On Saturday Luke and I were really glad to be invited on FBi radio’s excellent Backchat programme.
Luke and Henare with Backchat hosts Luke Marshall and James Colley
You can listen to the podcast here:
Thanks for having us, FBi!
For the last three and a half months I’ve been working with the OpenAustralia Foundation to design their latest project, They Vote For You. For me, as always, this was a broad interpretation of the role “designer”: digging into functionality, language, information architecture, appearance, feeling, right down to the purpose and direction of the site. At the core we are trying to respectfully support citizens in using the tool to achieve something they want. I’m very proud of where we’ve taken the project and to now be joining the team permanently.
I’ve gained so much from others who’ve opened up and I want to pay it back by documenting some of our process. Sharing experience is also a key part of the Open Source Design Manifesto, “I will share my design experiences; both the good and the bad”.
There were a lot of unknowns and first-times throughout the project. For me it was a new team and their strong commitment to a project methodology with which I had little experience, Agile development. I was also tasked with a lot of Ruby on Rails development—I had a little experience from Detention Logs, but had never written ruby for a client project.
Similarly, the OpenAustralia Foundation hadn’t worked with a designer in this capacity before: someone working on broad iterations of design and implementing it in code during major application development. Previously they’ve handed a fairly established interface over to a design phase. That is still a common process, but in the wake of responsive design practices more and more designers are being embedded into teams, helping to develop an application or website from day one.
Luke Bacon presenting They Vote For You at the OpenAustralia Hackfest September 2014, a month out from launch, Photo by Lisa Cross
The first recorded commit in our working repository for They Vote For You is 5th of August 2003, 11 years ago. The original version, Public Whip, has been running in the UK for a decade. As with most OpenAustralia Foundation projects They Vote For You is an implementation of a project proven overseas.
Many would have wiped away the decade-old PHP implementation and started from a clean slate. We briefly discussed doing this with the front-end page templates, but decided to keep them in place. There was 10 years of experience in the current version that we wanted to get as much value from as possible. We progressed by making changes in small iterations as our understanding of the project developed. Some of the site remains largely unchanged. The decision the build atop those foundations has defined the project.
We kicked things off with a whole day workshop to discuss our approach and get a feel for each-others’ perspectives. I ran a 20 second gut test exercise which helped me understand the others’ feelings towards basic colour, imagery, typographic concepts.
Most importantly we established design principles to guide our decision making:
- Focus on enabling actions that citizens want to take and access to the knowledge that they are looking for. Reduce the cost of them taking action. The action is the important bit. Citizens don’t need to understand the bureaucracy in order to use and access government.
- Assume people are smart & busy—present the important information up front and put detail within reach.
- Strive for universal accessibility.
- Design and implement with Progressive Enhancement.
- Create change by doing. Implement ideas quickly and assess—don’t be frozen by documentation and proposal.
- Maintainability is crucial, this project should last and evolve long into the future.
The next day, with great support from Matthew, Henare, I dove into the code. We targeted simple, obvious improvements; removing duplicate content and streamlining pages. As I went I took advantage of my fresh perspective to document the questions I was asking of the key interfaces. These user questions were helpful early on, but to be honest, I haven’t returned to them for a month or so.
I picked up Aarron Walter’s much referenced Designing for Emotion and was inspired to create a design persona for the project. I haven’t seen other open source projects publish something like this but it’s been extremely useful. They Vote For You’s persona is a statement of how our site fits into the world of our citizens. It avoids design jargon and talks about a character, something anyone should be able to engage. Like the design principles, the persona helps the team make consistent, thoughtful design decisions. It is something to aspire to. I don’t think we’ve achieved every aspect of it, but bit by bit we’ll get there.
I think it can also help people outside the core team contribute. It includes some general references for colour and typography so you can get a rough understanding quickly: ‘more towards Wikipedia Mobile, not like Heroku’ for example. Someone making a contribution to the project should be able to look to those basic guides and avoid doing something completely out of character.
I think we made a good decision to aim for something simple and straight-forward. Whenever I tried to get fancy it never fit anyway. I’d alway come back to the logical, familiar choices that made communication clearer.
