Data for Democracy
James Smith
@floppy / floppy.org.uk
Who am I?
- Engineer
- Parent
- Activist
- Optimist
Big problems
But no political will
"in order to truly change the system, you sometimes have to become the system"
"we should get started by setting up a GitHub repository, and get collaborating on policy for a brighter future"
openpolitics.org.uk
github.com/openpolitics/manifesto
Q: Who can edit?
A: Anyone!
Q: Who decides what to accept?
A: Existing contributors
Q: How do you vote?
A: Blackballing
Q: Who counts the votes?
A: Robots!
15 months
> 8500 words of policy
> 20 people
May 2014
Another unwise decision
somethingnew.org.uk
@havesomenew
Political Platform as a Service
Data!
Electoral Commission
2010 results
77564 voters, 55841 votes cast
72% turnout
Electoral Commission
Campaign spending
Spending
vs. votes gained
vs. deposits kept
different categories
Donations
Leafletting costs
one free delivery by Royal Mail
addressed or unaddressed
47300 households in EU elections
roughly £1500
Surprisingly
accessible
Maps
OS election maps
linked data
ONS 2011 census
Party Finances
Spend Network
spendnetwork.com
Schema
- Buyer (+ URI)
- Supplier (+ URI)
- Amount (currency, charged, paid, vat)
- Date
- Description
- Codes (UNSPSC, Electoral Commission)
- Transaction ID
Buyer URIs
- What's my URI?
- id.floppy.org.uk
Supplier URIs
- OpenCorporates
- OpenCharities
- Unincorporated Associations?
- Parish Councils?
Codes
- UNSPSC
- Electoral Commission reporting codes
Publishing
- github.com/SomethingNewUK/finances
- Datapackage & CSVs
- Validated with csvlint.io
- Published with Jekyll & GitHub Pages
- somethingnew.github.io/finances
Proper Open Data
