About mySocietymySocietyMS_09d1c070-265c-4848-9ee6-6cfe8ff9b2eeWe're a not-for-profit organisation, and we're just a little bit different from your everyday charity... We are a not-for-profit social enterprise. We are based in the UK ... CitizensInstitutionsDecision MakersUK Citizens Online Democracy (UKCOD)mySociety Limited (05798215) is a project of UK Citizens Online Democracy (UKCOD) a registered charity in England and Wales, charity number 1076346, company number 03277032.mySociety TeamConsider this your pocket guide to the lesser-spotted team members at mySociety. Sometimes nocturnal, in many cases omnivorous, distributed across the British Isles and beyond, these friendly creatures can generally be seen pecking away at a keyboard.Abi BroomAdministration ManagerBenjamin NickollsCommercial ManagerChris MyttonDeveloperDave ArterDeveloperDave WhitelandDeveloperDuncan ParkesDeveloperGareth ReesDeveloperGemma HumphrysEvents and Administration OfficerHakim CassimallyDeveloperIan ChardSystems AdministratorJen BramleyInternational ProjectsJessica MusilaAfrica Project LeadLiz ConlanDeveloperLouise CrowDeveloperMark LongairDeveloperMartin WrightDesignerMatthew SomervilleDeveloperMike ThompsonSenior ConsultantMyfanwy NixonMarketing & Communications ManagerNick JacksonDeveloperPaul LenzHead of International & FinanceRebecca RumbulHead of ResearchSteve DayDeveloperStruan DonaldDeveloperTom SteinbergDirectorTony BowdenInternational AgitatorZarino ZappiaDesigner_a59e90f6-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a5406To invent and popularise digital tools that enable citizens to exert power over institutions and decision makers._a59e93b2-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a5406Democratic AccountabilityWe believe … that strong democratic accountability and a thriving civil society are vital to our common welfare, and that these cannot survive where people do not engage with government and communities.Civil SocietyCommon WelfareEngagementCivic StepsWe work online … because we believe that the internet can meaningfully lower the barriers to taking the first civic or democratic steps in a citizen's life, and that it can do so at scale.Democratic StepsProjectsGive people the power to get things changed_a59e94c0-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061We run a number of projects designed to give people the power to get things changed ...FOIA RequestsMake it easy to formulate Freedom of Information Act requests and send them to the right contacts in the right departments_a59e95ba-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.1WhatDoTheyKnow The UK's Freedom of Information website Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, public bodies in the UK are obliged to respond to requests for recorded information. Is this something we all routinely access? No: perhaps because people don’t commonly know that they have this right. Even if they do, it’s not always simple to work out how to make a request. mySociety launched WhatDoTheyKnow to tackle that issue, and bring the power of the Freedom of Information Act to everybody. It’s easy to make or browse FOI requests Not only do we make it super-easy to formulate a request and send it to the right contact in the right department of your chosen authority -- but we publish all the requests and responses in an online archive. Over 200,000 requests have been made to date, and that figure is going up by the hour.AlaveteliEnable users to run their own Right to Know websites_a59e9eb6-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.2Run your own Right to Know website -- Alaveteli is our Freedom of Information platform -- Ruby on Rails code for running a site like WhatDoTheyKnow.com. It can be deployed in any country, in any language, and within any legislation. Your site will make it easy for people to ask questions of public authorities, and it will automatically publish these questions, and their answers, online. If your country gives its citizens the Right to Know by law, you can use Alaveteli to launch your own Freedom of Information site, and simplify the process of requesting information. If your country has no such legislation, you can still run an Alaveteli site to send questions to those in power – and you may just find that it gets things changed. There are Freedom of Information sites using Alaveteli in many countries, including Hungary, New Zealand, Spain, and Israel – with more coming soon. There’s even a site covering the European Union. Hundreds of thousands of requests have been made through all the Alaveteli sites worldwide. Alaveteli is open source code, so it’s free to use, modify and contribute to. There’s a supportive community to help you along the way, where you’ll find many people who have already set up their own Alaveteli website -- people who are well placed to answer any questions you may have.UK ParliamentsEnable users to keep tabs on the UK's parliaments_a59ea0d2-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.3TheyWorkForYou -- Keeping tabs on the UK's parliaments A large section of the UK population do not know the name of their MP, let alone how they voted on key issues or what they are saying in their name. We built TheyWorkForYou to rectify this. TheyWorkForYou is one of mySociety’s most visited sites, providing you with a vast range of information on the politicians who represent you, including: Who your local MP is Summaries of how MPs have voted Text of debates in Parliament – laid out in a way that’s easy to read, fully searchable and linkable Video of MPs speaking in debates Written questions MPs have submitted to government departments, and the answers they’ve got back Much of this content is available elsewhere on the web, but it’s typically not easy to find, navigate or share. We've added extra functionality