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/RSS FeedWe’ve got updates from Julia on this Parliament’s first Register of Financial interests, showing what second jobs and gifts, etc, MPs have declared; and on the startlingly diminished list of All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs).
Meanwhile, Gareth tells us how to get a discount on WhatDoTheyKnow Pro, and we hear from AccessInfo about a new award – the winner will be invited to Madrid to present their work.
Alongside all of that, Myf explains how a WhatDoTheyKnow user harnessed the power of Reddit to verify the responses they were receiving to their FOI requests.
Enjoy!
Links
- Blog post on the Register of Financial Interests spreadsheet; and more details on what it contains
- Blog post about Reddit, WhatDoTheyKnow, and Physician Associates
- Blog post on the diminishing number of APPGs
- AccessInfo Impact Awards
- Full details on how to get a discount on WhatDoTheyKnow Pro by linking to your outcomes
- Our TikTok account
- Our Bluesky account
Music: Chafftop by Blue Dot Sessions.
Transcript
[0:04] Myf: Hello. Thank you very much for tuning in.
[0:07] This is our second monthly collection of news and updates from mySociety, and my name is Myf Nixon. I’m mySociety’s Communications Manager.
[0:15] This month, I’m going to share with you five pieces of news — two from our democracy work, and three from our transparency side. (more…)
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If you’re a teacher, looking to spend the Easter holidays planning lessons, our latest news could save you a little time.
mySociety has collaborated with the Citizenship Foundation on the creation of materials for use in schools.
These activities, written and tested in consultation with teachers, introduce students to concepts of democracy, citizenship and community. A number of the materials also show students how they can use mySociety websites such as WriteToThem, WhatDoTheyKnow or FixMyStreet to bring about change.
We hope that you will find these activities useful. They span years 1 to 13, will fit into a variety of curricula from Politics to Geography, and are completely free to download and use. Access them here – and please do pass the word on to your teacher colleagues.
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Last week I travelled to Berlin to meet with @dcabo, @helen_access and @KerstiRu of Access Info Europe and Valon Brestovci of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova (FLOSSK) to discuss and plan collaboration on the first Alaveteli-driven websites: AskTheEu and Informata Zyrtare.
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Today I had a chat with Seb Bacon who is in charge of collaboration on clones of What Do They Know software. He is currently working with project from Kosovo we have mentioned earlier, but his work is more general. The main idea is to understanding the laws in each country to build a consistent software package. In the UK, for instance, authorities should usually respond to freedom of information requests within 20 days. In Kosovo, authorities have to issue a decision within 7 days, and will be fined if they don’t.
“The reality of all local implementations of ideas like What Do They Know is the fact that usually thinking short teems is easier on a national level. It is in everyone’s interest however to think in long term solutions and build effective teams that work internationally. This is really not so much a software issue, but a question of successful collaboration.”
Seb himself is a programmer, but at least half of his time is taken by talking to as many people as possible – now developers from Kosovo and What Do They Know team.
When asked about the tools used for this collaboration, Seb pointed out a mailing list and regular conversations over Skype. It’s early days of this collaboration so we can expect that this is going to evolve. There is also GitHub project repository for the software, which has a dedicated wiki.
In terms of promotion the collaboration has its own brand and website: http://alaveteli.org/ so we can expect all involved sites to link to it. The ultimate vision would be that the package can be used by any county. In which case all it would take for people who heard of it to navigate to the site, take the code and use it. One of the practical challenges to make it work locally is and will remain the fact that the software requires a lot of human input – at least 3-4 volunteers spending good amount of time on requests is crucial.
We will stay in touch with Seb to learn more about this process and with the developers from Kosovo to hear their thoughts on the local implementation so keep an eye on our blog.
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I think I might have mentioned earlier on this blog that we are awaiting information about Kosovo based WhatDoTheyKnow clone implementation. I have talked today to Valon Brestovci from FLOSS Kosova, the manager of InformataZyrtare.org, who shared more information about the team and their plans. When asked about the current stage of the project, Valon responded:
“We are doing the phase 1 of the project which is installing (and fixing the installation procedures), analyzing and understanding the code and having the site up and running.”
He also explained how the team is set to work on various aspects of implementation and promotion:
- “Ben and Petrit are doing the programing part,
- couple of guys from GAP Institute will help with getting the information about institutions, promoting the site and setting up meetings with civil society,
- there will be a couple of guys doing work on the interface,
- I will be managing the whole thing. Right now I’m helping Ben and Petrit with setting up the system, next week I’ll have meeting regarding interface requirements/design.”
I know it’s early days, but was eager to find out more about the plans for promotion and communication too:
“We have not started with promotion yet, we intend to do it at a later stages of project. I have identified target groups who might use/benefit the most from using the site.
- Civil society
- Press
- Students
- Research institutions (Institutes, Universities, Schools,…)
- Public Institutions
- Others
We will use various tools to do the promotions like setting up meetings, adverts in newspapers and online, social networks, blogs, etc). Of course all of these are open for debate and any suggestion is appreciated.”
I will do my best to update you on the local background, introduce the team in more detail and feed the information about the development of the project as we are awaiting its launch in the upcoming weeks.
