Category Archives: Announcement

You now have to use a key to access the PlanningAlerts API

By Matthew Landauer | Published: June 2, 2015

Three months ago we announced that you would need to get an API key to use the PlanningAlerts API. We gave you lots of time to transition. We made the use of an API key optional during this transition period. Now, as the start of June has passed, we’ve made the use of the API […]

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A better Right To Know on your phone

By Luke Bacon | Published: April 2, 2015

One in four people who visit Right To Know use a mobile device to do so. Unfortunately the site hasn’t been designed for them. They’ve been forced to zoom in on the page designed for desktop users. This made it hard to navigate, quickly understand what a page is about, and request information. When traffic […]

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Scraping javascript sites with morph.io

By Matthew Landauer | Published: March 17, 2015

Just a quick post to let you know that it’s now possible to scrape javascript heavy sites easily using our scraping platform morph.io. This is really useful with Microsoft .NET web sites that often use complicated states stored in javascript with links simulated via javascript posts. Also, we recently discovered another more worrying example. The […]

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PlanningAlerts API changes

By Matthew Landauer | Published: March 2, 2015

Starting today, we’re beginning to roll out a change to the way the PlanningAlerts API works. We’re introducing API keys for all users of the API from low-volume non-commercial users to high-volume commercial users. We are making this change so that we can better measure and understand the way people are using the API as […]

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Email is your secret weapon

By Matthew Landauer | Published: December 18, 2014

(Cross posted from the Poplus.org blog) Earlier this year I was lucky enough to attend PoplusCon in Santiago, Chile. It was a remarkable experience spending two very intense days working through problems, sharing experience and knowledge, and making connections with incredibly talented civic tech coders and activists from around the world. If you were lucky […]

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They Vote For You

By Matthew Landauer | Published: October 21, 2014

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 […]

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Sydney Pub Meet Now A Regular Feature

By Henare Degan | Published: July 14, 2014
Photo of the Woolpack Hotel

Before the night was even over at our last pub meet people were asking when the next one would be so we’re making it a regular thing! From now on, the last Tuesday of every month will feature the OpenAustralia Sydney Pub Meet. We’ve now got a fancy Meetup group set up so please join […]

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Sydney Pub Meet – 24th June 2014

By Henare Degan | Published: June 17, 2014
Photo of The Library room

We’re having a Sydney pub meet on Tuesday the 24th of June 2014 and you’re invited. Come along, say hi, and have a chat about open government, transparency, FOI, and civic hacking with us and friends. You can even get a sneak peek at our upcoming project. We’ll be sitting by the fire in the […]

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Morph: Announcing A New Scraping Platform

By Matthew Landauer | Published: February 27, 2014

Web scrapers could be called the unsung heroes of data liberation. They invisibly power so many websites including real estate search sites, product comparison sites and the ever familiar Google search engine. Scraping is where you run a program to extract structured data from web pages. Web scraping powers PlanningAlerts, which allows you to find […]

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Did I really vote for that?

By Matthew Landauer | Published: July 11, 2013

At the OpenAustralia Foundation we’ve been working hard to throw some light on the day to day reality of our democracy and help make connecting with our communities; our neighbours, politicians & people who work behind the scenes in the public service just a bit easier. More than 800,000 Australians have used OpenAustralia.org to follow […]

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