Fwd: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites

[Henare Degan]

In case some of you haven't already seen this...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Myfanwy Nixon <m...@mysociety.org>
Date: 27 March 2012 02:35
Subject: DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
To: transpar...@googlegroups.com


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!

[kat]

nice!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "OpenAustralia Community" group.
To post to this group, send email to openaust...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to openaustralia-...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openaustralia-dev?hl=en.

--

I'm coworking at 2780

0424 563 654

skype: kat.ska

twitter: @katska

[Henare Degan]

Indeed.

So... who's starting work on FixMyStreet?! See earlier complaints: https://twitter.com/#!/henaredegan/statuses/167394636611076096 :)

Cheers,

Henare

[Alex (Maxious) Sadleir]

FYI we've got "Fix My Street" (note spacing!) in Canberra:
https://www.contact.act.gov.au/app/ask
I used it yesterday and this morning I got a phone call personally
thanking me for my dedication to civic duty. They also fixed my issue
by the end of the day.

Does FixMyStreet support these kinds of ticket systems? It's not
Open311 compatible or anything - pretty sure my university and
webhosts use the same system ;)

[Rich Larcombe]

And then there's neatstreets.com.au and snapsendsolve

Both Melbourne startups, they serve all councils across Australia and most importantly they're both free to use.

Is there a need for fixmystreet?

[Henare Degan]

On 28 March 2012 21:36, Rich Larcombe <richla...@gmail.com> wrote:

And then there's neatstreets.com.au and snapsendsolve

Both Melbourne startups, they serve all councils across Australia and most importantly they're both free to use.

Is there a need for fixmystreet?

On 28 March 2012 18:32, Alex (Maxious) Sadleir <max...@gmail.com> wrote:

FYI we've got "Fix My Street" (note spacing!) in Canberra:
https://www.contact.act.gov.au/app/ask
I used it yesterday and this morning I got a phone call personally
thanking me for my dedication to civic duty. They also fixed my issue
by the end of the day.

Does FixMyStreet support these kinds of ticket systems? It's not
Open311 compatible or anything - pretty sure my university and
webhosts use the same system ;)

The Canberra government site and Snap Send Solve don't publicly display reports which is essential part of FixMyStreet. Neat Streets kind of does, but it's definitely not geared towards that.

The other problem with Neat Streets is that the data is not open and neither is the system. Don't get me wrong, I'm not immediately ruling the system out just because it's commercial but where's a page like this?

http://www.fixmystreet.com/reports

What's to say that a page like that doesn't exist because it's not in the commercial interests of the company behind Neat Streets? (i.e. by showing up some of their clients) Without the data and reporting system being open there's no defence to a claim like this.

We still need FixMyStreet in Australia.

Cheers,

Henare

[Daniel Hoolihan]

out of curiousity, has anyone approached SIGNAL PROCESSING KNOW-HOW PTY LTD about their intended use of both fixmystreet.com.au & org.au ??

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "OpenAustralia Community" group.
To post to this group, send email to openaust...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to openaustralia-...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openaustralia-dev?hl=en.

--
--------------------------------
Life is not a Rehearsal

[Henare Degan]

On 28 March 2012 18:32, Alex (Maxious) Sadleir <max...@gmail.com> wrote:

Does FixMyStreet support these kinds of ticket systems? It's not
Open311 compatible or anything - pretty sure my university and
webhosts use the same system ;)

Open 311: https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=open311+repo%3Amysociety%2Ffixmystreet&repo=&langOverride=&start_value=1&type=Code&language=

You'd need to speak to the FMS people to understand what this means in practice.

/via more awesome people than I.

Cheers,

Henare

[Henare Degan]

On 29 March 2012 19:46, Daniel Hoolihan <arch...@gmail.com> wrote:

out of curiousity, has anyone approached SIGNAL PROCESSING KNOW-HOW PTY LTD about their intended use of both fixmystreet.com.au & org.au ??

I haven't.

I understood it was being squatted but by somewhat more familiar and potentially friendly people.