Communities in action 08/02/2012

Ingrid Ødegaard, Head of Digital Strategy

ingrid@holderdeord.no

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

Why is open data important for democracy?

“The strange-sounding term monitory democracy is the most exact for

describing the big transformation that is taking hold …

Monitory democracy is a new historical form of democracy, a variety

of ‘post-parliamentary’ politics defined by the rapid growth of many

different kinds of extra-parliamentary, power-scrutinising

mechanisms that extend sideways and downwards through the whole

political order. “

- John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (2009)

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

How does democracy work?

Get elected

Make laws/ Pass

policies Accountability?

Campaign promises

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

How does monitory democracy work?

Get elected

Make laws/ Pass

policies Accountability!

Campaign promises

Presupposes that those subjected to transparency actually care about public opinion and/or building trust…

Open data = Transparency

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

What’s our mission?

Increase transparency in parlimentary processes

Increase visibility of political parties’ policies and promises

Make it easier for journalists, bloggers, researchers and citizens to hold parties and politicians accountable

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

Who are we?

Started out in 2009 as a climate change initative – investigating

whether the politicians’ promises were implemented

Started co-operating with Norwegian Unix User group (NUUG) in

2011, after both working on the beta version of data.stortinget.no

Now building an organization to develop and run www.holderdeord.no

as a leading Norwegian website for political data about all areas of

politics

13.02.2012

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

What do we want to do?

Gather and publish data on how the parties and representatives

vote in Parliament

Organize and publish the political parties’ program policies and

promises to allow for comparison between parties, and comparison

to the parties’ voting

Present political decision making in a easy and visual way, make it

easy for citizens to find information about topics important to them

Gather and publish other political facts with direct relevance for the

Norwegian democracy and how it functions

13.02.2012

13.02.2012

Skisse

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

What kind of skills are we building on?

Open data Political Science

Data Visualization/

Usability Design

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

We are part of an international trend

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

Timeline

Design/Prototyping

Organization building

Political process modeling

First working prototype

June February April

Iteration and expansion

Election 2013!

Technical infrastructure

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

We need help!

How can you contribute?

• Examine and maybe translate code from

foreign sites

• Front end coding

• Backend coding

• Content management system

• Building functionality on XML, RSS feeds,

widgets

• Contribute to building an open source

community, co-operate with other

foras/networks

• Funding/sponsorship

• Contact ingrid@holderdeord.no

• Twitter: @ingridod

Credit: John C. Dvorak.

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

Conference: Open Legislative Data in Paris

• July 6th & 7th in Paris

• International conference aimed at

gathering both academics and

hactivists working on parliamentary

and legislative issues

• The common project of

RegardCitoyens with SciencesPo

MediaLab will present during the

event the first prototype of a

legislative evolution monitoring

tool

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

French project: The Law Factory

“The research project “The Law Factory” aims at using different

software and informatics tools in order to question the generalized

Parliament impotence corroborated by a number of case studies, namely

from the legal and political science area.”

http://www.lafabriquedelaloi.fr

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no

References: International sites

Poland: http://sejmometr.pl/

France: http://www.regardscitoyens.org/

France: http://www.nosdeputes.fr/

Finland: http://www.kansanmuisti.fi/

UK: http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/

UK: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/

EU: http://www.itsyourparliament.eu/

US: http://www.politifact.com/

13.02.2012 www.holderdeord.no