Arranging meetings with MPs

[pkeenan]

I spoke with a fellow at the pub, forgot his name. But we talked about
prearranging meetings with MPs, so that each person from changecamp
would be set up with a date and time to talk to their MP about...

Change!

So, who wants to do this? I'm willing to do some work.

[Tim]

Hi Pat,

I think this is a fantastic idea. I would only add that it these
meetings would probably be more substantive and effective if the
content and materials for these meetings was in a format (in the
metaphoric and literal sense) that was digestable, actionable and
relevant to the MP's. Some work around what, how, when, where and who
wrapped up in a business case format (for lack of a better term) would
be helpful for all involved IMHO.

Cheers!

Tim

[mark raheja]

Hey Pat.

Pretty sure that I'm the 'fellow' in question.

For everyone else: the idea came out of a convo with Kuz & Dan about the 'What Next?' question.  As in...what to do with all the energy, engagment, 'ready-ness', etc. that attendees were/are feeling.  We spoke about the value of a message to all attendees while they [we] were all in a 'primed' state.   That provided some clear potential next steps.  On some level, there was agreement that it didn't necessarily matter what the next step was - only that it was taken, and established a link between attending the event and taking a [presumably positive/productive] action.

There are no shortage of things that people could do next.  In ExD speak, the 'high-value behaviours'.  Such as...

1. Learn More

About the current relationship between citizens and government.  About government at all levels, how it functions, who represents them, what choices that person makes on their behalf, what the current engagement/participation models and options are for them.

2. Form/Join a Group

To take action collectively.  The shame engine project, or whatever it's called, is an example of this.  But there could be other groups, trying to do other things.  Like working on 'ChangeCamp In A Box'.  Or starting a ChangeCamp Meetup Group.  Or helping Peter Flaschner with his awesome 'corporate discounts for active Citizens' idea.  Ask him about it.  Or helping the gang that work for the Premier build their arguments to combat the overwhelming specter of what they referred to as 'the political risks of openness'.]

3. Post Content to the Wiki

People scribbled in pads, took pics/videos themselves, etc.  Not everything made it up on the wiki.  To ensure that attendees AND those trying to organize future ChangeCamps are in the best position to learn from what we went through...get it all up there [and waive the rights].

4. Read/View Wiki Content

For every great conversation or idea a person had at ChangeCamp, they missed 50 of them.  Make up for the whole 'scarcity of time on the day of' issue by continuing your learning.  There is an utter crapload of great thoughts, ideas and conversations that was captured.  Learn from it.

5. Share

Spread the gospel.  I told my family about ChangeCamp at our weekly family dinner last night.  My grandfather thought it was rad.  I told my friend Adam about it last week.  He used to work for the World Bank...did his Masters of International Relations at Columbia.  Strong sense of personal responsibility, low exposure to new models for participation/engagement.  He was really into it.  Sent him the link, invited him to the next event.  Post the wiki stuff to your Facebook profile, send content to a friend that couldn't attend, etc.  Ideally, because you want to.  Because it's the kind of thing more people should know about, and want to be a part of.

6.  And...yes: Meet with your elected representative.  

Your MP.  Or MPP.  Or City Councillor.  Or...whatever.  Those that represent you.  I fully agree with Tim that there are a couple of things that should happen before such meetings are setup to make them...useful.  Having said that, I'll also point out that the hesitancy/trepidation that some may feel when considering a planned meeting with an elected representative is definitely a big part of the problem.  It's like people freaking out when they see cops.  These people should be our friends.  They're doing us a solid.  We shouldn't fear them...nor put them on pedastals.  They work for us, to represent our interests [ideally].  Obviously, the elected folk are busy, and if this new era of participation is new to them...a messy first touchpoint doesn't exactly create the right conditions from the get-go.  It stands to reason that if you want change on their behalf, or an evolution in behaviour, that it should be clear to you what you want and how you want to communicate that.  But it should also just be OK that you want to just meet them.  To have a conversation about what happened.  To work together to figure out how they can better represent you and your interests.  