The typeface is one example. I researched a bunch of open source typefaces as potential candidates for the site. I played with Open Sans, Source Sans Pro and Clear Sans in particular. While Source Sans Pro and Clear Sans are great for reading and comparing data and interface elements, key tasks in They Vote For You, we also had a lot of extended text and needed something more comfortable for reading paragraphs. Those typefaces also have a more neutral, almost futuristic feeling, and our design persona calls for something humanist with a bit of character.
Many typographers recommend that you get to know how a small set of typefaces perform best by using them across many projects. I’m quite familiar with FF Meta by Erik Spiekermann which we often used at Collagraph. Fira Sans is a humanist, sans serif typeface based on FF Meta, designed by Eden Spiekermann for Mozilla and released under an open source license. It has a personality that stands out against the sea of Helvetica. It’s also designed specifically for digital displays and to perform well across a huge range of devices. I think it works very well in They Vote For You and it felt like a logical choice to use something I knew was reliable.
Fira Sans in use on They Vote For You.
I think the biggest contributor to the success of the process so far is the support and openness everyone at the OpenAustralia Foundation gives each other. We all know that this is an unusual and challenging project. We give each other the space and support to voice our arguments on a given decision. At other times we can step back and allow someone to pursue a bold and uncertain solution.
OpenAustralia staff going through parliamentary process with Hannah from the Parliamentary Library at the OpenAustralia Hackfest September 2014, Photo by Lisa Cross
Henare has said he didn’t like the yellow section headings when I first implemented them, but over time has come to appreciate its affect. I think we did a good job of knowing when to keep discussing and when to give something a chance. At other times someone would step in to veto an addition. Those moments were crucial in protecting our aim for simplicity, it’s very easy to start adding unhelpful detail.
The lemon section header on the People page of They Vote For You
When is the right time to work on a specific element or layer of design? When is a design iteration done? When will we readdress it? For me, the hardest question through out this project has been ‘When?’
Aarron Walter suggests a Maslow’s Pyramid of UX: we should strive to design systems that fulfil people’s needs by being functional, reliable, usable, and finally pleasurable.
Working through my usual process, building up something from scratch, I knew when it was time to start thinking about colours or the finer, graphic layout challenges. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. There were large sections of the site untouched, wording that was still confusing and unhelpful, but the team wanted me to start adding this top emotional layer. It didn’t feel right when we hadn’t achieved functional or reliable in many cases.
That week of the project was extremely difficult for me. I thought I was spending time on the important things and the team wanted me to do something else. I became unsure that I was the right person for the project.
I was being rigid with the wrong aspects of the process—I think I had to go through a mini-crisis at that time to break it. This was not a project, team, or workflow like any I’d worked with before, and I was going to have to adapt to make it work. The order and answers I intuitively wanted just weren’t coming through, and I wasn’t developing the things that the others needed so they could be developed through interation in time for launch.
I started making small, focused decisions and then just taking the next step—slowly cutting a path. Suddenly, sometime later, I looked around and realised I was back on track. In late September we set ourselves a deadline to launch in mid October. Nothing works like a deadline to help you adapt, get over it and move on.
When I was feeling most unsure I returned to design basics: empathise with the user and create simple stories through the site. Surprise is a classic way to stop someone and make them consider something. An unusual bright orange makes people consider the short, direct question “How does your MP vote on the issues that matter to you” on the homepage. More than 60% of people follow that narrative and search for an MP.
The colour scheme more broadly comes simply from the design persona:
light and refreshing in stark contrast to the formal, exclusive character communicated through the school-tie maroons and navy blues of traditional parliamentary design. Lemon yellow, lots of white space and a bright, cool blue were a simple, colour theory grounded choice—I’m no expert there but was brushing up with The Elements of Colour at the time. So far, we’ve had very positive reactions.
There’s a lot of room to keep evolving the personality of the site, particularly through the feedback and interface text. Injecting appropriate emotion could reward and support people in contributing to the resource.
