DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
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DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
 
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On the applications side of open data, at the moment we do very little code-sharing between projects or countries. mySociety has a significant effort underway to change this -- read below.
On the technical component-sharing side, in a lot of respects I'm a skeptic who'd love to be argued out of his skepticism. But the guides and books mySociety is writing are utterly fantastic: I've already e-mailed the wonderful "How To Build Your Own TheyWorkForYou" to several people working on related projects.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Myfanwy Nixon <[hidden email]> Date: Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 11:35 AM Subject: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites To: [hidden email] Hi everyone, Apologies in advance for cross-posting, if you see this message more than once. I work for mySociety.org - we build civic and democratic websites in the UK, and, increasingly, internationally. Our sites range from WhatDoTheyKnow.com (a site helping people to send Freedom of Information requests) to TheyWorkForYou (our parliamentary monitoring site) and FixMyStreet (helping people report problems like potholes in their local area). I thought members of this list would be interested in a number of new resources we have recently launched under the banner DIY mySociety. We’re often approached by people in other countries who want to set up their own versions of mySociety’s websites - DIY mySociety is a way for us to encourage this, and help as much as we can. At the same time, we want to learn from other people’s experiences and improve our own ability to help in countries which might have spectacularly different political landscapes or civic frameworks to our own. We’re approaching the DIY mySociety project in three, interconnected ways - through Code, Documentation, and Community. Code: This year, we’ve been putting real effort into modifying our codebases. The aim is to make them simpler - by far - to install and run. We’ve also included features that will help the international community, like the ability to add translations. In particular, we have been working on two complete web apps that let you set up and run entire sites, based on two popular mySociety sites, FixMyStreet and WhatDoTheyKnow. You can download everything you need to make your own FixMyStreet website, or you can make your own Right-to-Know site with our Alaveteli Platform. In addition, we’ve also started to develop components that can help people with websites of all kinds. The most mature of these is MapIt, a system which can greatly reduce the burden of coding geographical lookups for political areas, councils, regions etc. How-to Guides (for everyone): Naturally, a lot of questions arise when people start to think about building an ambitious eDemocracy or civic website. Sometimes, there are also questions which should be asked, but don’t occur. We’ve started a process of creating simple guides to talk people through all the considerations before they take the plunge. We’ve tried as hard as we can to make them comprehensible for everyone, not just people with a technological background. If you’re interested, take a look at our guides to Getting Started with Alaveteli, and Getting Started with FixMyStreet Platform [PDF]. Community: We want people to be able to ask questions and tell us when they hit problems. So, we’ve created a number of channels for conversation and support.
I hope that some of this will be of interest. Please do drop me a line off-list if you’d like to know more. We’d also appreciate it if you spread the word amongst your own communities, if this is something that would be of use to them. Thanks for reading! |
Re: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
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This is really exciting and could lead to improved code and greater interoperability.
Glen, what is the name of the Gov. of Canada site where open source projects are shared, that could also be something to take into consideration.
Also, the GeoConnections program, was instrumental at building in interoperability and code standardization to ensure that data could be visualized in distributed systems, it allowed for the opening of servers and enabled data to be managed locally but visualized elsewhere. Also, Stephane might be able to talk about standardizing once he has completed his zone cone project. Finally, GeoConnections provides a host of services, standards and specifications here that can also be used as a guide for some http://geoconnections.org/en/communities/developers/index.html. And if you go to the GeoConnections Discovery Portal and scroll down you will find a developer's corner that includes services and so on http://geodiscover.cgdi.ca/web/guest/home.
Cheers
t
On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 12:53 PM, Michael Mulley <[hidden email]> wrote: On the applications side of open data, at the moment we do very little code-sharing between projects or countries. mySociety has a significant effort underway to change this -- read below. -- Tracey P. Lauriault 613-234-2805 |
Re: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
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> Glen, what is the name of the Gov. of Canada site where open source projects
> are shared, that could also be something to take into consideration. It is called IRCan http://ircan-rican.gc.ca/ -Glen On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 1:56 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote: > This is really exciting and could lead to improved code and greater > interoperability. > > Glen, what is the name of the Gov. of Canada site where open source projects > are shared, that could also be something to take into consideration. > > Also, the GeoConnections program, was instrumental at building in > interoperability and code standardization to ensure that data could be > visualized in distributed systems, it allowed for the opening of servers and > enabled data to be managed locally but visualized elsewhere. Also, Stephane > might be able to talk about standardizing once he has completed his zone > cone project. Finally, GeoConnections provides a host of services, > standards and specifications here that can also be used as a guide for some > http://geoconnections.org/en/communities/developers/index.html. And if you > go to the GeoConnections Discovery Portal and scroll down you will find a > developer's corner that includes services and so on > http://geodiscover.cgdi.ca/web/guest/home. > > Cheers > t > > On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 12:53 PM, Michael Mulley <[hidden email]> > wrote: >> >> On the applications side of open data, at the moment we do very little >> code-sharing between projects or countries. mySociety has a significant >> effort underway to change this -- read below. >> >> On the technical component-sharing side, in a lot of respects I'm a >> skeptic who'd love to be argued out of his skepticism. But the guides and >> books mySociety is writing are utterly fantastic: I've already e-mailed the >> wonderful "How To Build Your Own TheyWorkForYou" to several people working >> on related projects. >> >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> From: Myfanwy Nixon <[hidden email]> >> Date: Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 11:35 AM >> Subject: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build >> transparency websites >> To: [hidden email] >> >> >> Hi everyone, >> >> Apologies in advance for cross-posting, if you see this message more than >> once. >> >> I work for mySociety.org - we build civic and democratic websites in the >> UK, and, increasingly, internationally. Our sites range from >> WhatDoTheyKnow.com (a site helping people to send Freedom of Information >> requests) to TheyWorkForYou (our parliamentary monitoring site) and >> FixMyStreet (helping people report problems like potholes in their local >> area). >> >> I thought members of this list would be interested in a number of new >> resources we have recently launched under the banner DIY mySociety. >> >> We’re often approached by people in other countries who want to set up >> their own versions of mySociety’s websites - DIY mySociety is a way for us >> to encourage this, and help as much as we can. At the same time, we want to >> learn from other people’s experiences and improve our own ability to help in >> countries which might have spectacularly different political landscapes or >> civic frameworks to our own. >> >> We’re approaching the DIY mySociety project in three, interconnected ways >> - through Code, Documentation, and Community. >> >> Code: This year, we’ve been putting real effort into modifying our >> codebases. The aim is to make them simpler - by far - to install and run. >> We’ve also included features that will help the international community, >> like the ability to add translations. >> >> In particular, we have been working on two complete web apps that let you >> set up and run entire sites, based on two popular mySociety sites, >> FixMyStreet and WhatDoTheyKnow. You can download everything you need to make >> your own FixMyStreet website, or you can make your own Right-to-Know site >> with our Alaveteli Platform. >> >> In addition, we’ve also started to develop components that can help people >> with websites of all kinds. The most mature of these is MapIt, a system >> which can greatly reduce the burden of coding geographical lookups for >> political areas, councils, regions etc. >> >> How-to Guides (for everyone): Naturally, a lot of questions arise when >> people start to think about building an ambitious eDemocracy or civic >> website. Sometimes, there are also questions which should be asked, but >> don’t occur. We’ve started a process of creating simple guides to talk >> people through all the considerations before they take the plunge. We’ve >> tried as hard as we can to make them comprehensible for everyone, not just >> people with a technological background. >> >> If you’re interested, take a look at our guides to Getting Started with >> Alaveteli, and Getting Started with FixMyStreet Platform [PDF]. >> >> Community: We want people to be able to ask questions and tell us when >> they hit problems. So, we’ve created a number of channels for conversation >> and support. >> >> The DIYmySociety blog We’ve set this up for international users of our >> code. It’s the place to get non-technical, non-jargony news about what >> software, guides and events we are planning. Regular posts with advice and >> news for people setting up their own sites - there are also several handy >> links in the sidebar. >> DIYmySociety on Twitter For quick updates, and conversation about any >> aspect of reusing our code. >> The Alaveteli mailing list Support for anyone who wants to use our >> Alaveteli platform to create their own Right-to-Know website - or indeed is >> just thinking about the possibility. >> The FixMyStreet Platform mailing list Useful for anyone who’d like to >> build their own version of FixMyStreet. >> The Components mailing list The place to go if you’re installing our >> Components, like MapIt - or just want to know more. >> >> >> I hope that some of this will be of interest. Please do drop me a line >> off-list if you’d like to know more. We’d also appreciate it if you spread >> the word amongst your own communities, if this is something that would be of >> use to them. Thanks for reading! >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list >> [hidden email] >> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss > > > > > -- > Tracey P. Lauriault > 613-234-2805 > > > > _______________________________________________ > CivicAccess-discuss mailing list > [hidden email] > http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss -- - http://zzzoot.blogspot.com/ - |
Re: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
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In reply to this post by Michael Mulley
Hi Michael,
Can you develop on that: "On the technical component-sharing side, in a lot of respects I'm a skeptic who'd love to be argued out of his skepticism". Sharing libraries and ready-to-use (open source) platform really sounds like a necessary step to get cheap tools for public bodies. What makes you skeptic about that? Steph Le 26 mars 2012 16:53, Michael Mulley <[hidden email]> a écrit : On the applications side of open data, at the moment we do very little code-sharing between projects or countries. mySociety has a significant effort underway to change this -- read below. |
Re: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
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Steph - Yeah, I didn't really mean that at all :) A case of typing too fast when sending a quick forward.
I've been thinking a lot about the specific case of parliamentary-monitoring sites, where so far there've been enough little differences between countries to frustrate efforts at sharing. My hopefully unfounded skepticism is about mixing premade components to create an out-of-the-box parliamentary monitoring site (as opposed to establishing common formats and then building our tools to operate on top of these common formats, which I'm all for).
But there are already several examples of out-of-the-box packages working well in the general area of open data/open knowledge -- Alavateli and CKAN, for example.
2012/3/27 Stéphane Guidoin <[hidden email]> Hi Michael, |
Re: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
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Alaveteli succeeds at this because its motto is "Built it as it should be, not as it is." In other words, it deliberately tries not to model too much of any country's FOI system. For example, in some countries, you can send a request to a general FOI intake email, and it is forwarded to the appropriate recipient. In others, you need to know the precise entity within the precise department - that's not easy for regular citizens when departments and ministries regularly restructure, when their public names are not the same as their internal or official names, when email addresses are tied to individuals instead of functions e.g. [hidden email]. Alaveteli's approach is to not burden citizens with all the details. In parliamentary monitoring, on the other hand, you have much less leeway in terms of "building it as it should be." Developers often have no choice but to model the system as it is. This makes it much harder to share code. You more often than not get code that tries to model every parliamentary system out there: "One codebase to rule them all"-style (which Kevin McArthur refers to as the Sauron's Ring fallacy). I think common formats, as Michael suggests, is a more interesting approach. For Represent, the data format Michael and I came up probably breaks down in some edge case, but in general it's rather agnostic http://represent.opennorth.ca/api/#fields Other jurisdictions should be able to adopt it without much fuss. CKAN is a different beast. It doesn't really face the same problems.
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