In the case of the last one...Pat and I talked about all sorts of things.  Some of it nonsense.  Like...mapping out attendees by district, pre-planning meetings with each MP...and then putting the call out to attendees afterwards, telling them that the meeting was happening and that they needed to rise to the occasion.  Clearly a bit too militant.  But if that post-ChangeCamp email could clarify for attendees who represented them in which ways...and how to contact that person, well, perhaps that'll at least remove one or two of the obstacles that keep people from having any kind of relationship with those that represent them.

And, of course, there are more things people could do.  That list isn't complete.   It never will be.  There's no shortage of things we could do.

So.

Ahem.

What are we gonna do?  ;-)

-M

PS

To echo Pat's sentiment: I'm also willing to do some work.  

PPS

Back to work.

[Michael Allan]

pkeenan wrote:
>
> I spoke with a fellow at the pub, forgot his name. But we talked about
> prearranging meetings with MPs, so that each person from changecamp

> would be set up with a date and time to talk to their MP...

Also at the pub, I learned that one MP actually attended the event.
In other words, she arranged to meet with *us* - rather than
vice-versa.

* Olivia Chow, MP for Trinity-Spadina (Toronto)

Did any other elected official (MP, MPP, Councillor, etc.) show up at
the event?

Best,
--
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/

[Justin Kozuch]

I believe Olivia Chow was the only one.

- Justin

[Michael Allan]

Justin Kozuch wrote:
>
> I believe Olivia Chow was the only one.

Then we could adapt Mark Raheja's advice [no offense, just to make a
point], and post this recommendation for the benefit of all the other
elected representatives, in the hope it encourages them to show up at
future events:

6. And...yes: Meet with your [constituents]. Your [residents]. Or
[students]. Or [community leaders]. Or...whatever. Those that
[you represent]. I fully agree with Tim that there are a couple of

things that should happen before such meetings are setup to make
them...useful. Having said that, I'll also point out that the
hesitancy/trepidation that some may feel when considering a planned

meeting with a [constituent] is definitely a big part of the
problem. It's like [politicians] freaking out when they see [people
with signs]. These people should be our friends. They're doing us
a solid. We shouldn't fear them...nor put them [down]. [We] work
for [them], to represent [them] ideally. Obviously, the [voting]

folk are busy, and if this new era of participation is new to
them...a messy first touchpoint doesn't exactly create the right

conditions from the get- go. It stands to reason that if you want

change on their behalf, or an evolution in behaviour, that it should
be clear to you what you want and how you want to communicate that.
But it should also just be OK that you want to just meet them. To
have a conversation about what happened. To work together to figure

out how [you] can better represent [them] and [their] interests.

[Dan Hocking]

Not that this is an excuse or a reason, but we were very cautious in the
initial ChangeCamp online discussions about keeping things non-partisan,
which likely led to not inviting many politicians due to our belief in their
inability to be non-partisan.

Mark's ideas are awesome. Remember too that change is much "easier" to make
at a local level - city councillors are easier to get in front of than MPPs
whom are easier to get in front of than MPs. I think that the political risk
concept is scalar from the local to the provincial/federal level as well;
the city people may be more likely to try some of these big changes. In
doing so, you can create examples that you can point to and help demonstrate
the effectiveness of what it is we did/do; these examples are likely to lead
to a snowball effect of sorts. Note that this is applicable both from the
tech/PR/comms side and the gov't side - we can all help create these
examples, and in a lot of ways, we rely on some of what is happening now in
both the US/UK for examples for governmental change.

Bottom line is that we need to remember what it is that got us using these
tools in the manner we are, and figuring out how we can take that approach
to "sell" those people whom we feel should be using them. The outreach from
both sides at ChangeCamp was excellent - and in my opinion a clear indicator
that we should be making this a semi-regular event - but we still have lots
of room to grow. Let's keep it going. If anyone has an idea they're really
passionate about but could use some legs under, let me know - I'd be
interested in working on all kinds of projects that I may not have had the
chance to hear about.