to tackle that. With TheyWorkForYou, you can: * Receive email alerts whenever a specific MP speaks, or your chosen topic is mentioned in Parliament * Be notified by email about upcoming debates or topics * Add comments and annotations to what politicians have said TheyWorkForYou is also a historic resource which allows you to browse or search everything that was said in Parliament, right back to the 1930s.PombolaEnable users to run websites monitoring the activity of their own parliaments_a59ea0d3-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.4Parliamentary monitoring software -- Would you like to run a website monitoring the activity of your own parliament? Launching a website like that requires a lot of time-consuming coding -- but the good news is, we've done a lot of that work for you, and bundled it up in a software platform that we’ve called Pombola. Pombola is free, open source and available for use anywhere in the world. Features -- Pombola's core components are: * A structured database that links people to places, organisations and roles. Use it to create an accessible display of, for example, all of the members of a particular house of parliament, all of the elected representatives of particular areas, or even all of the politicians who attended a specific college. * A database of parliamentary transcripts linked to the individual speakers, making it easy to display how often a politician has spoken in parliament and what they have said * Boundary information (stored in our boundary mapping service, MapIt) allows users to search any location covered by your Pombola instance, and discover the elected representatives for that area * Integrated tools allow users to comment on and socially share individual pages * Twitter streams on the home page and a blog for news itemsPoplus ComponentsPromote the sharing of software for civic and democratic purposes_a59ea0d4-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.5Ciudadano InteligenteComponents are a Poplus initiative. Poplus, co-founded by mySociety and the Chilean organisation Ciudadano Inteligente, recognises that there are organisations like us in places all around the world. By collaborating and sharing our software and knowledge, we can all be greatly more efficient.Poplus Components -- What is Poplus? Poplus is an international movement which promotes the sharing of software for civic and democratic purposes. Its underlying principle is that citizens everywhere have the same basic civic needs, no matter where they live or what political structures are in place – and that digital tools can help answer these needs. Poplus’ main aim is to save developers time and effort, by providing tools that are flexible enough to work anywhere. These tools are known as Poplus Components. What are Poplus Components? Poplus Components are little pieces of functionality that slot into bigger websites. They are stand-alone tools which can be used within any territory, and translated into any language. Intentionally minimalist and focused, each Poplus Component is designed to do one thing really well. As a developer, you can pick and choose the Poplus Components that help with your website’s goals. Use our hosted versions, or install the open source code locally. Listed below are the Poplus Components that mySociety have made -- see the Poplus website for more Components from other organisations and developers.MapItMatch people responsible services by locations_a59ea0d5-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.5.1Many mySociety websites begin by asking the user for a location (as a postcode or a geographical point), and then matching it to the people responsible for that location. So for example, FixMyStreet matches the location of a pothole to the council whose job it is to fix it. WriteToThem matches a postcode to the user's elected representatives in that constituency. If your website needs that same functionality -- maybe you want to tell people who their MP is, or where to find their nearest voting station -- MapIt is what you need.SayItPresent transcripts online so that they are browsable, linkable, searchable and shareable_a59ea0d6-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.5.2It's now common for public authorities to publish transcripts online. You can find court proceedings, minutes of council meetings, and national inquiries very easily -- but generally they are in a format such as PDFs or Microsoft Word documents, and that doesn't make them very suitable for the sorts of things people like to do on the internet these days. SayIt allows you to present transcripts online so that they are browsable, linkable, searchable and shareable. You can use it for any written record of a conversation or meeting -- even playscripts. Coming soon, you'll also be able to create a transcript directly from an audio recording.PopItPresent "people data" about politicians and their roles, past and present._a59ea0d7-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.5.3If you’re building a site that contains information about a government, you’ll soon find that you need to solve a number of problems around presenting "people data" -- politicians and their roles, past and present. PopIt has done all the hard work for you. Input your data, and you don’t have to worry about things like politicans changing parties, or how to display their previous positions. It's not just for parliamentary sites, though -- PopIt can be used for any group of people that are related in any way: members of organisations, or historical figures, for example.WriteItAllow people to write to their elected representatives_a59ea0d8-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.5.4Our website WriteToThem allows people to write to their elected representatives, even if they don’t know who they