Francis Irving

Francis Irving is a 36 year old British computer programmer and activist for freedom of information.[1][2]

Francis Irving developed TortoiseCVS.[3]

He co-founded Public Whip with Julian Todd and became a developer of the affiliated TheyWorkForYou website,[4] a project which parses raw Hansard data to track how members vote in the UK Parliament. Initially risking prosecution for re-using the raw data which was under Crown copyright, the developers of Public Whip were later successful in getting permission to use it.[5] In 2004, Public Whip was recognised in the New Media awards.[6] In 2008, The Daily Telegraph rated TheyWorkforYou 41st in a list of the 101 most useful websites.[7] Irving together with Matthew Somerville wrote the code for FixMyStreet [8]

Irving was also a senior developer of PledgeBank.[9] He collaborated again with Julian Todd to create 'The Straight Choice a website (later renamed 'Election Leaflets') that archives election leaflets.[10][11]

He was the Campaign Director of the Save Parliament campaign which opposed the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.[12][13]

He was one of two people to suggest the winning idea of a site through which Freedom of Information Act requests could be made in a mySociety competition for ideas for public interest websites to build.[14] He was later to become the main developer of the site which was called WhatDoTheyKnow.[15] Francis has won seven New Statesman awards for websites he has worked on.[16]

Irving is currently CEO for ScraperWiki.[17]

References

  1. ^ http://www.newsrewired.com/speakers/francis-irving/
  2. ^ http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2010/06/victory_for_whatdotheyknow_web.html
  3. ^ http://www.tortoisecvs.org/companies.shtml
  4. ^ The Silent State, Heather Brooke p128
  5. ^ Brook, Heather (8 June 2006). "Make it work for us, Ms Tullo". London: The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/jun/08/epublic.freedomofinformation. 
  6. ^ http://www.newstatesman.com/nma/nma2004/nma2004winners.htm
  7. ^ The 101 most useful websites
  8. ^ http://www.fixmystreet.com/faq
  9. ^ Benjamin, Alison (10 January 2007). "Public inquiry". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jan/10/1. Retrieved 2 May 2010. 
  10. ^ 'British pensioners' on BNP election leaflet are actually Italian models
  11. ^ http://www.thestraightchoice.org/about.php
  12. ^ http://bill111.wordpress.com/2006/10/31/write-to-your-lord-to-save-parliament/
  13. ^ http://flourish.org/cv/
  14. ^ http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/about#credits
  15. ^ http://www.mysociety.org/2008/02/22/mysocietys-freedom-of-information-site-goes-live/
  16. ^ http://www.newsrewired.com/?page_id=510
  17. ^ http://blog.scraperwiki.com/2011/05/05/scraperwiki-a-story-about-two-boys-web-scraping-and-a-worm/