Dan

--
Dan Hocking
e-mail: d...@danhocking.com
blog: http://www.danhocking.com
mobile: 647.289.2301
twitter: http://www.twitter.com/D_Hock

--------------------------------------------------
From: "Michael Allan" <mi...@zelea.com>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 6:33 PM
To: <chang...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [changecamp] Re: Arranging meetings with MPs

[Michael Jones]

Another consideration - perhaps the target isn't current MPs/MPPs, but
future ones. Those strongly entrenched in the hallways of power
aren't likely to change overnight, if at all.

Those that will replace them, if primed right now, may just believe
that there are no alternatives but participatory, transparent, open
governance. The Obama model's power may just bear fruit for years,
and more broadly than people may expect.

I mean, if Maryland Republican activists are all over this idea now,
God knows what the future will bring.

[Mark Kuznicki]

This is a great thread.

Taking action and introducing ourselves, ChangeCamp and the ideas of
participation to our representatives and potential representatives,
our co-workers and neighbours, students and parents, our hometowns,
our friends in other cities.

Yes to all of the above.

Right now, I need to craft two things and I'm looking for some help
this week:

1. A post-ChangeCamp email to all registered participants with a clear
call to action.
2. A questionnaire designed to get answers to the question "what next?"

I got a seed started on the wiki: http://wiki.changecamp.ca/ChangeCamp_Engagement

Sign up on the wiki and start adding what we're missing!

Mark.

[pkeenan]

I'm putting together a little page that takes in a postal code or
address and spits out your MP, MPP, and councillor. Then it says if
there's a change camp meeting coming up.

Does anyone have this data? I have the MP stuff.

On Jan 26, 11:04 am, pkeenan <interfa...@gmail.com> wrote:

[mark raheja]

awesome!  

you're imagining this on the ChangeCamp site and wiki, as a tool to help site visitors connect with their representatives?

that perhaps that page would be linked to in Kuz's post-ChangeCamp email?

if we are to do this, i'd suggest that we parallel path:

a) a ChangeCamp One-Sheet [pdf] that summarizes what the event was, it's objectives, it's format and the range of people who attended [which can be forwarded to the elected representative, or anyone else]

b) a Wiki page with potential 'Talking Points' for ChangeCampers, when connecting with the MP[P] or Councillor

before throwing together such a page, though, this begs some discussion: 

at this stage, what change[s] in behaviour would ChangeCamp like to see from these representatives [or those higher up in their chain]?

awareness of the event?

adoption of Visible Government's principles?

consideration of new models of citizen participation [in government]?

....?

-M

[Tim]

I was working with a number of folks at ChangeCamp around this very
idea. We were looking at developing a mashup of tech that would
provide folks with the appropriate contacts in government based on any
number of variables (i.e. core job function, relationships, networks,
subject matter expertise, influence...etc.). For lack of a better
illustration...think Fonolo, IBM Connections and GMaps mashed
together...

> > So, who wants to do this? I'm willing to do some work.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Sean Howard]

Love it, Patrick!

Crazy question/idea for you.

How hard would it be to allow for commenting on the page that is
presented? or to reframe the "comments" to "Tell us what actions you
are taking"? ie: Could we just put in something like disqus?

I'm game to assist. I know enough to be dangerous. Someone give me
a gun! ;)

On Jan 28, 11:33 am, Tim <tim.y...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was working with a number of folks at ChangeCamp around this very
> idea.  We were looking at developing a mashup of tech that would
> provide folks with the appropriate contacts in government based on any
> number of variables (i.e. core job function, relationships, networks,
> subject matter expertise, influence...etc.).  For lack of a better
> illustration...think Fonolo, IBM Connections and GMaps mashed
> together...
>

> On Jan 28, 11:13 am,pkeenan<interfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm putting together a little page that takes in a postal code or
> > address and spits out your MP, MPP, and councillor. Then it says if
> > there's a change camp meeting coming up.
>
> > Does anyone have this data? I have the MP stuff.
>

[pkeenan]

Comments= Great Idea, I'll just hack in some.