I hope that explaining some of the choices and the ups and downs we made is useful to you. There are not enough discussions about visual and emotional design decisions in open source/civic hacking projects. It’s as if we think these aspects are just poured on by magical, inspired designers. I’ve found it extremely helpful to document and discuss as we’ve gone along, it’s been the foundation that has allowed me to be flexible.
They Vote For You will continue to evolve to better serve citizens. You can play a part. If you have ideas or changes you think would improve the project, please let us know by creating an issue on the repository. Check out the
OpenAustralia.org is ancient by internet standards. When it was created 7 years ago Twitter had just launched. There was no Instagram. Or GitHub.
After all this time it keeps chugging along, still making our Parliament more accessible and understandable.
Today is a rare and happy day when we add something new to the venerable site. You can now see how your MP voted on all sorts of issues, right on their OpenAustralia.org page:
All this information comes from our latest project, They Vote For You. The links next to each issue also allow you to drill down and find out more about how your MP voted in detail on They Vote For You.
Give it a try by visiting www.openaustralia.org.au and searching for your MP.
There’s something really nice about our oldest project working hand in hand with our latest project. We’re sure you’ll keep finding it useful too.
There are many ways to edit division summaries. Here, I’m going to explain an approach that’s worked well for me.
First, I choose a division to summarise.
I like to choose divisions that are relevant to policies that I’ve created, such as For decreasing availability of welfare payments. This means I often pick divisions based on what they’re called. In this case, I see a division called Bills — Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Seniors Supplement Cessation) Bill 2014, Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 4) Bi… [Fig. 1]. Since that sounds relevant to welfare payments, I click on it.
Fig. 1: Choosing a division
After choosing, I need to find out what the members of parliament were voting for in the division. Every division is a vote on a particular motion, so I need to find that motion text.
To do this, I take note of the time, date and place of the division: 7:48 pm, 22 October 2014, House of Representatives [Fig. 2]. I then click on preceding debate [Fig. 2], which takes me to OpenAustralia. There, I see that the motion seems to be “that these bills be now read a third time” [Fig. 3].
I want to confirm that this is the right motion text so I need to go to the official Hansard. To get there from the division page [Fig. 2], I can click on edit or provide a summary of what was voted on in this division and then select House Office Hansard under ‘Useful links for you to research’. This takes me to the Parliament of Australia website, where I can click on 22 October 2014, look at the text immediately preceding the 19:48 division and see that it is the correct motion text [Fig. 4].
Fig. 2: Note the time, date and place
Fig. 3: Look at the motion on OpenAustralia
Fig. 4: Confirm the motion text on Hansard
Since I’ve been editing divisions for a while now, I know what it means to read a bill for a third time. If I didn’t, I would look it up on Google or browse through the House Powers, Practice and Procedure (also available under ‘Useful links for you to research’ on the division’s Edit division summary page). There, I can find the Making laws infosheet, which explains how a bill passes through the House of Representatives. The Parliamentary Education Office also has some useful factsheets that relate to both houses of Parliament, such as the one on Making a Law.
I adopt some of the language of those factsheets and simplify the words ‘read the bills a third time’ to ‘pass the bills’.
Now I know this motion is about passing the bills, I need to find out a bit more about the bills themselves.
Since this division refers to three bills, there is a bit more work for me to do! I start at the bills’ homepages, which I can get to by clicking on the links under ‘External links’ on the division page [Fig. 5]. In this case, there are links from each of the bills to click on and explore.
These homepages [Fig. 6] give me the following information:
Fig. 5: Find the bills’ homepages under ‘External links’
Fig. 6: the bill’s homepage
Bills digests are my favourite resource, but there are several versions of each one on the Parliament of Australia website. All of them have the same information, but some are easier than others to read and work from because of their formatting or type (for example, PDF or ePub).
The link to the bills digest that is on the bill’s homepage will take you to a rather poor version, which I do not recommend using. At the top of that poor version, there is the option to download the PDF version [Fig. 7]. If you like PDFs, take that option. Personally, I prefer not to use PDFs because they’re harder to copy and paste from, so I’m going to find my preferred version.
