MySociety

mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy, that aims to build "socially focused tools with offline impacts". It was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003,^[1] and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004. Steinberg says that mySociety was inspired by a collaboration with his then-flatmate James Crabtree which spawned Crabtree's article "Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy".^[2][3]

Projects

• Alaveteli^[4] - international right to know software
• e-petitions^[5]
• FixMyStreet^[6] — a map based application that helps people inform their local authority of problems needing their attention, such as broken streetlamps etc.
• FixMyTransport^[7] - a site for contacting any transport operator in Britain about problems with public transport.
• Gaze^[8] — a gazetteer web service
• Hassleme^[9] — Because your mother can't remind you of everything, a website that sends reminders sporadically.
• HearFromYourMP^[10] — a site encouraging MPs to email their constituents.
• MapIt^[11] - maps postcodes and points to current or past administrative area information and polygons for all the United Kingdom.
• Mapumental^[12] — with support from Channel4ip^[13] this project uses isochrone maps to show accessibility from any location in Great Britain using public transport.^{[14][15][16][17][18]} Mapumental also underlies the property-search website.^[19]
• PledgeBank — runs pledges on all topics, of the form: "I will do x if y people agree to do the same."
• TheyWorkForYou — tracks speeches and activities of Members of Parliament, including presenting an accessible version of Hansard
• Travel-time maps^[20] — maps showing how long it takes to travel on public transport to a given destination, expanded in 2007.^[21][22]
• WhatDoTheyKnow ^[23][24] — a site designed to help people find out (through Freedom of Information requests) what the British government and public services are doing. The site receives over 30,000 unique visitors a week.^[25]
• WriteToThem^[26] — provides contact details for elected representatives at all levels of UK government, and users can send messages to them directly from the site (formerly FaxYourMP).

Previous projects

• Downing Street e-Petitions — mySociety developed the original solution for publishing petitions on the website of the Prime Minister's Office.
• GroupsNearYou^[27] — a map-based application that enabled users to find local community groups in their local area
• Notapathetic.com^[28] — a site about people who planned not to vote in the United Kingdom general election, 2005.
• Placeopedia — was an online gazetteer consisting of a mashup of Google Maps and the English Wikipedia.

Office of Public Sector information

In response to the EU Directive on Reuse of Public Sector Information 2005,^[29] the UK government created an Office of Public Sector Information^[30] to promote public sector information reuse. OPSI now runs a government data unlocking service^[31] to help people find and reuse government data with licensing or format restrictions.

In March 2006 The Guardian started a "Free our Data" campaign,^[32] which got Inspire^[33] a proposal for free open geodata, passed into EU law.

In April 2007, Cabinet Office Minister Hilary Armstrong commissioned Ed Mayo and mySociety director Tom Steinberg to draft a "Power of Information Review" on how the government could serve the public's information needs better.^[34] The resulting report^[35] led Cabinet Minister Tom Watson, MP to create a Power of Information Task Force.^[36][37] They launched the ShowUsABetterWay competition^[38] to award £20,000 to the best application reusing public government data.

See also

• Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community
• Chris Lightfoot
• Public Whip

References

External links

• Official website
• UK Citizens' Online Democracy, the charity that owns mySociety
• UK Citizens Online Democracy, Registered Charity no. 1076346 at the Charity Commission