As for the data

The Federal one costs 10000 bucks
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=92-153-X&lang=eng

The provincial one is nice and free
http://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/Tools/ElectoralDistricts/PostalCodeFile.htm

The municipal one is ugly
http://app.toronto.ca/wards/findAddressForVotingPlace.do

[Adam King]

Are you talking about "Project Shame" / "The Shame Engine" #shamen
that's been tossing around on Twitter? (If not, you folks need to
touch base and synergize!)

[Jennifer Bell]

> before throwing together such a page, though, this begs some discussion:
> at this stage, what change[s] in behaviour would ChangeCamp like to  
> see from these representatives [or those higher up in their chain]?
>
> awareness of the event?
> adoption of Visible Government's principles?
> consideration of new models of citizen participation [in government]?
> ....?

Hey, thanks for thinking of VisibleGovernment.ca! We actually haven't
defined an explicit set of principles that govt's should adopt yet,
but if I were to throw one together (or contribute to a changecamp
one) I would include:

- the OpenGovData principles to define open data:
http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OpenDataPrinciples
- chunks from the Obama tech platform on structured data and citizen
participation: http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/technology/Fact_Sheet_Innovation_and_Technology.pdf
- selected policy reccommendations on institutionalizing government
transparency from this OMBWatch report:
http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/moving-towards-a-21st-century-right-to-know-agenda/

The problem with a large group like changecamp, though, is that it's
hard to know what aspects people support, and what aspects they
don't. It might be fun to put discrete principles on something like
google moderator to see what gets traction.

Jennifer
http://visiblegovernment.ca

[Jennifer Bell]

On further reflection, a policy/principle voting system would be
pretty strong, because it would show some legitimacy for the people
bringing these ideas into the MP's office. What would be even better
is if the voting system were linked to an indication of that voter's
riding.

Not interesting to an MP: 'Me and my cool friends think *this*!''
More interesting: 4000 people in Canada think this.
Very interesting: 4000 people in Canada, including 120 voters in your
riding, think this.

Since you're doing a group finding system based on postal code anyway,
why not throw a principle voting system in?

We tried to leverage this with http://ibelieveinopen.ca during the
election. The app, in django, is open source in theory - I posted it
on github but took it down to fix up some things.

Jennifer

On Jan 28, 1:03 pm, Jennifer Bell <visiblegovernm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > before throwing together such a page, though, this begs some discussion:
> > at this stage, what change[s] in behaviour would ChangeCamp like to  
> > see from these representatives [or those higher up in their chain]?
>
> > awareness of the event?
> > adoption of Visible Government's principles?
> > consideration of new models of citizen participation [in government]?
> > ....?
>
> Hey, thanks for thinking of VisibleGovernment.ca!  We actually haven't
> defined an explicit set of principles that govt's should adopt yet,
> but if I were to throw one together (or contribute to a changecamp
> one) I would include:
>
>  - the OpenGovData principles to define open data:http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OpenDataPrinciples
>  - chunks from the Obama tech platform on structured data and citizen

> participation:http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/technology/Fact_Sheet_Innovatio...

>  - selected policy reccommendations on institutionalizing government

> transparency from this OMBWatch report:http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/taxonomy/term/moving-towards-a-21s...

[David Janes]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:13 AM, pkeenan <inter...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm putting together a little page that takes in a postal code or
address and spits out your MP, MPP, and councillor. Then it says if
there's a change camp meeting coming up.

Does anyone have this data? I have the MP stuff.

LOL ... chicken & egg.

--
David Janes
Mercenary Programmer
http://code.davidjanes.com

[Dan Hocking]

From the Project Shamen standpoint, what we're working on is very close to
what Jennifer is talking about regarding the "Very interesting" section
below. Notes continue to be added/gardened in the wiki, should people want
to take a look at it.