From the poor version, I hover my curser over ‘Parliamentary Business’ and click on Bills and Legislation [Fig. 8]. I then go to Browse Bills Digests, which is in the column to the left [Fig. 9]. I click on the correct time period (in this case 2014-2015) and then click on the links for my bills [Fig. 10]. This takes me to my preferred version of the bills digest, complete with proper formatting!
Fig. 7: The poor version of the bills digest
Fig. 8: Click on ‘Bills and Legislation’
Fig. 9: Click on ‘Browse Bills Digests’
Fig. 10: Find your bills
There are several useful links on the Edit division summary page [Fig. 11]. As well as the links to Hansard and parliamentary powers, practice and procedure (which I mentioned above), there’s a link to the research guide. This guide includes a ‘Guide for division summaries’, which gives advice on what information I should include in my summary and how I can best structure it. There’s also a Markdown link that tells me how to format my text. Finally, there’s the style guide, which helps me to write as clearly and plainly as possible. After I’ve read these three pages, I know I’m ready to start.
Fig. 11: Edit division summary page
I start with the title. My aim is to make it as brief and understandable as possible. Using the Guide for division summaries, this is what I come up with: ‘Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Seniors Supplement Cessation) Bill 2014 and two related bills – Third Reading – Pass the bills’.
Then I write the body of the summary. I start with a brief sentence or two on what the vote was. Then I describe what the bill does and some of the background of the bill. I use as many subheadings as I think are needed to make the information accessible.
The two questions I always ask myself when writing summaries are:
I add links as I write, including links to the bill’s homepage and its bills digest.
Once I finish the summary and am happy with it, I save it and add any policies that may be relevant. To do this, I click on the Does this division relate to a policy? link on the division page [Fig. 12] and then select the relevant policy [Fig. 13].
Fig. 12: Does this division relate to a policy?
Fig. 13: Add related policies
I may re-read the summary I’ve written in a week or so and decide to re-edit it to make it better. Or maybe someone else will. These summaries can always be made clearer and more accessible, so don’t be afraid to change them.
I’m sure that as more people get involved, we’ll find different and better ways to approach summarising divisions. I know I’ve changed my approach hugely over the past year and am looking forward to seeing how it continues to change.
Believe it or not there is no easy to understand explanation of every vote in our Federal Parliament. That’s why They Vote For You relies on the hard work of people like you to summarise votes and research Policies so that we can all better understand how our MPs are voting on our behalf.
Largely thanks to the magnificent political research of Micaela and Natasha there are over 900 divisions that have been summarised and dozens of Policies created on They Vote For You. In fact, just this week there has been more than 40 changes.
Luke and I have recently been working on a way to keep track of all these changes. Today we’re pleased to introduce email alerts for changes to Policies and their related divisions. Here’s how it works.
You’ll need to log in or sign up first. Then find a Policy you’re interested in getting alerts for and click the Subscribe link:
Now when any edits happen to a policy or any of its related divisions you’ll get an email:
Here’s what an email alert looks like
If you ever want to unsubscribe from an alert you can visit the policy page again or see all of your subscriptions on one page by clicking on Your subscriptions under the user menu:
We’re keen to add more useful email alerts to the site – what would you like to see? Leave a comment or Tweet us @TheyVote4You.
Today you have an opportunity to support effective Freedom of Information (FOI) laws in Australia. If you support strong FOI legislation then you really can do something to help, and you have to do it today!
Tomorrow the Senate will be voting on a Bill which we at the OpenAustralia Foundation believe will undermine your rights to access Freedom of Information. We made a short submission two weeks ago.
If you’ve made an FOI request on Right To Know your request has become part of the 748 public FOI requests which we presented to the Senate as part of our submission.
The amendments proposed in theFreedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014 undermine your ability to access government information in the future. It makes it easier for agencies to refuse requests, leaving no truly independent oversight of our Freedom of Information mechanism.
It’s likely the Coalition will vote in favour of this bill with Labor and The Greens opposing it. This leaves cross-benchers with the balance of power in the Senate on this vote.
If they vote against the bill, it will not pass.
