Re: Getting Tools Built
Posted by
Hugh McGuire-2 on
Jul 08, 2008; 1:18pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/capitol-words-tp1130p1138.html
Thus far civicaccess has been mostly an email list, and a wiki outlining a idea/vision for data & the govt, pointing to various projects and things of interest (probably a bit of spam too). I see it as a useful gathering place, that *might* evolve into something later - but after X months (years?) it has remained mostly an occasional information swapping ground, and nothing more.
Visiblegovernment is, if i understand jennifer correctly, planning to build actual tools (a la opencongress etc) ... which is something some of us on the list have worked on in the past to varying degrees of success - but certainly we need more of it in canada, from this group and from others.
i think civicaccess should continue on as an info exchange, and do what we can to promote our objectives, which are:
1. To encourage all levels of governments (county/municipal, provincial, federal) to make civic data and information available to citizens without restrictions, at no cost, and in useable open formats.
2. To encourage the development of citizen projects using civic data and information
So i'd see visiblegovernment as a specific project that civicaccess enthusiastically encourages (to the extent that visiblegovernment does objective #2) ... and civicaccess as a broader group that cheers on & supports visiblegovernment and any number of other interesting projects that come along.
The more of us actually doing things the better, I think.
... speaking of which, I have a datalibre.ca blog to fix. sigh.
Hugh.
On Jul 8, 2008, at 2:38 AM, Cory Horner wrote:
A while back there was brief discussion about CivicAccess becoming an umbrella foundation/non-profit to conglomerate the various Canadian access-related projects. I see a real need/use for this, as i'm sure each little project has little interest in all the paperwork involved to achieve non-profit status, when all they want is a little financial support; sticking a little "a CivicAccess project" logo in the corner is a lot more appealing.
To contrast the two examples given by Jennifer, I guess I see mySociety as a handful of people who built tools who then built a non-profit around it, versus Sunlight as a group with a bucket of money who then built tools. CivicAccess and VisibleGovernment seem to be taking the similar approaches, respectively.
My question is, are CivicAccess and VisibleGovernment competing, or should we try to, for example, make CivicAccess the umbrella/community, and VisibleGovernment the fundraising wing? Is there is a difference that i'm not seeing here, besides branding? (or is having 2 entities too confusing?)
Thanks,
Cory.
On 7-Jul-08, at 1:11 PM, Jennifer Bell wrote:
I've been thinking the last while about the best approach for promoting the creation of online tools for government transparency. The Sunlight Foundation in the US and mySociety in the UK are showing that the government can be changed by example, from the outside. It just takes people to push to make it happen.
What will it take to get a similar movement going here in Canada? As I know there are several people here with experience in similar groups, I'd like to get your opinions.
The ingredients, as I see them, are:
1) Money.
2) A Community.
3) A Tool.
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