mySociety news

May 2020

Events

TICTeC videos now available

The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference, TICTeC, went ahead last month as a virtual event.

The live conversations were all part of the fun — but no worries if you couldn't make it: the presentations and Q&A sessions are now on our YouTube channel. You'll find them all here.

And in case you didn't see, we blogged the whole experience of switching to a virtual event in this post. We've detailed the logistics to make it really easy for anyone else looking at all the options and wondering what works best.

Transparency

Mental health in Higher Education staff

With zero hour contracts and low wages, conditions were already getting worse for uni and college staff long before lockdown. A new report, Pressure Vessels II, has just been released by HEPI, the Higher Education Policy Institute.

It's based on the results of multiple Freedom of Information requests submitted through WhatDoTheyKnow. The research builds on a previous study into the changing state of staff mental health, analysing the demand for counselling and occupational health services within HE as a measure of just how sick the sector is.

Freedom of Information during the pandemic

What's being neglected during the fight against coronavirus? Countries worldwide are seeing the right to information compromised to a greater or lesser degree, as authorities concentrate their efforts on the immediate concerns of battling covid-19.

And yet, factual information is critical during this time. Read mySociety's statement on FOI during the pandemic.

Bulk request downloads on Alaveteli Pro

You asked for it! And now we've done the development.

After several requests from users, we've added a new feature to the Alaveteli Pro codebase (including WhatDoTheyKnow Pro) — so now you can download batch request data as a spreadsheet.

That means that if you'd rather run your analysis on a different tool, or share status reports with a colleague, it's pretty simple to do so. Here's how.

Community

New features on FixMyStreet

If you're a user of FixMyStreet, you might have noticed some nifty additions of late. That's all down to the fact that we recently released the newest version of the FixMyStreet codebase, FixMyStreet 3.0

Not sure you've spotted them all? Here's a rundown of the improvements you can enjoy right now.

Events

Personal Democracy Forum CEE

Like pretty much every event these days, Personal Democracy Forum, the annual conference from the ePanstwo Foundation, is going online.

Our Head of Research Rebecca Rumbul will be speaking in a session on Open Data. Join her and a wealth of other inspiring speakers from around Central and Eastern Europe, for free. Full details here.

What we're reading

The latest edition of the Verification Handbook is a free resource designed to give journalists the tools they need to identify disinformation.
Can local governments build on the changes that the pandemic have forced upon us, for the good of all?
Julia Keseru asks deeper questions about the impacts on FOI of covid-19.
And, if you feel like all the brands are pumping out the same messaging right now, you might just be right.

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