If you want the cross-benchers to oppose this bill, then you need to tell them how you feel by calling, tweeting (#OAIC, #Auspol, #FOI) or emailing them.
Their contact details are below.
If you call, simply say you wish to talk to someone there about the Freedom of Information Bill currently before the Senate, and make as few or many points as you wish.
Here are some key points you could mention:
Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014:
Here are the cross bench Senator contact details:
Senator Day
(02) 6277 3373
senator.day@aph.gov.au
@senatorbobday
Senator Madigan
(02) 6277 3471
senator.madigan@aph.gov.au
@SenJJMadigan
Senator Xenophon
(02) 6277 3552
senator.xenophon@aph.gov.au
@Nick_Xenophon
Senator Leyonhjelm
(02) 6277 3054
senator.leyonhjelm@aph.gov.au
@DavidLeyonhjelm
Senator Lazarus
(02) 6277 3204
senator.lazarus@aph.gov.au
@SenatorLazarus
Senator Wang
(02) 6277 3843
senator.wang@aph.gov.au
@SenatorZWang
Senator Muir
(02) 6277 3040
senator.muir@aph.gov.au
@muir_ricky
https://www.facebook.com/SenatorRickyMuir
Senator Lambie
(02) 6277 3063
senator.lambie@aph.gov.au
@JacquiLambie
The Secretary of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee recently invited The OpenAustralia Foundation to make a submission on their Inquiry into the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements). These amendments make it harder and more expensive to argue the case if and when agencies refuse requests for information under FOI law. This makes it harder for ordinary people to access information. Here’s what we wrote.
The OpenAustralia Foundation (OAF) recommends that the committee opposes the amendments proposed in the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014 (the Bill)
Specifically, OAF recommends that the committee oppose the repeal of the Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010 to abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
OAF recommends that the committee oppose amendments the Freedom of Information Act 1982 to move functions relating to FOI matters exclusively to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the Attorney-General’s Department and the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
OAF recommends that following an internal review, a choice be made available to FOI applicants
The Government holds information gathered on behalf of the Australian people. The Government is required to make documents in the public interest freely available to the public. Governments also need to give open access to people wanting specific information.
Australia was an early adopter of securing the rights of citizens to access information, but the rest of the world is moving quickly and we’re now falling behind.
Only half a dozen countries secured the rights of citizens to access information when Australia enacted the Freedom of Information Act 1982. As of September 2013, at least 95 countries around the world now have Freedom of Information laws. These are also known as Access to Information and Right to Information laws. [1] This access is a key component of transparency, accountability and participation. It’s a way for all citizens to scrutinize Government and public sector information, to become better informed, and to take full part in our democratic system. FOI is increasingly strengthened as part of Open Government initiatives, in which Governments are expected to be open and promote openness.
Today Australia ranks at only 49th in the global index of right to information standards [2] We can do much better.
Freedom Of Information (FOI) is a crucial part of the checks and balances in any democracy, and key part of transparency and accountability of Government.
The process of making a freedom of information request is not very straight forward. OAF created the RightToKnow.org.au site with the aim of demystifying and simplifying this process and helping more Australians make FOI requests.
The site not only shows all requests but the paper trail of correspondence in pursuit of the request from those requesting documents and those holding them. Read more below at About RightToKnow.org.au
The site provides an unparalleled public view of the workings of the Australian Federal FOI system.
In appendix A OAF presents the 748 public FOI requests and their related correspondence made to Australian Federal authorities through RightToKnow.org.au* between Oct 16th 2012 and Oct 31 2014.
199 of these requests were successful or partly successful. 384 requests were unsuccessful (refused or did not turn up any documents), and 165 remain unresolved. These await reply, await classification, are overdue, or long overdue for a response.
These publicly available FOI requests and their correspondence have given us all an opportunity to see first hand how agencies handle requests.
The evidence we present shows that there are big differences across agencies’ handling of FOI requests. Some agencies handle requests professionally and courteously. Thank you to those agencies.
Some agencies show a systemic culture of secrecy and a disrespect for FOI requests at work; they’re the ones gaming the system.
