them have all come at once, we’ve put together a round-up.

Oh – and it’s worth saying that your feedback helps us prioritise what we work on. If you’re using any of our software, either as an implementer or a front-end user, and there’s something you think could be better, we hope you’ll drop us a line.

Here’s what we’ve been doing lately:

MapIt

We’ve just released version 1.2 of our postcodes-to-boundaries software.

The new version adds Django 1.7 and Python 3 support, as well as other minor improvements.

For the UK, this version now includes October 2014 Boundary-Line support, new OpenStreetMap data, and, crucially for this time of year, Santa’s new postcode (yes, it’s changed, apparently).

Find MapIt 1.2 here.

SayIt

The latest version of our transcript-publishing software, 1.3, adds mainstream support for import from fellow component PopIt (or any Popolo data source). That’s key to making it a truly interoperable Poplus Component.

SayIt is now also available in Spanish. Additionally, there are improvements around Speakers and Sections, plus this release includes OpenGraph data.

Many thanks to James of Open North, who contributed improvements to our Akoma Ntoso import.

Find SayIt 1.3 here.

PopIt

Our software for storing, publishing and sharing lists of politicians now has multi-language support in the web-based editing interface as well at the API level.

We’ve also recently added API support for merging the records of two people, and the API can now be used over SSL/TLS.

Full details are on the Poplus mailing list.

Alaveteli

Release 0.20 of our Freedom of Information platform sees improvements both to the Admin interface and to the front-end user experience.

Administrators will be pleased to find easier ways to deal with spammy requests for new authorities, and manage the categories and headings that are used to distinguish different types of authority; users should enjoy a smoother path to making a new request.

Full details can be seen here.

FixMyStreet

Version 1.5 of the FixMyStreet platform fully supports the new Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu, Trusty Tahr 14.04.

Four new languages – Albanian, Bulgarian, Hebrew, and Ukranian – have been added. There are also some improvements across both admin and the front-end design, and a couple of bugs have been fixed.

Full details are here.

Feedback

Whatever mySociety or Poplus software you’re deploying, we hope these improvements make life easier. Please do stay in touch – your feedback is always useful, whether it’s via the Poplus mailing list (MapIt, PopIt, SayIt), the FixMyStreet community or the Alaveteli community.

Image: Niels Linneberg (CC)

We were at the Mozilla Festival again this year. In practice, this meant we had a table at the Friday night Science Fair, ran a session in the Build and Teach the Web track about “Reusable Civic Tech”, and spent a lot of time meeting old friends and making lots of new ones (technically, we call that “networking”). This blog post is a shout-out to all the fabulous people we talked to, demonstrated with, learnt from, and perhaps even drank a cheeky beer with. It was excellent to meet you all.

Because we’re based in the UK, we’re especially lucky that the Mozilla Foundation’s annual festival was once again held in London. It’s good for us because our friends from the London Mozilla Space are there, and also because this makes it easy for us to get to (unlike so many of the attendees, we didn’t need to travel all the way into the country first). In fact, the unique and lofty Ravensbourne venue is an excellent location for such an event — it’s easy to see what’s happening on the other floors, and it’s easy to wander up and down between them. There is a lot going on to see and do, and, just like last year, even the stairs are productive: we had some serendipitous encounters on our way between floors.

Our primary activity at the festival was spreading the word about the Poplus federation and its reusable civic tech components. If you bumped into any of us, or if what we were demonstrating tickled your fancy, or if you are even now wearing one of the T-shirts we generously gave out: do please remember to get involved!

Image credit: Mozilla in Europe CC BY-SA 2.0

In yesterday’s blog post we talked about using our free, Open Source software, SayIt, to create collections of statements, like our collections of Party speeches.

That’s one use of SayIt – but we actually built it with a slightly different aim in mind: the storing and publication of transcripts.

SayIt really does transform transcripts – so, if you regularly take minutes of meetings at work, or in another capacity, it’s worth a look.

That’s easy for us to say, we know. But if you play with it for half an hour, we think you’ll see the benefits.

Making online transcripts better for your readers

Traditionally, transcripts of meetings are published as PDFs or Microsoft Word documents. The information is there; you’ve done your duty in making it available – but do you ever wonder if it’s really working for your readers?

