News and updates

mySociety 20th anniversary awards

Yes, mySociety's been around for 20 years — but enough about us; it's time to recognise the incredible things people have done with our outputs during those two decades.

That's why we'll be celebrating exceptional usage of our services across five categories, at the first ever mySociety Awards next week. Take a peek at our shortlist to see which people and projects are in the running for top spot - and the chance to take home a unique trophy.

The Council Climate Action Scorecards are here

Just in case you missed the blanket coverage across almost every regional and local paper in the UK — the Council Climate Action Scorecards have launched, representing 18 months of hard work in collaboration with our partners Climate Emergency UK.

They devised the marking scheme, trained a large cohort of volunteers to assess the climate action being taken by every UK council, and assembled the data.

And we built the website, made the tool that helped collate the evidence, and put our Projects tool to use on nationwide sets of FOI requests. Partnership in action!

You can read more about the background in our blog post here. But first, why not check what your own local council is doing on climate?

Gaining support for the Climate and Ecology Bill

Encouraging people to contact their MP is one effective way to campaign around climate action. That's how Zero Hour have locked in so much support from a variety of MPs across the House — and they used our free WriteToThem service to do so. Find out how.

Community-led climate action

Zarino reports back from the Business Green Net Zero festival, where we were presenting on public mobilisation around climate, or, as he puts it, "the space between direct action, and government ‘business as usual’". Read the full account here.

In memory of Francis Mainoo

Tech for effective crowdsourcing

mySociety has always used crowdsourcing as an effective way to break daunting data tasks into manageable pieces. Over time, our methods and thinking around crowdsourcing has become more sophisticated, as Alex explains here.

WhatDoTheyKnow and the Post Office Horizon scandal

You may have seen the ongoing saga of the Post Office and the mis-coded Horizon accounting machines, a scandal which resulted in the wrongful imprisonment of many sub Postmasters.

One person whose work has resulted in front page headlines is Eleanor Shaikh, who used WhatDoTheyKnow to challenge the official line that there was nothing amiss - and ultimately helped to bring justice. Read the whole story here.

What we're reading

• Poor use of Excel can have life-changing implications.
• Carnegie's Life In The UK report gives a wellbeing score to the nation — including a score for democratic wellbeing. 
• We were surprised to see Doug Paulley — one of the activists shortlisted in our awards — pop up in this story about taking the government to court over failings in climate adaptation... but on reflection, it's just the sort of thing he would do!
• A good use of open data: to tell people whether the lifts are working in the London Underground.
• And finally: sound on.

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