Australia has unbalanced laws about releasing information. The Government appears acutely aware of the risks associated with releasing information but much less aware of the risks of not releasing enough information. We have a system which severely punishes those public servants who release information which in it’s view ought not be public, and consciously or not, systematically encourages and protects those who avoid publishing information they could easily share. Thus it becomes safer for every public servant to hold documents close, and release as little as possible by default. This all helps to create the culture of secrecy.
We’re not surprised when we see agencies interpret FOI law to the most minute detail with the purpose of avoid releasing information to the public by default. They argue against the release of even mundane documents where the material is uncontentious or even publicly available in another form already. At the same time, obstructive agencies also display what might be wilful misinterpretation or incompetence in their failure or inability to give the documents requested.
Such responses show that there is a culture of working harder to refuse rather than share their documents, Whether due to failing inefficient old information storage and retrieval systems, fear or lack of leadership, they’re acting in flat contradiction to their responsibilities under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act).
It is these agencies’ behaviour which is most in need of ongoing guidance and training, and scrutiny.
Under this bill, important FOI functions would move from the OAIC to the The Attorney General’s Department (AGD). They would be be responsible for issuing guidelines in the Bill. However the AG’s Department is not independent and it is clear that they are not modelling best practice in this area. The AGD along with other agencies routinely delay requests for documents made under FOI law [3]. Is this because the AGD sees FOI as responsibility of the legal department to defend against requests from citizen, and not as a service for citizens?
For accountability, citizens need access to a free merit review system administered by an effective Independent office. We already have that office, in the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).
Framing FOI as a legal problem, not a civic right is plain wrong. FOI decision makers and officers use the language of legal exemptions in interpreting the Act, rather than emphasise the need for openness and of ‘maximum disclosure’ made more explicit in 2010 reforms to the FOI Act. [4]
Having learned all the standard tricks of the refusal trade, agencies have become very adept at refusing FOI requests as a matter of course. In doing this they are knowingly gaming the system. They know that on refusal a request will go to review, making more work for the OAIC. This puts pressure on genuinely difficult to assess requests, which leaves the OAIC overwhelmed and very under resourced. Practically speaking it is their safest and (pending a review) cheapest course of action, and so we are not surprised when they do it as a first response. This tactic is also used to avoid answering time sensitive questions, so that by the time they are answered the issues raised are less relevant to public discussion.
In an interview in February of this year John McMillan, the Information Commissioner said
I’m not going to name individual cases, but I have a great concern that agencies will say, ‘Let’s just deny it. The person can appeal to the OIC, it may take them a year or two to get around to it,’ in which case the sensitivity will go out of the issue… I accept that that happens at the moment. So there is gaming of the system going on.[5]
Before RightToKnow.org.au came along, the only people who knew about these tactics were ‘insiders’, many of whom who take this situation for granted. Now everyone can see what they are up to. See Appendix A
To give ordinary users of FOI access recourse when their requests are denied, refused or avoided, then FOI law gives the a right of appeal to an independent office. An external review system which is accessible, free, and appropriately resourced to enable independent and timely assessment of whether the citizen’s rights of access were upheld is essential.
The current system is a long way from perfect, but the suggested changes in the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014 would be a step backwards for transparency and would not serve the public interest.
The proposed $861 charge levied on people seeking a review acts only as a barrier to entry for ordinary people who still want answers when a government agency denies or obstructs their request. People will stop asking for a review and the public interest will be undermined.
If the OAIC is abolished, agencies routinely refusing requests know it will go on unchecked, and as a result, far fewer cases will be investigated. In the end, fewer people will trust the FOI system and fewer requests will be made. Determinations will lead straight to a costly review process needing expensive legal assistance. That would be a terrible outcome for FOI and for Australia’s democratic health.
There are those who do wish to go straight to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), including media reporters following a time critical story. Their commercial interests and others argue for an alternative route to justice, one they are happy to pay for, but we should not make ordinary people pay for a process which does not best serve them.
Let’s keep the OAIC.
