TheyWorkForYou
TheyWorkForYou is a parliamentary monitoring website operated by mySociety which aims to make it easier for UK citizens to understand what is going on in Westminster, as well as the Scottish Parliament, the Senedd and the Northern Ireland Assembly. It also helps create accountability for UK politicians by publishing a complete archive of every word spoken in Parliament, along with a voting record and other details for each MP, past and present. TheyWorkForYou does not publish original content: it scrapes from the official sources, then presents debates and information about representatives in a more accessible version. For example, TheyWorkForYou's version of Hansard may be searched, and each section has its own permalink so that it can be shared easily. The site aggregates content from the Hansard records of the House of Commons, House of Lords, Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly, along with other publicly available data such as the MPs Register of Members' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Public Whip
The Public Whip is a parliamentary informatics project that analyses and publishes the voting history of MPs in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was developed by Francis Irving and Julian Todd following the 18 March 2003 Parliamentary Approval for the invasion of Iraq as a tool to record which MPs had defied their party's whip long after the information had become effectively inaccessible for reference. On 1 August 2011 Irving and Todd handed control of the site to a new team. The project is loosely affiliated to mySociety's TheyWorkForYou with which it shares a large part of the same parliamentary parsing code-base. In 2014 the OpenAustralia Foundation launched a fork of the project for Australia's federal parliament calleThey Vote For You. Awards and funding In 2004 the Public Whip won the ''New Statesman'' New Media Award for "civic renewal". The site has never received a grant from any funding body and remains entirely paid for by its creators, including server cos ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mysociety
mySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that the code could be (and soon was) redeployed in other countries. mySociety went on to simplify and internationalise its code and through the now dormant Poplus project, encouraged others to share open source code that would minimise the amount of duplication in civic tech coding. Like many non-profits, mySociety sustains itself with a mixture of grant funding and commercial work, providing software and development services to local government and other organisations. mySociety was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003, and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004. Steinberg says that it was inspired by a collaboration with his then-flatmate James Crabtree which spawned Crabtree's article "Civic hacking: a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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MySociety
mySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that the code could be (and soon was) redeployed in other countries. mySociety went on to simplify and internationalise its code and through the now dormant Poplus project, encouraged others to share open source code that would minimise the amount of duplication in civic tech coding. Like many non-profits, mySociety sustains itself with a mixture of grant funding and commercial work, providing software and development services to local government and other organisations. mySociety was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003, and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004. Steinberg says that it was inspired by a collaboration with his then-flatmate James Crabtree which spawned Crabtree's article "Civic hacking: a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hansard
''Hansard'' is the traditional name of the transcripts of parliamentary debates in Britain and many Commonwealth countries. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard (1776–1833), a London printer and publisher, who was the first official printer to the Parliament at Westminster. Origins Though the history of the ''Hansard'' began in the British parliament, each of Britain's colonies developed a separate and distinctive history. Before 1771, the British Parliament had long been a highly secretive body. The official record of the actions of the House was publicly available but there was no record of the debates. The publication of remarks made in the House became a breach of parliamentary privilege, punishable by the two Houses of Parliament. As the populace became interested in parliamentary debates, more independent newspapers began publishing unofficial accounts of them. The many penalties implemented by the government, including fines, dismissal, imprisonment, and investigati ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parliament Of The United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and the overseas territories. Parliament is bicameral but has three parts, consisting of the sovereign ( King-in-Parliament), the House of Lords, and the House of Commons (the primary chamber). In theory, power is officially vested in the King-in-Parliament. However, the Crown normally acts on the advice of the prime minister, and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation; thus power is ''de facto'' vested in the House of Commons. The House of Commons is an elected chamber with elections to 650 single-member constituencies held at least every five years under the first-past-the-post system. By constitutional convention, all governme ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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OpenAustralia Foundation