are. But we built it within the UK system, and without much thought of re-use, so it wasn't suitable to be a Component. Enter WriteIt, from our friends Ciudadano Inteligente in Chile -- a much leaner, more accessible piece of code for you to integrate with any website. WriteIt provides an easy way for your users to contact people in power. Just like WriteToThem, it makes the process very simple, matching users to their representatives by asking for just one piece of information.WriteToThemMake it easy to contact representatives_a59ea186-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.6CitizensDoes it work? WriteToThem has helped citizens send over a million messages since it was launched in 2005, and our statistics show that more than 40% of the people using it have never written to a politician before. Underpinning WriteToThem is a series of sophisticated anti-abuse filters, as well as a surveying mechanism to help us publish league tables of MP responsiveness. This data appears to create a positive incentive for MPs to get better at responding to their mail, and we've spoken to people who've improved the way their staff handle mail as a consequence of having low scores on WriteToThem.PoliticiansMembers of ParliamentThe easy way to contact your representatives -- Do you know who your MP is? If your answer is 'no', you’re not alone -- 78% of the UK population cannot name their representative in Parliament. If you need to make contact, that makes it a bit tricky -- but WriteToThem solves this problem. Visit the homepage, input your postcode, and it will show you everyone who represents you, from your local councillors up to your MEPs. What's more, you can then write them a message, simply and quickly.FixMyStreetMake it easy to report problems_a59ea46a-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.7FixMyStreet makes it easy to report a problem in your area -- even if you don’t know who is responsible for fixing it. Reports automatically go to the people who are in charge of fixing them. FixMyStreet also publishes them online, so others can see what’s an issue in their local area, then comment or offer support.FixMyTransportAllow passengers to report issues on any public transport route in the UK_a59ea5aa-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54061.8PassengersEuston, we have a problem -- Your bus is always late, your train is falling apart, and the station's a disgrace. It's easy enough to grumble to your co-passengers, but have you ever stopped to think what might happen if you all got together to do something about it? FixMyTransport allows passengers to report issues on any public transport route in the UK -- train, bus, underground, tram, or coach. But more than that, it brings together people who have the same issue, so they can campaign to solve it.PartnershipsSupport partners who deploy our technology in countries around the world._a59ea6e0-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54062We also work internationally to support partners who deploy our technology in countries around the world. Software & Development ServicesProvide software and development services to organisations that can benefit from our experience in civic technologies._a59ea82a-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54062.1This work is partially supported by providing software and development services to organisations that can benefit from our experience in civic technologies.Web DevelopmentDesign, build and grow web and mobile applications_a59ea96a-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54062.1.1What do you need? We'll design, build and grow it as an ultra-usable web or mobile application, consulting you at every stage. Large or small, we don't mind. Tough, data-intensive problems? We have them for breakfast.Digital Consulting_a59eaaa0-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54062.2We understand how organisations operate, and we understand the internet -- a combination that’s surprisingly rare. If you worry that your organisational strategy may not be keeping up with the pace of digital change, ask us for help.User ExperienceGive advice on how to improve websites_a59eb388-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54062.3User Experience consulting and design -- Navigating any website should be a breeze. We'll take a comprehensive look at how easy -- or otherwise -- your site is to use. Then we’ll give you concrete, achievable advice on how to improve it. We can design the changes for you too, if you need us to.FixMyStreetOffer a cloud-hosted application for websites and mobile that can integrate directly with councils' back-office CRMs._a59eb3e2-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54062.4CouncilsFixMyStreet for Councils -- All the benefits of our award-winning FixMyStreet website, now developed specifically for council needs. An elegant, cloud-hosted application for websites and mobile that can integrate directly with councils’ back-office CRMs.FOI RequestsTrack Freedom of Information requests from receipt to response_a59eb608-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54062.5FOI request management -- Track Freedom of Information requests from receipt to response. This ground-breaking system is based on the award-winning WhatDoTheyKnow website. Developed to answer the needs of councils and other public bodies, it offers all the benefits of usability and transparency.MapumentalDisplay public transport journey times on interactive maps_a59eb609-9e05-11e4-9796-db07239a54062.6Sometimes you need to show distance in time, not miles. Mapumental displays public transport journey times on sleek, interactive maps. Beautifully flexible, Mapumental has uses across a variety of industries.2015-01-16https://www.mysociety.org/about/OwenAmburOwen.Ambur@verizon.net