Right To Know aims to make it easier for everyone to make Freedom of Information requests in a few different ways.
RightToKnow does not provide help for individuals accessing private or personal information held by government.
The OpenAustralia Foundation encourages and enables people to participate directly in the political process on a local, community and national level. We believe that we can help to reinvigorate Australia’s civic culture by using powerful and exciting new technologies to inform and empower people, to address the growing disconnect between the Government and the people who elect it.
We currently do this through our five online projects TheyVoteForYou.org.au RightToKnow.org.au, OpenAustralia.org, PlanningAlerts.org.au and ElectionLeaflets.org.au. These websites aim at finding better ways of making government, the public sector and political information freely and easily available and usable by all Australians. We aim to inform people so they can make a positive difference.
The OpenAustralia Foundation is a strictly non-partisan organisation. We are not affiliated with any political party. We are simply passionate about making our democracy work.
*Not included here or at RightToKnow.org.au one or two requests which were hidden from the website because they contained inappropriately personal requests for information (not what the site is for). This is made clear on the site’s help page.
[1] Right to Information Index: http://right2info.org/access-to-information-laws
[2] http://www.rti-rating.org/country_data.php
[3] Posted in OpenAustralia Foundation, RightToKnow.org.au Tagged Accountability, Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Attorney-General's Department, Australia, committee, Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, Ethics, FOI, FOIA, Freedom of Information, Freedom of Information Act, Freedom of Information Act 1982, Freedom of information legislation, Information Commissioner, John McMillan, law, media reporters, OAIC, office of the Australian Information, office of the australian information commissioner, open government, openaustralia foundation, Right to Information Act, Right To Know, senate, Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee Leave a comment
We believe everyone should know what our politicians do on our behalf in parliament. If we don’t, how can we hold them to account meaningfully? How can we begin to talk to them about what we want them to do?
Trust in politicians is at an all time low. Yet we live in a time when technology has the potential to bring us ever closer to our representatives. It’s time we started using it.
What we see on television or read about online or in newspapers about parliament focuses on arguments in Question Time. We see adversarial battles, emotional rhetoric and partisan spin. It can be a distraction. It’s not an accurate view of what goes on in parliament.
We need to look behind what they say, and examine how they vote, because the most important things that politicians do in parliament is vote. They vote to make new laws, and update and amend the existing ones. Changes to the law can and do have a profound effect on our society, and the way we go about our daily lives. Yet if you want find out how they voted, you have to roll your sleeves up, trawl through pages and pages of Hansard, Votes and Proceedings and Journals of the Senate and try to make sense of it all. This is not something anyone can do easily.
Parliament should be easy, and accessible. That is why today the OpenAustralia Foundation is launching a new site They Vote for You, so you can find out how your representatives in parliament vote on issues you care about.
Our political researchers have been working to accurately summarise votes and connect these with easy to understand policy positions. So, now you can see where everyone in parliament stands on issues that you could talk to them about, issues that your MP or Senators might vote on again in the near future. Do you agree with them, or not?
How, for instance, has your representative voted on “a minerals resource rent tax“, “decreasing availability of welfare payments”, “increasing surveillance powers”, “decreasing availability of abortion drugs”, or “increasing restrictions on gambling”?
They Vote for You is a small but vital piece of “civic infrastructure” which help build the roads and bridges that 21st century citizens need to help them get to where they want to go.
You might ask if parliament should be putting all this together? Well, yes perhaps, but the machinery of parliament is slow, and we are not. In many ways, it’s easier for us to do it than it is for them. That’s why we are filling the gaps and hopefully in the process, change everyones’ expectations of what democracy looks like in the internet age.
And you can help.
If there is a policy missing that you would like to see you can do your own research and add it, much like Wikipedia. See a mistake? You can fix it yourself. A mistake could be as simple as a spelling error, or as subtle as one word in a description which changes how you interpret the result of a vote.