--
Dan Hocking
e-mail: d...@danhocking.com
blog: http://www.danhocking.com
mobile: 647.289.2301
twitter: http://www.twitter.com/D_Hock

--------------------------------------------------

From: "Jennifer Bell" <visibleg...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 1:55 PM
To: "ChangeCamp Canada" <chang...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: [changecamp] Re: Arranging meetings with MPs

>

[Michael Allan]

pkeenan wrote:
>
> As for the data
>
> The Federal one costs 10000 bucks
> http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=92-153-X&lang=eng
>
> The provincial one is nice and free
> http://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/Tools/ElectoralDistricts/PostalCodeFile.htm

And the provincial and federal ridings are 99.9% identical. I was
playing with it, last year. Here it is unpacked:
http://zelea.com/system/host/obsidian/home/tester/votorola/riding/_/postal/

For me, it had these caveats (maybe not a concern for your app):

* inaccuracy - they request you to send bug reports

* some postal codes are split across multiple ridings

> The municipal one is ugly
> http://app.toronto.ca/wards/findAddressForVotingPlace.do

--

[David Janes]

Is there something like a Data Wiki? I wonder if there is some possible synergy for putting this data together with Geonames [1][2]?

Regards, etc...

[1] http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;664453065;fp;;fpid;
[2] http://www.geonames.org/

[Michael Allan]

Jennifer Bell wrote:

> Not interesting to an MP: 'Me and my cool friends think *this*!''
> More interesting: 4000 people in Canada think this.
> Very interesting: 4000 people in Canada, including 120 voters in your
> riding, think this.
>
> Since you're doing a group finding system based on postal code anyway,
> why not throw a principle voting system in?

Voter authentication is one problem: Voter is real person, not a bot?
Person lives in riding? Person voted once only?

Another is the framing of the petition question. This is harder to
open up, and still encourage consensus. Then again, dissensus is also
interesting - as in a 3 way split, among variant principles, etc.

Votorola is aimed at these problems. But it's still only alpha. And
it's big, not a throw-in. http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.xht

[Jennifer Bell]

> The Federal one costs 10000 buckshttp://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=92-153-X〈=eng

Yes, the 10K price point for national postal code to federal electoral
district lookups is a tremendous civic injustics. Just ask
CivicAccess:
http://civicaccess.ca/

If you want to pay less money, you can join the club of non-profts
here:
http://www.makethechange.ca/

There are also scrapes of this data set floating around that have been
cleared as 'probably not high-risk' (from my memory) at a CIPPIC legal
clinic.

Another, completely legal approach that would work for all of Canada
(instead of just Ontario) would be to use the federal riding boundary
data from the 2001 census, available for free here:
http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/option/select.do?id=426

Instead of going pcode => electoral district, you go pcode => geocode
=> electoral district

Chris Taggart is working on a similar transformation from postal code
to census subdivision (municipality or equivalent) for
fixmystreet.ca. The same transformation would probably work (though I
don't know, really) for the federal district boundary information also
included in that file.

Jennifer
http://visiblegovernment.ca

[Michael Allan]

David Janes wrote:
> Is there something like a Data Wiki? I wonder if there is some possible
> synergy for putting this data together with Geonames [1][2]?

A data wiki... is an interesting idea. So crowd-source a huge
database - people populate it, and police it for accuracy.

Brittleness is a problem: Although people are writing the data, they
are not reading it - machines (clients) are reading it. So a vandal
may cause widespread client damage before the problem is detected and
(somehow) traced to the sabotaged data.

[Cory Horner]

On 28-Jan-09, at 2:45 PM, Jennifer Bell wrote:

> Another, completely legal approach that would work for all of Canada
> (instead of just Ontario) would be to use the federal riding boundary
> data from the 2001 census, available for free here:
> http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/option/select.do?id=426
>
> Instead of going pcode => electoral district, you go pcode => geocode
> => electoral district

Yes! I had a similar thought...

You are welcome to use this lat-long to riding service for the latter
portion:

http://www.subroutine.ca/services/latlong2riding-info.php

Cheers,
Cory.

