supporting a civic access project
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supporting a civic access project
 
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Hey folks,
Ilona and I worked up a project and submitted it to one of those trendy online competitions. We need some voting for it so if you had the inclination to head over there and give us a good rating, we would very much appreciate it. Basically the project is to improve OurParliament, create a second youth-friendly version of it called Citizen Factory, and develop a lot of online youth educational content about how parliament works. As the project is designed, the data, the code, and the educational content created will all be open / creative commons. :-D And if any of you have suggestions about where else we could pitch this project to get the rest of the funding, those would be appreciated as well! The url is below. And I included the project description. --------------------------------------- Apathy is Boring needs your help - Vote for Citizen Factory! In keeping with our mission of making Canadian democracy accessible (and sexy!), AisB has applied for funding to launch Citizen Factory, a website that will provide Canadians with real time updates on the actions of our elected officials. From your MPs' voting record to the status of bills on environmental protection, Citizen Factory will make all info about Parliament accessible and understandable. To get Citizen Factory off the ground, we need your help. Show your support by visiting http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/17338 and rating our innovation, Citizen Factory, with 5 stars - and tell your friends to do the same. Thank you! content from the application------------------------------------------------------------ WHAT IS YOUR IDEA? WHAT MAKES IT INNOVATIVE? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT? The Citizen Factory Project will offer real time info about how Canada's democratic process works through a website created for youth by youth. President Barack Obama's campaign was characterized by the message of change based on more frequent and higher quality interactions between citizens and their government. Projects like TheyWorkForYou.com (UK, run by MySociety) and OpenCongress.org (US, run by the Sunlight Foundation), as well as Obama's Change.org are innovative examples of this new dynamic. By using technology to inform and involve more citizens in the workings of their democracy, these initiatives all aim to improve connections between elected officials and their constituents through increased transparency and accessibility. However, none of these projects are specifically geared towards youth. Apathy is Boring will change that by creating The Citizen Factory Project. By adapting the technology of OurParliament.ca, a citizen-run bilingual website which aggregates government and civic information, Citizen Factory will offer youth real-time updates on the actions of their elected officials and youth-friendly information about how Canadian democracy works. Since 2004, Apathy is Boring has been using art and technology to educate youth about how to get involved in their communities. During that time, we have been recognized as a leader in the field of youth engagement. By partnering with OurParliament.ca, Apathy is Boring will collect relevant government information and adapt it for a demographic that is increasingly opting out of traditional forms of civic participation. The importance of projects like Citizen Factory are concretely supported by research such as Mimi Ito's work for the MacArthur Foundation and studies by the Canadian Chair of Electoral Studies Professor Henry Milner. Citizen Factory will capitalize on new tech possibilities of the web to engage young Canadians with the democratic process in real time. WHAT WILL BE THE IMPACT OF YOUR IDEA? We believe it should be easy to be informed of the activities of your representatives. The main impact of this project will be to give the next generation of Canadian voters the resources they need in order to be engaged actors in the democratic process. By taking civic information which is currently inaccessible to youth (and most citizens) like representatives' voting records and "Web2.0"-ing it, Citizen Factory will help make sure that Canadian youth can easily access government information. This will be supplemented with youth-friendly educational resources explaining what this information means. Concretely the project will also help develop the ecosystem of democratic online projects in Canada and beyond. It will support improvements to the scraping and aggregation system of OurParliament as well as the development of an API (application programming interface) and RSS feeds so that third-party websites can easily access and repurpose OurParliament's database. All of the software and educational content created will be FLOSS and Creative Commons, therefore they can be reused and repurposed by other projects. We anticipate that this project will help guide the development of similar youth-oriented materials within transparency and citizen engagement initiatives in other countries. |
Re: supporting a civic access project
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where is the voting spot! I am a reputablebar in toronto with my reputable friend se, and neither of us could find the vote pot!
mighta been the cognac, or the hot toddy, maybe even the peanuts- alas help us help you! hic cup! On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Michael Lenczner <[hidden email]> wrote: Hey folks, -- Tracey P. Lauriault 613-234-2805 https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault |
Re: supporting a civic access project
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On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 16:36, Tracey P. Lauriault <[hidden email]> wrote:
> where is the voting spot! I am a reputablebar in toronto with my reputable > friend se, and neither of us could find the vote pot! Top right: Help us select the top entries! Rate this innovation! > Average: Your rating: None Average: 5 (9 votes) -- Robin http://identi.ca/millette |
Re: supporting a civic access project
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Thanks and wholly not obvious! 3 of us tried to figure it out!
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Robin Millette <[hidden email]> wrote:
-- Tracey P. Lauriault 613-234-2805 https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault |
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