Re: Request for collaboration
Georgie Burr
Hello Žiga,Great to speak to you today!I will get back to you on the other parts of our call in the coming weeks but wanted to pass on quickly how to suggest additions to the Popolo standard, the suggestion is to:1. Create a Pull Request against https://github.com/popolo-project/popolo-spec2. Or raise an issue in the same place if you want to start a discussion about how to extend the standard.Hope that is helpful,Speak soon,GeorgieOn Tue, 23 Oct 2018 at 11:33, Žiga Vrtačič <zi...@danesjenovdan.si> wrote:hi, hangouts is perfect. i added you.____________________________________Danes je nov dan, Inštitut za druga vprašanjaOn Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 12:29 PM Georgie Burr <geo...@mysociety.org> wrote:Morning Žiga,Is Googlehangouts ok? I have just added a link to the invite.If not, please suggest an alternative and I will be there.Look forward to speaking!GeorgieOn Mon, 22 Oct 2018 at 11:44, Žiga Vrtačič <zi...@danesjenovdan.si> wrote:That's perfect, thank you.____________________________________Danes je nov dan, Inštitut za druga vprašanjaOn Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 11:06 AM Georgie Burr <geo...@mysociety.org> wrote:Morning Žiga,How would 11.30 GMT+1 work for you?
I will send a calendar invite and we can change if needed.BestGeorgieOn Fri, 19 Oct 2018 at 16:53, Žiga Vrtačič <zi...@danesjenovdan.si> wrote:Hi Georgie!Let's do it on Tuesday maybe, my schedule is quite empty on that day, so I can do it whichever part of the day works best for you.Looking forward to it!Best,Žiga____________________________________Danes je nov dan, Inštitut za druga vprašanjaOn Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 7:20 PM Georgie Burr <geo...@mysociety.org> wrote:Hi Ziga,I'm so sorry to hear about Filip, I hope he is making a speedy recovery.
And I apologise for my slow reply, this email got lost after the Code for Summit.I am available to chat through your initial ideas next week. I am largely free Monday - Thursday (except Monday afternoon). So please suggest a few times and I am sure one will work.I look forward to speaking,BestGeorgieOn Thu, 11 Oct 2018 at 17:02, Žiga Vrtačič <zi...@danesjenovdan.si> wrote:Hi!
Thank you Mark for the introduction, Georgie, nice to meet you!
Filip, our CEO who also leads our development team, got hospitalized overnight and that made us a bit busier and a little less on top of things. After the initial chaos, we have sort of regrouped, and finally I can get back to you. Filip was also supposed to be one of the speakers at Code For All Summit, but obviously that too had to be cancelled.
We would still very much like to discuss potential integration any time next week. Please let us know which day suits you best.
Looking forward!
With best regards,
Žiga Vrtačič
____________________________________Danes je nov dan, Inštitut za druga vprašanjaOn Thu, Oct 4, 2018 at 4:29 PM Mark Cridge <mark....@mysociety.org> wrote:Hello ŽigaSorry for the delayed response - we'd certainly be interested in having a conversation about how this might work.Can I introduce my colleague Georgie Burr who can set up a call and is responsible for all of our partner working in our Democracy team.Are you going to be at the Code For All summit in Bucharest next week by any chance?all the bestMarkOn Tue, 25 Sep 2018 at 08:33, Žiga Vrtačič <zi...@danesjenovdan.si> wrote:Dear mr. Cridge,
I hope this finds you well. Your email was given to me by mr. Krzysiek Izdebski. I am writing on behalf of Today is a new day, Institute for other studies, the largest civic tech NGO in Slovenia. We have worked together with mySociety in 2017 on hosting a community event in Ljubljana for your project EveryPolitician. We are reaching out with a suggestion for another collaboration. I hope you will be able to give me an answer or direct me to the relevant person within your organisation.
In 2016 we received more than 330.000 EUR of Google DNI funding for developing Parlameter, an opensource platform that automates parliamentary data collection, processing and visualisation (computer-generated infographics). It helps political journalists and researchers to more efficiently analyze and present information on MPs’ activities in the parliament to the public. It provides analysis of voting (e.g. similarity of voting records, ad-hoc coalition forming, etc) and does natural language processing to automate analyses of MPs’ speeches (content analysis as well as basic statistics about speaking habits). The information cards (visualisations) are automatically generated based on parliamentary data. They can be easily embedded into web articles and are readily exportable for print media, so journalists can use them without relying on their understaffed development and design departments. The platform also features a powerful search engine that is able to search through large datasets of speech transcripts and voting records based on specific criteria (author, time range, political body …). This way, researchers and journalists are able to quickly get an overview of how certain topics are discussed through time and get a feel of the kind of rhetoric MPs or their parties engage in.
In 2018, another 100,000 EUR was invested in the platform by NED and around the same amount by the institute itself. Since then, we have launched a Slovenian and Croatian version of the platform. We have written more than 270,000 lines of code and invested years of development in the project. Right now, we are working on the Bosnian version.
Our next step is to launch an English version of the platform, as this will help us present the project in countries that do not speak Slovenian or Serbo-Croatian language and possibly spread Parlameter outside of the region. Because of easily accessible parliamentary data, UK seems like an obvious choice.
However, we believe it would be somewhat redundant for us to build another parliamentary monitoring website, considering They Work For You already exists and does a great job making British MPs accountable. Rather than being your “competition” we would like to collaborate and add to theyworkforyou.com, especially as we have developed some tools our audience found very useful and we don’t think exist on your website.
As a bunch of open-source enthusiasts we want to build on top of what your platform already provides. Therefore instead of launching the whole Parlameter platform, it could be more effective to just integrate some of our tools and modules to your platform and let them find a way to your audience.We can cover all integration/development costs ourselves.
Therefore, if you would be interested, we would like to suggest features/code that could be added to They Work For You and, we believe, would be beneficial to the British public. We share your commitment to opensource and would be very happy to work with you.
I would be happy to further explain our proposal in a video call at your convenience.
Kind regards,
Žiga Vrtačič
____________________________________Danes je nov dan, Inštitut za druga vprašanja----Georgie BurrCommunity Liaison for Democratic CommonsmySocietyTwitter: @georgieburr--Georgie BurrCommunity Liaison for Democratic CommonsmySocietyTwitter: @georgieburr--Georgie BurrCommunity Liaison for Democratic CommonsmySocietyTwitter: @georgieburr--Georgie BurrCommunity Liaison for Democratic CommonsmySocietyTwitter: @georgieburr
Matthew Somerville
Just to quickly add, as well as the API, if you want some dumped files
of the data for use, http://parser.theyworkforyou.com/ has
details/links to our Popolo person data, and our XML debates/written
answer output. Hope that's helpful.
ATB,
Matthew