[Jennifer Bell]

> Yes! I had a similar thought...
>
> You are welcome to use this lat-long to riding service for the latter
> portion:
>
> http://www.subroutine.ca/services/latlong2riding-info.php

OMG. It works.

pcode->geocode here:
http://geocoder.ca/?locate=H2J3S6&geoit=GeoCode+it!

geocode->electoral district here:
http://www.subroutine.ca/services/latlong2riding.php?region=federal&lat=45.532290&long=-73.579577

I don't believe it... this has been *such* an issue for ages. High
five!

Jennifer

[David Janes]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:13 AM, pkeenan <inter...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm putting together a little page that takes in a postal code or
address and spits out your MP, MPP, and councillor. Then it says if
there's a change camp meeting coming up.

Does anyone have this data? I have the MP stuff.

Sorry if this duplicates information that's already found ... just playing around with some ideas this morning!

* Postal Code to Member of Parliament
http://www2.parl.gc.ca/parlinfo/compilations/HouseOfCommons/MemberByPostalCode.aspx?Submit=Find&Language=E&PostalCode=A1B2B3

* Postal Code to Federal District:
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/pss/FindED.aspx?L=e&PC=&image.x=20&image.y=11

* BC Postal Code -> MHA
http://www.leg.bc.ca/Mla/3-1-1.htm

* Ontario Postal Code -> Provincial District (horrible)
http://fyed.elections.on.ca/fyed/en/form_page_en.jsp

* Ontario Member Name -> District:
http://www.ontla.on.ca/web/members/members_current.do?locale=en

[Tania Samsonova]

The $10,000 data are available at no additional charge to Canadian
educational institutions participating in the Data Liberation
Initiative. I believe YorkU is one of them and UofT is another. I'll
talk to someone in YorkU who might know about how to get access to
this data and whether we can use it for public good.

Tania

On Jan 28, 12:35 pm, pkeenan <interfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Comments= Great Idea, I'll just hack in some.
>
> As for the data
>

> The Federal one costs 10000 buckshttp://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=92-153-X〈=eng
>
> The provincial one is nice and freehttp://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/Tools/ElectoralDistricts/PostalCodeF...
>
> The municipal one is uglyhttp://app.toronto.ca/wards/findAddressForVotingPlace.do

[Michael Allan]

Jennifer Bell wrote:

> Another, completely legal approach that would work for all of Canada
> (instead of just Ontario) would be to use the federal riding boundary
> data from the 2001 census, available for free here:
> http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/option/select.do?id=426
>
> Instead of going pcode => electoral district, you go pcode => geocode
> => electoral district

But start with a full address. A postal code is too imprecise. It
may straddle a riding boundary.

Or get geoshape (vertices) of the postal code and go:

pcode => geoshape = vertex geocodes => electoral district(s)

But where to get the geoshape?

[Sean Howard]

In Changelab 2 we explored the idea of a data wiki a bit. It came out
of our desire to open source (mass collaboration) the pulling in of
government data across sources and formats. ie: getting diverse
people to work at retyping in stuff from PDFs and the like.

We don't have any set answers but we did explore some interesting
ideas.

Assumptions:
- full support for version'ing
- easy to right/manage business rules
- ability to have "conversations" on each piece of data

Data is weighted for it's likeliness of being accurate by the
authority of the submitter.
ie: Rules could allow for small tweaks by people with lower authority
but past a threshold, the data is held for review by the community.
Where review is explicit or after a number of people have blind
validated the data

Use of flags to easily and more quickly identify suspect data
ie: "This data has been flagged as questionable" or "The source for
this data has not been verified". ie: the new data is served on
request but with a flag set. Past a certain threshold the system
would shift to serving the last "trusted" version of the data (again
with a flag set to notify the requester that newer data may be
available but intervention needed).

Open up the entry and policing of data
ie: We could explore simple interfaces for both humans and bots to
submit and validate data. And where authority is based on a building
up of trust.

