Posted by
Michael Lenczner on
Jul 08, 2008; 3:42pm
URL: http://civicaccess.416.s1.nabble.com/capitol-words-tp1130p1141.html
On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 8:55 AM, Jennifer Bell <
[hidden email]> wrote:
> I met with Micheal Lenczner at a coffee shop in April, and was told that CivicAccess was a community of interest, with no specific plans for the future.
>
I'm sorry for the miscommunication Jen. What I meant to say that it
was my impression that CivicAccess had no immediate plans for any
legal shape. I just think it's very important that people know what
they are getting into - especially around areas of governance. I'm
sure that there are projects or campaigns that can be done with/by
Civicaccess, but I just didn't / don't see a CivicAccess office
happening anytime soon, or even a board. It could happen, but someone
would have to propose something clear. Also, I do believe that a
neutral place of discussion and support is important for a movement
like this.
> There's nothing wrong with maintaining a separate 'community of interest'... my impression was that CivicAccess seems to have a broader focus than visiblegovernment, with more interest in scientific data.
>
Well, Tracey does love scientific data. ;-) And yeah - we had early
discussions about having access to government datasets, not just what
we would think of as "info" in terms of freedom of information
requests.
> Jennifer
>
> --- On Tue, 7/8/08, Cory Horner <
[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>> From: Cory Horner <
[hidden email]>
>> Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] Getting Tools Built
>> To: "civicaccess discuss" <
[hidden email]>
>> Received: Tuesday, July 8, 2008, 2:38 AM
>> 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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