The OpenAustralia Foundation (OAF) is a non-profit organisation aimed at improving government transparency. Its projects include Right to Know, a website allowing users to submit freedom of information requests, and They Vote for You, a parliamentary informatics website. Structure OpenAustralia is a registered charity that operates as a company limited by guarantee. It was established in 2009, co-founded by Matthew Landauer and Katherine Szuminska. Projects One of the foundation's earliest projects was Election Leaflets, a website established in the lead-up to the 2010 federal election that allowed users to upload pamphlets that they receive from political parties. It allowed voters to track if parties were emphasising different policies in different electorates or if candidates were offering policies that differed from party platforms. Leaflets uploaded to the website were retained on the National Library of Australia's Pandora archive. Right to Know Right to Know, established ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area, covering . New Zealand is about east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland. The islands of New Zealand were the last large habitable land to be settled by humans. Between about 1280 and 1350, Polynesians began to settle in the islands and then developed a distinctive Māori culture. In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to sight and record New Zealand. In 1840, representatives of the United Kingdom and Māori chiefs ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Open Source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized software development model that encourages open collaboration. A main principle of open-source software development is peer production, with products such as source code, blueprints, and documentation freely available to the public. The open-source movement in software began as a response to the limitations of proprietary code. The model is used for projects such as in open-source appropriate technology, and open-source drug discovery. Open source promotes universal access via an open-source or free license to a product's design or blueprint, and universal redistribution of that design or blueprint. Before the phrase ''open source'' became widely adopted, developers and producers have used a variety of other terms. ''Open source'' gained ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Source Code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source code. The source code is often transformed by an assembler or compiler into binary machine code that can be executed by the computer. The machine code is then available for execution at a later time. Most application software is distributed in a form that includes only executable files. If the source code were included it would be useful to a user, programmer or a system administrator, any of whom might wish to study or modify the program. Alternatively, depending on the technology being used, source code may be interpreted and executed directly. Definitions Richard Stallman's definition, formulated in his 1989 seminal li ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog ''Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics. Life and career Cory Efram Doctorow was born in Toronto, Ontario, on 17 July 1971. He is of Eastern European Jewish descent. His paternal grandfather was born in what is now Poland and his paternal grandmother was from Leningrad. Both fled Nazi Germany's advance eastward during World War II, and as a result Doctorow's father was born in a displaced persons camp near Baku, Azerbaijan. His grandparents and father emigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union. Doctorow's mother's family were Ukrainian-Russian Romanians. Doctorow was a friend of Columbia law ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Department For Constitutional Affairs
The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) was a United Kingdom government department. Its creation was announced on 12 June 2003; it took over the functions of the Lord Chancellor's Department. On 28 March 2007 it was announced that the Department for Constitutional Affairs would take control of probation, prisons and prevention of re-offending from the Home Office and be renamed the Ministry of Justice. This took place on 9 May 2007. It was primarily responsible for reforms to the constitution, relations with the Channel Islands and Isle of Man and, within England and Wales, it was concerned with the administration of the Courts, legal aid, and the appointment of the judiciary. Other responsibilities included issues relating to human rights, data protection, and freedom of information. It incorporated the Wales Office and the Scotland Office, but those offices remained the overall responsibility of the Secretary of State for Wales and Secretary of State for Scotland respe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Philip Gould
Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularized the name include kings of Macedonia and one of the apostles of early Christianity. ''Philip'' has many alternative spellings. One derivation often used as a surname is Phillips. It was also found during ancient Greek times with two Ps as Philippides and Philippos. It has many diminutive (or even hypocoristic) forms including Phil, Philly, Lip, Pip, Pep or Peps. There are also feminine forms such as Philippine and Philippa. Antiquity Kings of Macedon * Philip I of Macedon * Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great * Philip III of Macedon, half-brother of Alexander the Great * Philip IV of Macedon * Philip V of Macedon New Testament * Philip the Apostle * Philip the Evangelist Others * Philippus of Croton (c. 6th cent ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |