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You're a subscriber to our newsletter, so you already know more than the average person about mySociety and our range of civic services.

But often, people know one or two of our websites much better than the others — and all of them have little-known features that can be put to good use.

That's why we created the mySociety Toolkit: a series of six emails, sent over a couple of weeks, that introduce you to the ins and outs of each service, one at a time. It's free of charge, of course! Give it a go, and get to know us a little better.

TICTeC keynote announcement

María Baron, founder and Global Executive Director of Directorio Legislativo, will be one of two keynote speakers at TICTeC this year.

She's the perfect fit for one of the conference's core themes: how civic tech might safeguard democracies. Find out why in our blog post here... and then make sure to book your place at the conference before 20 April, while tickets are still at earlybird prices.

Rewatch: Creating datasets from FOI data

In our third Freedom of Information seminar, Maya Esslemont from After Exploitation explained how to prepare for an FOI project to ensure you get the best results possible (and what to do if you don’t); and Kay Achenbach from the Open Data Institute explained the problems with ‘messy’ data, and how to fix them.

It's well worth a watch, thanks to the two compelling speakers fitting in more useful and immediately applicable tips than you could shake a stick at. Read the write-up or catch the video via this blog post.

...and discover how to make data visualisations

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What are the questions MPs ask
that don’t get answered?

Councillor uses Scorecards to get a sustainability motion passed

We were more than delighted when we heard that Councillor Andrew Murray, of Newry Mourne and Down District Council, used information from the Council Climate Action Scorecards to gain support from his fellow councillors for climate action.

Read our blog post to see the three different strands Cllr Murray took to secure climate commitments in his beautiful corner of Northern Ireland. 

“Don’t be afraid to copy”

and four more highlights from the Scorecards Successes Conference

This week, Climate Emergency UK launched research into what types of councils are doing best on climate action. Want the top line? We were at the launch event for the report, and brought back five important takeaways.

What we're reading 

• Democracy Classroom are collecting and mapping data on where hustings are being held.
• Talking of maps, here's one to show where MPs are standing down at the next election.
• Oh, you want more maps? Well this one lets you see which councils have invested the most in fossil fuels — or input your postcode to check your own council's record.
• FixMyStreet has something to say in this article about pothole budgets.
• If you want to vote for "literally anybody else", here's your man. This reminded us of a now-closed 2005 project.
• As one of the mySociety team put it, "Oh thank goodness, at last: a fish doorbell".

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