On Saturday the 27th of November 2010 Victorians are going to the polls with the very big job of electing their next state government. That is a little over a month away.
Two weeks ago, a few of us who had worked on ElectionLeaflets.org.au during the Federal election got together to talk about what we should do next with the site.
With the upcoming Victorian election it seemed clear. Let’s make ElectionLeaflets work for the Victorian election as well.
We set today as our deadline for launching it.
Well, to cut a long story short, the disappointing thing is that we haven’t made it. We won’t be launching that site today.
There are a few reasons for this.
Firstly, remember that despite ElectionLeaflets being run by a charity, don’t assume that anyone is being paid to work on this. Quite the contrary, all the work that has gone into the site, setting it up, designing it, publicising it and talking to the media about it has all been done by unpaid volunteers.
We were hoping that adding support for multiple elections to ElectionLeaflets would be relatively straightforward, as the original developers had already thought about this from the beginning. However, it turned out to not be completely trivial. To make the required changes would need a bit of work – probably a few more full days effort.
We’re pretty good at getting things done on the smell of an oily rag and very little time but in this case with only one weekend, a few short evenings, and only two developers available, we simply ran out of time.
Despite the widespread media coverage and praise of ElectionLeaflets during the Federal election campaign, nobody came forward to say “Here’s a donation to support the running of the site and to ensure that it can be around for future elections.”
If that had happened we could have sponsored a developer to focus on this full time. It wouldn’t have taken much.
Donations for the site would also help pay for the PO Box that we rent to collect posted leaflets and help pay for the hosting of the leaflet images on Amazon’s S3 service.
Secondly, beyond the original core team of a dozen or so volunteers, we haven’t had many other people approach us offering their help to make this happen.
This is where you come in – our next goal is to cover the New South Wales state election in March 2011. The last couple of weeks has reminded us all that projects like this don’t build themselves and we need people that are as passionate as we are about keeping our elections fair and honest.
You can help shape this exciting project, and feel good knowing you’ve made a difference to electioneering in Australia. You’ll also be supported by a talented and diverse group of volunteers that are keen to share their skills and experience.
So if you want to see ElectionLeaflets cover the next election you’re called to vote in, you can start by making a donation, telling your friends about ElectionLeaflets, asking us questions on the mailing list, checking the existing trouble tickets, or even downloading our open source code and diving straight in.
If you’re not sure how to get started, please let us know in the comments how we can better help you get involved.
Henare and Matthew
OpenAustralia Foundation volunteers
PS. Victorians can still send their physical leaflets to:
Riley & Ephemera Collection,
C/O Australian History & Literature Team Access and Information Division State Library of Victoria,
328 Swanston Street,
Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia
Donors should include their name and contact details if they would like an acknowledgment of their donation and they only accept hardcopy donations (not scanned copies, or photographs).
You may recall that when we ran Election Leaflets for the 2011 NSW State Election, we stopped displaying leaflets from the 2010 Federal Election when you browsed the site. This was simply because we didn’t have the time or resources to build the site in such a way that you could see these leaflets.
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PlanningAlerts closes the loop
Our built environment has a huge impact on our lives. And we all have strong opinions about what it should be like.
One of the major things that determines this is the planning process that our councils look after. If you’ve ever tried to make a submission on a development application you will know that it can be a difficult process to understand. Chances are you’ve not bothered because it all seemed like too much trouble.
Today we want to let you know about a new PlanningAlerts feature which makes this simple. Now when you click on a development application, you’ll be able to make a submission to council right on the PlanningAlerts page for the application – no more hunting down the right form, email address or even which council to send it to. We do the boring stuff for you automatically.
This means you have the opportunity to directly affect whether an application will get approved or not. It “closes the loop”, so that not only do you find out about things planned near you, you can easily and directly do something about them.
You also get to see what other people have said because all comments automatically go up on the site once they’re sent to the planning authority.
Over the next couple of weeks we will be rolling out the new feature, adding it council by council. When the feature has been rolled out for your council you will see the big new comment box. If it hasn’t been rolled out yet you can help by finding the email address that submissions should go to for your council and sending that to us.
As this feature is brand new it’s bound to have some niggling problems. So, please help by letting us know about any problems that you find or things that could be done to improve the service.
To get started go to http://www.planningalerts.org.au/ and enter your street address.
It’s your neighbourhood. Make sure you have a hand in how it develops.
Matthew and Henare
OpenAustralia Foundation Volunteers