mySociety

Web Page: http://www.mysociety.org/gsoc2012ideas/

Mailing List:

mySociety has two missions. The first is to be a charitable project which builds websites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. The second is to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to use the internet most efficiently to improve lives.

Projects

• Professors on PopIt University professors play a very important role in our societies. They teach future generations, give statements in the media and are considered to be generally credible. But where do you find information about university professors like the professor's bio? Normally you would have to go to the website of the university or the professor's homepage. However, often some data is missing or very difficult to find. "Open does not only mean availability, but also accessibility!" As my SoC 2012 project I plan to extend PopIt so that one can add not only politicians or judges but also professors. This will help validating the platform itself and help people to better understand what professors say in the media.
• Project: Parliamentary Monitoring project The aim of the project is to use the PopIt component of MySociety to build Parliamentary Monitoring Websites for more countries. Considering the lack of transparency and accountability in public governance in countries like India, I believe, this is a very useful initiative. It can serve as a one stop solution over the web to find the latest information about any politician.