Allow for conversations on each piece of data
ie: The system allows for both human readable and computer
conversations. The discussion pages behind the wiki page. Statistics
on the authority of this data by the flags, human reviews and
statistics on how many times it has been blind validated by trusted
sources. And it can also be conversations between people (though we
would have to explore "sets" of data to tie conversations to)


On Jan 28, 4:57 pm, David Janes <davidja...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 4:54 PM, Michael Allan <m...@zelea.com> wrote:
>
> > pkeenan wrote:
>
> > > As for the data
>
> > > The Federal one costs 10000 bucks

> > >http://www.statcan.gc.ca/bsolc/olc-cel/olc-cel?catno=92-153-X〈=eng

>
> > > The provincial one is nice and free
>

> >http://www.elections.on.ca/en-CA/Tools/ElectoralDistricts/PostalCodeF...

>
> > And the provincial and federal ridings are 99.9% identical.  I was
> > playing with it, last year.  Here it is unpacked:

> >http://zelea.com/system/host/obsidian/home/tester/votorola/riding/_/p...

[Jennifer Bell]

True: going from address, not postal code, to federal electoral
district is more precise. The federal ED shapes from 2006 are here:

http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/option/select.do?id=1169

Shape files for the municipal level -- census division & subdivision
-- are here (I think):

http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/option/select.do?id=426
http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/collection/detail.do?id=36925

Which might make a nice rosetta stone for finding political
representatives at mulitple levels of government.

Jennifer

[pkeenan]

freebase.com is a data wiki, let's contribute to the commons!

[David Janes]

Do you have an example of a Postal Code that straddles a riding boundary?

[Cory Horner]

On 30-Jan-09, at 6:44 AM, David Janes wrote:

> Do you have an example of a Postal Code that straddles a riding
> boundary?

Some potential examples here:

http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1607#comment-1667

[Michael Allan]

> David Janes wrote:
>
> > Do you have an example of a Postal Code that straddles a riding
> > boundary?

Cory Horner wrote:

> Some potential examples here:
>
> http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/1607#comment-1667

Postal Codes with 6 matches: [!]

T5S2B9
T6T1V2

A full list for Ontario is here:

http://zelea.com/system/host/obsidian/home/tester/votorola/riding/_/postal/

see Postal-Codes-107-ManyEDs.txt

[Michael Allan]

It would be especially nice to have the shapes of the postal code
(LDU) areas. Then we wouldn't have to parse the full street address,
- something the user may be reluctant to give, in the first place.

http://www.dmtispatial.com/postal/index.html

Looks like it costs. Most likely Canada Post is sitting on the data,
waiting for it to hatch... ?

--
Michael Allan

Toronto, 647-436-4521
http://zelea.com/

[Jennifer Bell]

Maybe not even Canada Post has it. :-) I just got an email from
geogratis confirming that they don't, in fact, have postal code shape
files for free. They were helpful in providing other sources, one of
which you already mentioned:

"We are aware that that the Geography Network data Web site through
DMTI does offer some limited Postal Codes at no cost.
( http://www.geographynetwork.ca/ ) DMTI Spatial is the Map Quest
software provider ( http://www.dmtispatial.com/postal/index.htmlI )
and they sell data collections covering postal codes and roadways.
Statistics Canada also sells a postal Codes data collection at $445 on
a CD Rom.
( http://geodiscover.cgdi.ca/gdp/search?action=entrySummary&entryType=productCollection&entryId=33127&entryLang=en
)"

The Geography Network only seems to have postal code centroids, which
is not much help. However, $445 for shape files is cheaper than 10K,
if you can figure out how to do the computations. The DMTI platinum
postal code services may be cheaper yet.

I wonder how an online service that uses the StatsCan (or other) shape
files to enable politically-themed APIs would square with the
liscensing?

