mySociety is a UK-based

registered charity A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being (e.g. educational, religious or other activities serving the public interest or common good). The legal definition of a ch ...

, previously named

UK Citizens Online Democracy UK Citizens Online Democracy (or UKCOD) is a registered charity in England and Wales, number 1076346. At present, UKCOD's main activity is running the mySociety project. mySociety builds websites which give people simple, tangible benefits in th ...

. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were

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 sof ...

, 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 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 ...

project, encouraged others to share open source code that would minimise the amount of duplication in civic tech coding. Like many

non-profits A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

, 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 Tom Steinberg is a nonprofit leader and author, with a career history mainly in public interest technology, and in the profession of grantmaking. He is the co-author of the book 'Modern Grantmaking: A Guide for Funders Who Believe Better is Pos ...

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 James Crabtree is a British author and policy analyst living in Singapore. He is currently executive director of the Asia branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Crabtree writes columns for Nikkei Asian Review, Foreign Polic ...

which spawned Crabtree's article "Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy". In March 2015, Steinberg announced his decision to stand down as executive director of mySociety. In July of that year, Mark Cridge became the organisation's new CEO.

Projects

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 Assembl ...

is a parliamentary monitoring website which aims to make it easier for UK citizens to understand what is going on in

Westminster Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster. The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...

as well as

Scottish Parliament The Scottish Parliament ( gd, Pàrlamaid na h-Alba ; sco, Scots Pairlament) is the devolved, unicameral legislature of Scotland. Located in the Holyrood area of the capital city, Edinburgh, it is frequently referred to by the metonym Holyro ...

, the

Welsh Assembly The Senedd (; ), officially known as the Welsh Parliament in English and () in Welsh, is the devolved, unicameral legislature of Wales. A democratically elected body, it makes laws for Wales, agrees certain taxes and scrutinises the Welsh Gove ...

and the

Northern Ireland Assembly sco-ulster, Norlin Airlan Assemblie , legislature = 7th Northern Ireland Assembly, Seventh Assembly , coa_pic = File:NI_Assembly.svg , coa_res = 250px , house_type = Unicameralism, Unicameral , hou ...

. It also helps create accountability for UK politicians by publishing a complete archive of every word spoken in

Parliament In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

, along with a voting record and other details for each MP, past and present. *

FixMyStreet FixMyStreet is a free and open-source software framework by mySociety which enables anyone to run a website for aggregating and reporting street problems, similar to FixMyStreet.com. The United Kingdom FixMyStreet inspired similar sites in othe ...

platform is

free and open source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

which enables anyone to run a map based website and app that helps people inform their local authority of problems needing their attention, such as

potholes A pothole is a depression in a road surface, usually asphalt pavement, where traffic has removed broken pieces of the pavement. It is usually the result of water in the underlying soil structure and traffic passing over the affected area. Water ...

, broken

streetlamp A street light, light pole, lamp pole, lamppost, street lamp, light standard, or lamp standard is a raised source of light on the edge of a road or path. Similar lights may be found on a railway platform. When urban electric power distribution ...

s, etc. The UK version is FixMyStreet.com. mySociety also provide FixMyStreet as a report making system for several local and transport authorities in the UK, including TfL. *

WhatDoTheyKnow WhatDoTheyKnow is a site by mySociety designed to help people in the United Kingdom make Freedom of Information requests. It publishes both the requests and the authorities’ responses online, with the aim of making information available to all ...

is a site designed to help people in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

make

Freedom of Information Freedom of information is freedom of a person or people to publish and consume information. Access to information is the ability for an individual to seek, receive and impart information effectively. This sometimes includes "scientific, indigeno ...

requests. It publishes both the requests and the authorities’ responses online, with the aim of making information available to all, and of removing the need for multiple people to make the same requests. By 2011, a significant proportion of requests, around 15%, to UK central government were being made through the site; more recently, that's still the case, with a little over 15% of requests to

audited An audit is an "independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit oriented or not, irrespective of its size or legal form when such an examination is conducted with a view to express an opinion thereon.” Auditing ...

bodies and around 20% of those to ministerial departments being sent through the service. *

Alaveteli Alaveteli is free and open source software by mySociety to help citizens write Freedom of Information requests and automatically publish any responses. Alaveteli is described as "a project to create a free, standard, internationalised platform f ...

is free and open source software to help citizens write

Freedom of Information request Freedom of information laws allow access by the general public to data held by national governments and, where applicable, by state and local governments. The emergence of freedom of information legislation was a response to increasing dissatisfa ...

s and automatically publish any responses. The UK version is

. *

WriteToThem WriteToThem is a website by mySociety which allows UK citizens to contact their elected representatives. Users do not need to know their representatives’ names: instead, using the mySociety software MapIt, the site matches their postcode to it ...

is a website which allows UK citizens to contact their elected representatives. Users do not need to know their representatives’ names: instead, using the mySociety software MapIt, the site matches their postcode to its various

constituency An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger State (polity), state (a country, administrative region, ...

boundaries, before displaying elected representatives at all levels of UK government from local councillors to

MEPs A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

. Users can send messages to them from the site; responses are then sent directly to the user's

email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineer ...