For example, let’s say you are a clerk in the local council, and you routinely publish transcripts from council meetings online.

The chances are that residents access your transcripts when they have an interest in one specific topic. Typically your meetings cover many subjects, and readers have to wade through pages to find the part they want. On SayIt, searching is very easy, even for people who are not very familiar with internet technology.

Or suppose that you are a member of a pressure group, and you’ve transcribed a local community meeting to share on your website. You might want to highlight particular parts of the meeting. With SayIt, you can link to individual statements, so it’s simple to share them by email, social media, or on your website.

 

See some examples

If you’d like to see how your meeting transcripts will look, once they’ve been published on SayIt, have a browse through these two examples:

• Philadelphia City Council meetings
• The Leveson Inquiry

 

Getting started

Ready to have a go? Here’s how to start your own SayIt site:

1. Go to this page and sign up.

We’ll ask you for:

• Part of the URL (web address) for your site – for example, if you choose “TotnesCouncil”, your new URL will be http://TotnesCouncil.sayit.mysociety.org. Note that URLs can’t contain spaces or non-regular characters.
• A title: this will appear in the top bar of your website. Don’t sweat too much: you can always change this later. In this example we might choose “Totnes Council meetings”.
• A description (optional): this is a good place to explain the purpose of your site at a little more length. You might write something like “Transcripts from local council meetings in Totnes, UK, 2014 onwards”. Again, you will have the chance to change this later if you like.

2. Confirm your email address

If this is the first time you have used SayIt, you will need to input your email address, then go to your email and find our automated message so you can click on the confirmation link.

Keep a note of your password, as you will need it whenever you want to edit your site.

Inputting transcripts

SayIt is currently in Beta – that’s to say, it’s functional and live, but we’re still developing it.

In this phase, you can manually type (or copy and paste) each statement of your transcript in. Soon, it will also be possible to import a document of the entire meeting, as long as it’s in the required format – if you have a lot of existing transcripts and you’d like to try this, get in touch and we may be able to help.

In this post, we’ll look at the manual input of speeches.

Manual input

You will need either a copy of your transcript, or a recording of the meeting you wish to transcribe.

Here’s how to begin:

1. Click on the ‘add your first statement’ button.

 2. You can paste, or type, your content directly into the box marked “text”.

In the fields below the text box, you have the option to add more details about this piece of text. None of these fields are mandatory, but all of them add functionality or information to your transcript:

• Date and time If you know these, they are useful because they will help SayIt to order your speeches chronologically. Don’t worry if you don’t know them, though – SayIt automatically arranges speeches in the order that you input them, unless the timestamps tell it otherwise.

• Event and location What sort of meeting was it, and where did it happen? For our example, we might input “Totnes Town Council Meeting” and “Guildhall, Totnes”.

• Speaker Enter a name, and then click on the underlined text to add it to your database. As with all text fields on SayIt, once you have added it, it will be offered as an auto-fill option for subsequent speeches. Attaching names to your speeches also means that SayIt can do clever things, like display everything said by one speaker.

If you are not sure who spoke, don’t worry – you can leave this field blank, or enter a name such as ‘Unknown’.

• Section Meetings often have distinct sections: an introductory period, apologies for absences, following up on agreed actions, etc. Or you might use Section to identify items on the agenda. If you use the Section field, SayIt will automatically arrange your transcript into groups of associated content.

• Source URL If you are taking speeches from a source such as a news report or another website, you can add the web address so that interested people can see it in context.

• Title and tags: These enable you to tag your content – for example, you might want to tag everything to do with road-building, and everything to do with tourism, et cetera. That means that your readers will be able to find the sections of the content they are most interested in.

When you’ve added everything you want to for this part of speech, click “Save speech”.

Well done! You’ve just added your first speech to SayIt.

You can go back and edit it at any time – and that applies to every field.

3. Continue adding speeches.

As you do so, SayIt will be making connections and organising things neatly.

Tip: If you click ‘add another speech like this’ then fields such as ‘event and location’ will automatically be filled for you – you can overwrite them if they are incorrect for your next speech.

Click on ‘Speakers’ to see an icon for everyone you’ve added:

– and click on any one of those icons to see just their speeches:

Clicking on ‘Speeches’ in the top bar will show you every speech you’ve input; if you used Sections, they will be divided up neatly:

Click on any of those sections to see its content:

You’ve done it

So there you are, now you’ve seen what SayIt can do – we hope you liked it enough to consider using it in the future. Remember, it’s completely free.

Let us know if you hit any problems, or if there are features you’d like us to add. SayIt is in active development at the moment, so your feedback will help shape it. We’d also love to hear if you are using it.

Importing content

Manual inputting is clearly only practical for shorter meetings (or people who have plenty of time on their hands!). As mentioned above, we’ll be adding the ability to import your transcripts.

They will need to be in the format that SayIt accepts, which is Akoma Ntoso, a schema for Parliamentary document types – you can read more about that here.

If you already have documents in Akoma Ntoso, get in touch and we can get them imported for you.

Hosting

You can host SayIt on your own servers, but for beginner users it’s quicker and easier to start by creating a version that we host, as described in the steps above.

If you decide later on that you want to host the content yourself, and perhaps embed it on your own website, that option will remain open to you.

SayIt is a Poplus Component – open-source software that is designed to underpin digital democracy projects. It can stand alone, or work with other Poplus Components. The source code is also available for developers to modify and improve, so if you are already imagining more ambitious ways that you might use SayIt on your website, let us know.

Other ways to use SayIt

We’ve recently written about:

– Using SayIt to make collections of statements.

– Using SayIt to store interviews from your research project

We’ll also be looking at the following soon:

– Collaborating with other users on SayIt transcripts

Image: A scribe from the Book of Hours (public domain)

Party Conference season is upon us again, and, with it, a new set of fine promises and rhetorical flourishes, as each party’s top dogs take the podium. But what happens to those pledges, vows and forecasts once the banners are taken down and the party faithful turn for home?

Cast your mind back to November 2013, and you may recall that there was bit of a fuss about the fact that the Conservative party had removed old speeches from their website.

Not just that, but they’d also effectively erased them from the places where you can commonly find retired internet content… unless you really know where to look.

Was it a sinister rewriting of history, or a simple spring clean of elderly content? Well, that depends who you believe – but here at mySociety, we do think that you should be able to hold political parties to account for promises they made in the past.

Not only that, but we happen to have a splendid tool for publishing the spoken word: SayIt.

So we thought we’d track down that missing content and put it online for anyone to search and browse. And because we are a wholly non-partisan organisation, we did the same for Labour.

Take a look at that content: Conservative speeches and Labour speeches – and do let us know if you find anything particularly interesting!

Note: we’re not intending to update these collections regularly – it’s a one-off initiative, designed to fill a gap in the public archive. And within the confines of this project, we’ve only published Labour and Conservative speeches.

On the other hand, if you’re interested in setting up similar sites for the other parties, or even taking over these ones, SayIt is very simple for anyone to use: just get in touch.

Image by Klaus Riesner (CC)

Poplus Components are interdependent, Open Source pieces of code for civic and democratic websites. Find out more on the Poplus website.

Do you have an idea for a new Poplus Component? Or would you like to add features to an existing one?

We’re currently inviting groups and individuals to apply for grants. You may apply for up to USD $5,000 to help you with development work on creating or improving a Poplus Component.

• Priority will be given to proposals for the development of new Poplus Components, or new features for existing Components.
• We will also consider grants for those planning to implement existing Poplus Components into wider projects.

How to apply

Please complete this form before 10th September 2014.

We hope to inform successful applicants by 17th September. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Help us fund more projects

This funding will be the final expenditure from the original Poplus start-up grant.

If you represent a funding organisation, and might be interested in helping support the growth of Poplus through funding micro-grants, please do let us know! Poplus Components represent great ‘bang for your buck’, since they are re-usable across the entire eDemocracy worldwide community.

When you want one of your friends to answer a question, the chances are that you hop onto Facebook and leave them a message. What if you could do exactly the same with your MP?

June 23rd saw the soft launch of an innovative new tool that uses a Poplus Component as an integral part. It’s called Nouabook.ma and allows constituents in Morocco to contact their elected representatives, either through the website or while logged in to Facebook.

Nouabook is built on top of the WriteIt Poplus Component developed by Ciudadano Inteligente and connects into Facebook, one of the most used websites in Morocco. The group behind the site are SimSim-Participation Citoyenne and developer Tarik Nesh-Nash.

This is an exciting time for the whole Poplus network. The community has been going from strength to strength since the conference in April, and this tool, the first built by an external group using a Poplus Component, is a real sign that it is beginning to spread its wings.

And of course, because all Poplus Components are open-source, Nouabook is available for any other group to use! An exciting prospect as social media is such an important tool for communication in today’s society.

How did this project come about?

To decide the right approach, SimSim and Tarik conducted surveys of citizens throughout Morocco to find out how many had ever contacted their representatives. The results showed that of 80 respondents, 81% had never written to their representative. Yet 73% said that if it was easier to get in touch, they would be more likely to contact their representative, on issues ranging from public transport to security at Moroccan universities.[1]

Couple this thirst for communication with the fact that Facebook is one of the most popular websites in Morocco [2], and the idea for Nouabook.ma was born.

Nouabook.ma (meaning “Your Deputies” in Moroccan Arabic, but also a reference to the well known Facebook) allows users to find their representative, read a profile on them including their roles and responsibilities, and see their activity in Parliament. Most crucially, it also allows users to publicly put questions directly to their representatives, who can respond equally publicly on the site. A user can submit a question either by filling in a short form, or uploading a short video. Other users can vote on their questions, meaning the representative can quickly see which questions are most important for their constituents and prioritise their answers. For those who have authorised it, the question is posted automatically to their Facebook page. By enabling users to easily share questions and responses on their own timeline, this helps to spread information beyond the boundaries of the original Nouabook.ma site.

The site is currently in Beta and a small group of very engaged hand-picked representatives have signed up for the site. Of these, there are 4 or 5 who are already getting very involved answering questions, which is a huge success for the site. Once the pilot phase is over, the hope is to extend the platform to cover the whole Moroccan Parliament, so keep your eyes peeled for news come the next Parliamentary session in October.

So far the site is only in French, but if you read French and want to give some feedback there’s a short form here which will help the team with their next stage of development. The site will soon be in Arabic as well.

Follow Nouabook on Twitter and Facebook for further updates!

 

[1] http://nouabook.tumblr.com/

[2] http://www.wamda.com/2014/02/new-data-proves-facebook-s-extensive-reach-in-morocco

Tablet Picture by ebayink courtesy of Flickr and the creative commons license.

 

The right conference, held at the right time and attended by people with common problems, can sometimes give birth to whole new organisations. I was at OpenTech when the Open Rights Group was born, and on a grander scale the Red Cross and the UN both featured conferences at catalytic moments in their early history.

Last week in Santiago, Chile, a conference took place that felt like exactly such a moment – PoplusCon. People from 27 countries spent two days talking about their shared goals and desires, and from it the skeleton of a new federation – the Poplus federation – started to take shape.

Not everyone at the conference worked on identical projects, or had identical skills. Some people were specialists in tracking suspicious relationships (‘This guy’s brother-in-law gets all the contracts’), others were big into training journalists how to use FOI, others specialised in making important datasets more accessible to members of the public, others still were journalists, skilled at constructing stories. But one theme emerged pretty quickly – people wanted better, easier, more reliable ways of sharing knowledge and sharing technology, so that they could all save time, effort and money.

What could a new federation do for you?

And so that is how the conversation turned to the idea of founding a new federation – an organisation that could serve the needs of many different groups without being run or owned by any one of them. In a brainstorm session about what people wanted from a new federation, the following ideas were raised:

• Running events to facilitate more sharing of ideas and tech
• Publishing stories about successful and unsuccessful projects, especially where those stories need to cross language barriers to spread
• Vetting and endorsing data standards
• Access to a community of peers (for sharing experience, encouragement, tips and tricks etc)
• Resources for projects that are running short
• Help and advice on making projects sustainable
• Certification of what counts as a Poplus Component
• Where groups face common challenges, perhaps coordinate advocacy
• Organisation of mentorship, exchanges and placements

This wish list is clearly far more than a nascent organisation could arrange in the near future, but there was some informal voting and the top priorities fairly quickly emerged. People really wanted access to their peers, and to the stories that they tell. And there was a strong wish to see Poplus Components become more official, and better explained.

Getting Real – Getting Involved

But a list is just a list without people willing to make it real. And so without doubt the most awesome thing that took place at PoplusCon was that eight people immediately volunteered to form a committee that would bring Poplus into being, representing half a dozen countries in different parts of the world.

This committee, which is completely open for anyone to join, will be meeting a couple of times in the next few weeks to agree on a plan for the first 12 months of the Poplus federation. It will work out how the new-born federation should govern itself, and what the first things that this entirely volunteer-run group should be doing. It’s an exciting, fragile moment and I’ve not seen anything like it in my ten-odd years working in this field. There’s no boss, no leader, just some people trying to build something of shared value.

Right now there are no rules, no barriers to entry, no bureaucracy. In fact there’s nothing but some hope, enthusiasm and some shared dreams of a stronger community of individuals and organisations.

I hope that if you read this and think that Poplus sounds cool, that you’ll consider joining the committee too. All you have to do is join the mailing list and ask where and when to show up. If you come to online committee meetings a couple of times, you’re de facto one of the people who runs Poplus. What happens next is – quite literally – down to you.

Image: Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente

Last Sunday, several mySociety team members woke up just in time to see the sun rise over the Andes – not our standard view in the morning.

We were on our way to Santiago, Chile, as were delegates from 27 different countries, all headed to the inaugural Poplus Conference. This was a joint event organised by ourselves and our Chilean friends Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente.

Long-haul flights don’t feature high on our list of favourite activities – so what was so important that we all happily put in the 7,000 miles to Santiago?

Poplus

Before we can answer that question, you need to know what Poplus is. In short, it’s a project to create and share open source code that can help civic organisations around the world. You can find out more here.

While legal structures and ruling regimes vary from place to place, the needs of citizens are broadly constant: they require information, empowerment, and transparency.

The digital age has provided opportunities here, and there are many organisations like mySociety and Ciudadano Inteligente around the world: groups that harness the power of the internet to open access to civic and democratic processes.

Underpinning Poplus is the belief that we can make great efficiencies if we share our code – that way, there’s no need for each of these groups to rewrite what is effectively the same piece of software. Poplus aims to encourage the creation of ‘Components’ – small pieces of software that can be used easily, by anyone across the world.

Poplus – the next step

Poplus is a project in its infancy, and this conference was the next step in its growth. It brought together civic coders, and organisations with an interest in the code they create.

The Poplus project was initially conceived by Ciudadano Inteligente and mySociety – but in order to thrive, it needs many members from all over the world to play a part. The conference allowed us to present the general idea behind Poplus, and to ask for help shaping and refining it. Once some underlying principles had been agreed, we could become a true federation.

There were also many opportunities to listen to organisations, about what they needed from Poplus software, and their experiences running civic websites in their own territories. By the close of the conference, we had thrashed out some broad agreements, and there was a lot of excitement about carrying on the work to create Poplus Components – and the community around the movement.

Defining a Poplus Component

One important task was to define exactly what makes a Poplus Component: the conference offered us a real opportunity to get input from many different perspectives, and come away with a ‘gold standard’.

It was very useful to have developers and end users in the same room, talking about the process of creating Components, and the experience of using them.

You can see what we came up with in the photograph (click to see it bigger). Among other things:

• Poplus Components are small pieces of software which provide functionality for civic or democratic websites.

• Each Component solves a single problem.

• They are built to work in any country, making minimal assumptions about location.

• They are open source and free for anyone to use.

• They slot into any website, and may also inter-operate.

Just the start

The Poplus Conference was a great opportunity to nail down everyone’s thoughts. Now we have agreed on our shared purpose, the real work will begin. The conference fostered communication and sense of community, and we’ll all be trying to keep that alive.

A huge thanks to everyone who attended and contributed  – and especially to Ciudadano Inteligente for being such welcoming and generous hosts.

Read more

• For a quick run-through of the conference as a whole, see it on Storify
• Or for a more in-depth experience, check out the #PoplusCon hashtag
• Session notes are here.
• There are photos on Flickr (with more to follow)

 

Header images – click to see larger. L-R: Setting up the timetable for the ‘unconference’; networking time; ample snacks for everyone; nailing down the essentials of what makes a Poplus Component; t-shirts ready for delegates; jotting down proposals for sessions; more networking; lunch among the autumn leaves; coffee time; chatting.