mySociety news

Transparency

Halting the Haringey Development Vehicle

Freedom of Information played a valuable part in a campaign that used many different approaches. SHDV, the Stop Haringey Development Vehicle campaign, protested against the council's planned sell off of property, including swathes of social housing.

Hilary Adams told us how she used WhatDoTheyKnow to support the campaign, saying that requests already published on the site proved just as useful as putting in new ones.

Learn how to use FOI

If that story inspires you, you might be interested in a new online course from journalism platform The Ferret. They're offering the chance to learn everything you need to know about using Freedom of Information in campaigns and investigations.

Access to WhatDoTheyKnow Pro is included in the price — and the whole course costs less than a subscription, so you're ahead before you even begin! Find out more here.

WhatDoTheyKnow identifiers in Wikidata

A new project is taking the IDs of every authority on WhatDoTheyKnow and linking them to existing Wikidata entities.

It's a bridging exercise that should open up many new possibilities — and you're welcome to pitch in. Read more here.

Job vacancy

Join the mySociety team

We're currently recruiting for a new Account Manager to help look after clients of our FixMyStreet Pro and SocietyWorks services. As with all mySociety jobs, you'll be working from home as part of our supportive and friendly team. Find out more and apply here.

Community

FixMyStreet during London’s lockdown

We might have thought FixMyStreet would be less useful during lockdown: after all, with fewer cars on the roads and people on the streets, perhaps reporting wasn't so crucial?

But the word from TfL is that quite the reverse is true, as Delivery Manager Sally Reader laid out here.

Climate

We haven't forgotten there's a climate crisis

Covid-19 might be top of all our minds, but of course the climate emergency is still as pressing as ever.

Here's an update on where we are with our work in that area.

Events

Rewatch Personal Democracy Forum CEE

The whole conference from the ePaństwo Foundation is now available on YouTube for you to watch at your leisure. Our Head of Research Rebecca Rumbul speaks about Open Data together with Krzysztof Izdebski and Anna Kuliberda here.

Democracy

Do you use Parliament data?

Dr Ben Worthy, an academic at Birkbeck College, is hoping to understand more about how data is used to help people monitor Parliament, and how or whether this impacts on the way they think about Parliament and democracy in the UK.

If you've used TheyWorkForYou or the official Parliament website to find out information or access data, please fill in the short survey here.

What we're reading (and listening to)

• The very first episode of Delib's new Practical Democracy podcast covers mySociety's work in areas such as participatory budgeting and citizens' assemblies. Listen here (and there are several other episodes now too).
• Joe Mitchell of Democracy Club lays out a proposal for a Centre for Democracy.
• We found this in depth piece on the UX of different banks' offerings surprisingly compelling. Bet you do too.
• Lockdown has led us all into some new and perhaps peculiar behaviours. But have you had a party in a spreadsheet?

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