. * SayIt: software for publishing transcripts of debates (e.g. from

parliaments In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. T ...

, court proceedings and meetings). * MapIt: software for matching a geographical point with its legislative boundaries. MapIt underlies several mySociety websites such as FixMyStreet and WriteToThem, where it allows for a user to input a postcode and be matched to the correct

local authority Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...

or representative. * Gaze: a

gazetteer A gazetteer is a geographical index or directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas.Aurousseau, 61. It typically contains information concerning the geographical makeup, social statistics and physical features of a country, region, or co ...

web service

Discontinued or passed to new owners

* Poplus was an international federation of organisations who benefitted through the sharing of civic code and online technologies. It was set up in April 2014 by mySociety in collaboration with Chilean

e-democracy E-democracy (a combination of the words electronic and democracy), also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, is the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in political and governance processes. The term is believe ...

organisation

Fundación Ciudadano Inteligente Fundación Ciudadanía Inteligente (Smart Citizen Foundation) is a non-profit organization based in Santiago, Chile. The organization creates web technologies as a key tool for gathering, organizing, illustrating and sharing information through ...

and encouraged the development of free, open source civic 'blocks' of software, which it termed 'Components', intended to make it easier for people to build civic tech tools. In 2014 Nominet awarded Poplus a place in the Nominet Trust 100. Poplus ceased being maintained in 2016. *

Mapumental Mapumental was a web-based application for displaying journeys in terms of how long they take, rather than by distance, a technique also known as isochrone or geospatial mapping. It was developed by British organisation mySociety but was withdra ...

was free and open source software for displaying journeys in terms of how long they take, rather than by distance, a technique also known as isochrone or

geospatial Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also call ...

mapping. It was withdrawn in 2020. *

Pombola Pombola is free open source software by mySociety for running a parliamentary monitoring website. Pombola's development was funded by the Omidyar Network to relaunch the Mzalendo site in Kenya. The IndigoTrust funded roll-out to further countrie ...

was free open source software for running a parliamentary monitoring website inspired by TheyWorkForYou. While it is still available, it is no longer being actively maintained. * Downing Street e-Petitions: mySociety developed the original solution for publishing

petition A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication. In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some offici ...

s on the website of the

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...

's Office. In 2011 the system was replaced with the government's own development. * EveryPolitician: a project that ran from 2015 to 2019, with the aim of storing and sharing data on every politician in the world, in structured

open data Open data is data that is openly accessible, exploitable, editable and shared by anyone for any purpose. Open data is licensed under an open license. The goals of the open data movement are similar to those of other "open(-source)" movements ...

* Pledgebank: Allowed users to make pledges of the format: "I will do x if y number of people agree to do the same". Now dormant, with archives still browsable. * HassleMe: a website that sends reminders sporadically, now run independently of mySociety * HearFromYourMP: a site encouraging MPs to email their constituents, closed May 2015 * FixMyTransport: a site in the model of FixMyStreet for contacting any transport operator in Britain about problems with

public transport Public transport (also known as public transportation, public transit, mass transit, or simply transit) is a system of transport for passengers by group travel systems available for use by the general public unlike private transport, typical ...

. Correspondence was published online. The site ran from 2011 to 2015 and has now been frozen, though archives are still browsable. * PopIt: Storage of

on politicians * ScenicOrNot: a

gamification Gamification is the strategic attempt to enhance systems, services, organizations, and activities by creating similar experiences to those experienced when playing games in order to motivate and engage users. This is generally accomplished thro ...

-powered site which invites users to rate photographs according to their ‘scenicness’. The results fed into

. In 2015 ScenicOrNot was passed over to the

Warwick Business School Warwick Business School (WBS) is an academic department of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Warwick University, that was established in 1967 as the School of Industrial and Business Studies. The Business School offers undergraduate, postgradu ...

where it is being used to track the correlation between

health Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...

and the beauty of one's surroundings. * GroupsNearYou: a map-based application that enabled users to find local community groups in their local area. * NotApathetic: a site where people who planned not to vote in the

2005 United Kingdom general election The 2005 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 5 May 2005, to elect List of MPs elected in the 2005 United Kingdom general election, 646 members to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons. The Labour Party (U ...

could explain why. * Placeopedia: an online

consisting of a mashup of

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

and the

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

. * Democracy Club: an election information project, now a separate company.My Society: Democracy Club
/ref>

References

External links

* * {{EW charity, 1076346, mySociety
Freedom of Information: Going beyond the scoop
Journalism.co.uk Companies based in the London Borough of Ealing Online companies of the United Kingdom Charities based in London Non-profit technology Politics and technology Crowdsourcing E-democracy Freedom of information activists Social networking services Open government

Projects

Discontinued or passed to new owners

See also

References

External links