Sejmometr.pl team is currently working on adding written questions functionality to their portal. As with all other options, this one has to comply with the local legislative process, which according to their blog looks like this:

“In the Polish law system, there are three types of questions that MP can make:
– spoken questions – on each Sejm session, there is a time when each MP can ask a question and receive an immediate answer from a government representative.
– written questions called “interpelacje”
– written questions called “zapytania” “

According to Daniel Macyszyn the last two types do not differ much from the point of view of general public – the target audience of his website, hence why the plan is to put them in the same category on Sejmometr.pl.

“My opinion is that the difference between “interpelacje” and “zapytania” is understood only by a specialists and regular users won’t care so much if a particular written question was submitted as an “interpelacja” or “zapytanie”. That’s why I’m planing to join them in a Sejmometr database structure and present them in a one browser.”

I am sure will will find out if it works in practice fairly soon.

Do you have similar instances of simplifying the legislative proces for the sake of your projects? Do let us know!

“I’m trying to develop Sejmometr in a maximal openness. This means a “technical” openness (Open Source, Open Data coming soon) and this blog is also a way of opening conceptual works around the Sejmometr. Now I want to add another level: I will be publishing every official letter that I’m writing or receiving from a public institutions.”

This is how Daniel Macyszyn starts his new post. His first letter was sent to Sejm Bureau of Research in order to ask for them to approve the usage of the information published on their sites for Sejmometr.pl purposes, but without the usual charge.

“Sejmometr publishes all opinions and anylisys that are present on the official Sejm website, but we had to make an exception for the Bureau of Research, because they claim that their opinions are a subject of copyright protection and they don’t allow to publish them without an additional fee.

While this is hard to understand for us why citizens got to pay a second time for this data (they already paid for this with taxes), I decided to write a letter to them and ask for a permission for publishing their documents on Sejmometr. I will put the answer here on this blog, when it comes.”

It’s brilliant to see the openness of the Sejmometr team! What do you think – would this approach work in your country? Do let us know!

In our last update on the work of Sejmometr.pl we have mentioned that Daniel Macyszyn was considering a calendar as a default view of Parliament sessions browser on the site. Well, it is implemented now, but in a different form than originally anticipated.

“On the top, we have a not so big calendar with all day events, representing Sejm sessions (there are no single events). Users can select sessions they are interested in, by clicking them on the calendar. If no session is selected – Sejmometr will automatically select the latest (or almost the latest) session. Users can also change months and see related sessions, without overloading the whole site. This was done using AJAX technology.”

The original  idea proved to be overcomplicated and not entirely along the lines of Sejmometr overall priorities.

“Sejmometr is a projects-oriented portal (OK, bills-oriented would sound better, but it wouldn’t be strict – bills are only one of the legislative projects types). In future, it will be a projects-and-MPs-oriented, but for now – projects are a backbone of Sejmometr’s database structure. Practically, it means that legislative events (like legislative debates, speeches, reports) are always child elements of some projects and we always try to show these events from a perspective of their parent projects.”

You can find out more information about the reasons behind moving away from the original idea for this particular development on Sejmometr’s English blog. It would be also great if you could nagivate over and leave a comment for Daniel on the following points:

“Calendar programming:

• loading data indicator
• javascript data caching

Blank space in the top, right corner of the page. What to put there? Some stats? dedicated sessions search engine? tags cloud?”

It is extremely useful to see the updates of our projects on their own blogs, so we are very happy to see Sejmometr.pl starting one in English. Daniel, the lead developer, is posting about their current work on processing the outstanding data from sessions of Sejm. He is also raising a very interesting question of presenting the sessions in a form of a calendar (using TheyWorkForYou.com as an example). He seems to come to the conclusion that a calendar view could become a central part of the entire Polish website, and would make it possible to present all events – parliamentary sessions and other, additional events in two categories:

-“all-day events – for presenting Sejm sessions’ days

-single events – for presenting all other legislative events (mainly announcing documents like: bills, committees’ reports and such)”

This solution raises another question (related to Sejmometr’s general focus on users’ communication with the website):

“If this would work as a typical calendar, why won’t provide tools for synchronizing calendars? Users could synchronize their iCals or Google calendars to Sejm calendar via Sejmometr. Just another form of communication in addition to notifications, RSS and mails. For sure, it would be a great tool for MPs, but what about regular site users? Is this worth of implementing?”

What do you think? Is it a good idea? Can you support Daniel with your thoughts and experience? Do let us know in the comments section!

Well, Sejmometr.pl is something I did not have to be introduced to simply because I had the privilege to talk to the team this summer during my Technology for Transparency research (entire case study available in English here). It’s an on-line platform providing Polish citizens with insights into the work of their government in a very simple, easily digestible way as opposed to the traditional sources of information. Sejmometr.pl in its original form was running for about two years before it received our support to re-launch in its new, more developed form. Today the major functions allow the users to browse through parliament’s work based on the political party involved or the status of various acts. The next steps will contain adding profiles of MP’s and building Facebook-line functions into the system, but I am sure we will hear about those soon in more details from Daniel Macyszyn, the developper of the project.

Sejmometr.pl has employed another local Technology for Transparency researcher, Jakub Górnicki, to drive promotion and marketing activities. As part of the job, Jakub presented the current vision of Sejmometr.pl at TransparencyCamp in Warsaw quite recently. It’s a great pity that the recording is available only in Polish, but if you trust my translation I can share with you few insights resulting from questions Jakub has received. It has been suggested that the website could also act as a place for political discussions, however Jakub pointed out that this would defeat the main, rather educational goal of the platform and would become difficult to mange (could be a separate project though). One suggestion worth incorporating on the current website is the option of subscribing to Sejmometr.pl content based on the interests of users, who usually remain ignorant of overal legislative work, but who would be interested in acts and laws related to their work or passions.

It is also worth mentioning that while Jakub was promoting their ideas in Warsaw, Daniel presented Sejmometr.pl to attendees of Open Goverment Data Camp in London (you will find a lot of interesting content from that event here) collecting valuable feedback. He  is currently working on their new blog in English, but in the meantime you can find their updates on the Polish blog and Facebook fan page.