In our short life as a charity, the OpenAustralia Foundation, has already created several other non-partisan pieces of civic infrastructure. OpenAustralia allows you to keep tabs on what politicians say in Federal Parliament. With PlanningAlerts you receive an email any time something new is planned to be built or knocked down in your local area. With RightToKnow you can access inside information on what your government is doing by making a Freedom of Information request really easily. With ElectionLeaflets we monitor the leaflets that people receive in the mail during elections. If you live in Victoria, you can upload election leaflets you get in the mail for the upcoming state election.
The right to know what politicians say in parliament and how they vote on our behalf is one that has been fought for and won by citizens. It is a right that we must not take for granted.
Now it’s time to bring it bang up to date.
(An edited version of this was published at Guardian Australia)
September 15th is The International Day of Democracy and this year also marked the start of the Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW). GLOW is a week of openness activities around the world, with events hosted by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership and members of the parliamentary openness community. To celebrate GLOW, the OpenAustralia Foundation ran one of our legendary hackfests on the weekend of the 20th and 21st.
And what a hackfest it was. Our most successful ever – if the number of code contributions is anything to go by. 18 pull requests from over half a dozen different authors in just one weekend is a excellent achievement. These contributions have made valuable and tangible improvements to a number of our civic projects.
We started the weekend with an introduction to parliamentary and legislative openness and an exciting new project we’re soon to launch. This progressed into a discussion with participants about what challenges they want to use civic tech to address and what everyone wanted to work on over the weekend. Matthew set the scene for the weekend:
“Let’s make stuff. What will you make?”
Over the weekend participants were encouraged to run breakout sessions on topic or projects that interested them. Nick explored political donation data, Luke gave us a detailed look at our soon-to-be-released parliamentary vote tracker project and Matthew provided an introduction to web scraping on our morph.io platform.
We were very pleased to have representatives from the Australian Federal Parliamentary Library attend our hackfest. To our knowledge this was the first time staff from any of Australia’s parliaments have attended a hackfest in an official capacity. They quickly discovered that we share many of the same interests in parliamentary data and Hannah generously shared her knowledge of parliamentary procedure in another exciting and informative breakout session.
When the dust settled Sunday afternoon our show and tell revealed the impressive results of a fun weekend hacking parliamentary, legislative and democratic data. In addition to the many pull requests, Sash had created a beautiful new rich email template for OpenAustralia.org, Matthew had used MapIt to finally solve the problem of easily mapping your location to electorates, Alex added great new Parliamentary Bills data to the OpenAustralia.org scraper, and Tracy developed much improved forms with Luke on our soon to be released parliamentary voting project.
Thank you to everyone that participated, you made it the amazing weekend that it was. Thanks to Googlers Tim and Jack for volunteering all weekend and thanks once again to our hosts Google for their continued support.
See you at the next pub meet or hackfest,
P.S. Check out more great photos of the hackfest by Lisa Cross.
The OpenAustralia Foundation is pleased to invite you to another one of our legendary hackfests. In some of our previous hackfests we’ve opened PlanningAlerts to over 1.8 million more Australians and brought hacks and hackers together to launch our Freedom of Information project Right To Know.
Places are limited so RSVP for free now or read on for more details below. You can RSVP on our Meetup group.
This time we’re going back to the old school and will be concentrating on opening parliaments, politicians and elections. Our event is timed to coincide with the Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW). This week sees events hosted by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership and events like ours hosted by members of the parliamentary openness community around the world.
As usual we’re inviting anyone interested in open government, not just developers, along to our event that will run on the weekend of the 20th and 21st of September 2014. Once again we’re being generously hosted by Google Sydney.
While you’re welcome to come along and work on anything you’d like, here’s some ideas to get you started:
Oh, we’ll also be providing special access to our latest project that allows you to analyse votes in our federal parliament!
This is roughly what the weekend will look like:
Saturday
10:30 – Doors open
11:00 – Introduction and talk(s)
12:00 – (Free!) Lunch, chat and meet people to work with
13:00 – People have eaten and found something and someone to work with
17:00 – Pack up and have a drink somewhere
Sunday
10:30 – Doors open and hacking starts
12:00 – Lunch
15:00 – Show and tell
16:00 – Grab another well deserved beer
Grab your free RSVP now – we hope to see you there :)
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