DIY mySociety - helping international organisations build transparency websites
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Michael Mulley
Mar 26, 2012, 12:53:44 PM3/26/12
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On the applications side of open data, at the moment we do very little code-sharing between projects or countries. mySociety has a significant effort underway to change this -- read below.
On the technical component-sharing side, in a lot of respects I'm a skeptic who'd love to be argued out of his skepticism. But the guides and books mySociety is writing are utterly fantastic: I've already e-mailed the wonderful "How To Build Your Own TheyWorkForYou" to several people working on related projects.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Myfanwy Nixon <m...@mysociety.org>
Date: Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 11:35 AM
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.
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!
From: Myfanwy Nixon <m...@mysociety.org>
Date: Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 11:35 AM
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!
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