Jennifer

On Jan 30, 7:23 pm, Michael Allan <m...@zelea.com> wrote:
> It would be especially nice to have the shapes of the postal code
> (LDU) areas.  Then we wouldn't have to parse the full street address,
> - something the user may be reluctant to give, in the first place.
>
>  http://www.dmtispatial.com/postal/index.html
>
> Looks like it costs.  Most likely Canada Post is sitting on the data,
> waiting for it to hatch... ?
>
> --
> Michael Allan
>

> Toronto, 647-436-4521http://zelea.com/

[pkeenan]

So after a while of trying the toronto site
http://app.toronto.ca/wards/jsp/wards.jsp

I now accept its much too slow, even when using the form. I can't find
any geo-ward information on the web, and would really like this to
work with municipal, provincial, and federal.

Any tips?

On Jan 28, 9:36 pm, Cory Horner <cory.hor...@gmail.com> wrote:

[pkeenan]

I've made up some mocks, without the municipal data. Check it out in
the files section. I will go ahead and make it work, but first some
feedback would be good.

Any thoughts?

On Feb 4, 9:58 am, pkeenan <interfa...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So after a while of trying the toronto sitehttp://app.toronto.ca/wards/jsp/wards.jsp

[Cory Horner]

On 4-Feb-09, at 6:58 AM, pkeenan wrote:

> So after a while of trying the toronto site
> http://app.toronto.ca/wards/jsp/wards.jsp
>
> I now accept its much too slow, even when using the form. I can't find
> any geo-ward information on the web, and would really like this to
> work with municipal, provincial, and federal.
>
> Any tips?

Ask them for it (vector data, preferably, shapefile format is nice --
but take whatever they'll give you).

This has worked for me in the past (half the time), but you may get
bounced around a bit. If you do manage to pry it from their hands...
please ask them nicely to make it publicly accessible for others,
preferably with a non-constrictive license.

Cheers,
Cory.

[Michael Allan]

Jennifer Bell wrote:

> I wonder how an online service that uses the StatsCan (or other) shape
> files to enable politically-themed APIs would square with the
> liscensing?

Not sure... But this much is surely legal: We do what Elections
Ontario must have done in computing their own PC-ED database. But we
do it with complete national coverage:

1. Obtain postal code (PC) shapes (pay I guess).

2. Obtain electoral district (ED) shapes for all levels of
government (mostly free, or we pay).

3. Compute a PC-ED database linking each PC to its ED - or, where it
overlaps, multiple EDs - for each level of government.

4. Publish the PC-ED database for free.

That could be a useful little project. PCs are the lingua franca.
Pat's project would benefit. I guess others, too?

[Sean Howard]

The mocks rock dude!

Wish I could help with the postal code data/front. Just wanted to
give some positive support on the mockups. Happy to assist with any
fundraising efforts if we're going to go for buying the data.

[pkeenan]

Here's the script I set up for the abh widget
http://www.theundecided.ca/represent/postalcode.php?pc=l6w1x1

[pkeenan]

Thanks Sean, the support is very appreciated!

[Michael Allan]

pkeenan wrote:
>
> Here's the script I set up for the abh widget
> http://www.theundecided.ca/represent/postalcode.php?pc=l6w1x1

Playing, to see how it handles overlaps:

http://www.theundecided.ca/represent/postalcode.php?pc=T5S2B9

http://www.theundecided.ca/represent/postalcode.php?pc=T6T1V2

Each of those covers 6 ridings, somewhere in Edmonton apparently. But
the script dies in mid-output.

What's at the back end? Postal code center-points? Or something more
like the following?

> >   1. Obtain postal code (PC) shapes (pay I guess).
> >
> >   2. Obtain electoral district (ED) shapes for all levels of
> >      government (mostly free, or we pay).
> >
> >   3. Compute a PC-ED database linking each PC to its ED - or, where it
> >      overlaps, multiple EDs - for each level of government.
> >
> >   4. Publish the PC-ED database for free.

--

[pkeenan]

I figured out the bug...

Edmonton is in fact not part of Canada, who knew!

[Michael Allan]

It was purchased by Los Angeles, along with Wayne Gretzky.