December news

Modernising Parliament

The House of Commons Modernisation Committee has made a call for submissions to reform procedures, standards and working practices.

This was our prompt to not only submit a response, but to publish all our thinking about changes that would improve how Parliament works. We’ll be sharing these in a series of blog posts, the first of which can be found here:

• Modernising the House of Commons and stand-in MPs
• Using citizen assemblies to set standards and support for MPs
• To fix Parliament, fix the Public Ombudsman

If we had €1 million...

Want to present at TICTeC 2025?

The TICTeC 2025 Call for Proposals is now open — and this year the conference is inviting presentations around the overarching theme of ‘pro-democracy technology’.

If you’d like to share your work with a global community of civic tech practitioners, researchers, funders and commentators in Mechelen Belgium this June, see what we’re looking for here.

We'll help your campaign gather the information it needs

Do you work for an organisation that supports marginalised people in the UK?

We’re currently offering a free support programme, guiding you through the use of FOI to support your campaign or advocacy work.

We have the capacity to help around ten organisations: if you’d like yours to be one of them, find out more here.

Planning on applying for our Head of Fundraising maternity cover role? Better get to it — the application deadline is 10pm on Sunday 15 December. All the details are here.

From our supporters: why I donate

“I support mySociety as they increase ordinary people’s engagement with democracy when trust in politics has diminished, and when government and other powerful people put obstacles in the way.”

Feel the same? If you’d like to support our vital work, please head to our secure donate page. Every contribution helps us to work harder and faster towards a better, more inclusive society. Thank you.

Keeping track of citizens’ assemblies

We needed it, so we made it: a register of citizens’ assemblies held in the UK. If you think that might be useful for you too, read all about it here.

What we’re consuming

• Full Fact are keeping track of every promise the government makes, and whether they are keeping them.
• Rachel Coldicutt says, “Let’s make technology work for 8 billion people not 8 billionaires”.
• Not a single Whitehall department has registered the use of artificial intelligence systems since the government said it would become mandatory, reports the Guardian.
• OK so this article had us at the first line. The rest is a bonus.
• mySociety’s Zarino went on holiday — and took his love for complex spreadsheets with him.
• Our parliamentarians may know several ways to disrupt proceedings; but here's one they haven't tried yet.

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So if you've got a minute, please tell us a bit more about yourself, and we'll work towards sending you the stuff you really want to read.

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