And all the other news from mySociety
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** News from mySociety
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December 2020
** Climate
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** What's your council doing about the Climate Emergency?
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The first version of our data-collating Climate Action Plans website is live, and ready for you to give it a test run.
Find your own council, and see how far they've got with a response to the Climate Emergency — or try searching for a word/phrase across all the plans to find out who's prioritising what.
Find out how to access the data here ([link removed]) .
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** How you're helping the climate with our sites, too
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mySociety's WhatDoTheyKnow ([link removed]) , FixMyStreet ([link removed]) , WriteToThem ([link removed]) and TheyWorkForYou ([link removed]) weren't originally created with the climate in mind. But of course, it's a pressing concern for all of us, and these services are ideal for questioning, campaigning and demanding action — just the skills you need for a global emergency.
Find out how each of these sites has helped you help the climate ([link removed]) , and maybe get a little inspiration for more ways you can take action, as well.
** Events
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** Join us for an online Christmas celebration
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Everyone's welcome to the mySociety Christmas Party — and because it's online, you can take part from the comfort of your own sofa!
We'll enjoy a friendly natter, maybe play a couple of games, and launch our Annual Report. Do join us if you can ([link removed]) ! Paper hats optional.
** Transparency
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** Keep the FOI process 'applicant blind'
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Open Democracy has been busy this week, with a report into the government's 'Clearing House' for FOI requests ([link removed]) . Years of poor practice from the Cabinet Office have resulted in stonewalled and blocked requests, with concerning disregard for the FOI Act's protocol that it should be 'applicant blind' (that is, everyone is treated the same in law).
If you feel strongly that the government needs to stage an enquiry and recommit to transparency, you can sign Open Democracy's petition here ([link removed]) .
** Research and Data
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** Tossing the tables
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Now and again, we get an email asking after our rankings of MPs' responsiveness tables, which we last published in 2015: where have they gone, and when will we be updating them?
Their removal was one of a series of decisions we made around rankings: you may also have noticed the disappearance of MPs' 'Numerology' sections on TheyWorkForYou, and a lack of council comparisons on FixMyStreet.
In this post ([link removed]) , researcher Alex lays out the thinking behind why we're publishing less.
** Community
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** Gritty stuff
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Winter will soon be upon us, so if you live in an ice-prone spot, why not take a leaf out of Tim Morton's book and request a grit bin from your local council ([link removed]) ?
In his case, it took a while, but he got there in the end — and ten years later, his neighbourhood is still enjoying the benefits.
** Should you add a photo to your FixMyStreet report?
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Short answer: it's complicated ([link removed]) . But in some cases, a photograph does seem to be a factor in whether or not a FixMyStreet report is recorded as fixed.
Did you know that you can subscribe to our special interest newsletters too? Get an extra monthly bulletin on Democracy & Campaigning, Freedom of Information, Better Cities & Councils, or Research. Pick and choose your mySociety newsletters here ([link removed][UNIQID]) .
** APIs
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** An addition to MapIt
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We've added new kinds of statistical geography to to our administrative boundaries service, the MapIt API: Small Census Areas and Travel To Work Areas.
Exciting, eh? Well, definitely exciting for a certain subset of developers, into which we squarely fall. Find out more here ([link removed]) .
** All about us
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** Tracking our carbon footprint
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You can't work on the climate without having a good hard think about your own carbon emissions.
It's tempting to believe that as a remote organisation, we must be pretty low on impact, but then - there is the small matter of all the travel we do, and the servers our websites are hosted on. Take a look at our calculations ([link removed]) , and what we're planning on doing about them.
** Proactive anti-racism
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Back in the summer, we committed to redouble our efforts towards making mySociety diverse and proactively anti-racist: both in terms of the services we run, and as an organisation ourselves.
Our internal group is in the early stages of formulating the policies to make that happen: read all about it in this post ([link removed]) .
** What we're reading
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* This thread ([link removed]) summarises a paper on why Wikipedia survived, when several online encyclopaedia projects didn't.
* Life in the automated society: beware the algorithm ([link removed]) .
* Benjy Stanton has sensible thoughts about making maps accessible ([link removed]) .
* Even putting the data visualisation aside, this interactive site ([link removed]) wins the award for best title.
* We do not endorse this type of photo opportunity ([link removed]) , even when demonstrating the depth of a pothole.
* Conversely, here is some behaviour ([link removed]) we very much encourage. Thanks r/WholeWideWorld!
** Follow mySociety
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Image credits Grit bin: Tim Morton; leaves: ** Providence Doucet ([link removed])
mySociety is a registered charity in England and Wales (1076346) and a limited company (03277032).
Through our trading subsidiary SocietyWorks (05798215) we also provide commercial services.
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