Couldn't the basics be done on a wikipeida model with a bod per council... Doesn't 'write to them' do it manually for councillors?
Paul /)/+) 2009/6/17 CountCulture <[email protected]> > Tim > > Can you point me to a URL so I can get an idea of how it works. > > Actually, had a look at Sheffield Council, and it's going to be a tricky > one to deal with -- there doesn't even seem to be a list of all > councillors (let allow UID for each councillor). I agree there's a real > need to get councils to open up data, but when you look at some of the > the websites, it's clear they don't have a clue (and maybe don't want to > have one). My hope is that if we can get most of the main councils > available through something like theyworkforyoulocal, locals can start > to pressure the others into doing something. > > Cheers > C > > Tim Duckett wrote: > > This is interesting - there's a small group of us doing something > > similar with (or should that be *to*?) Sheffield City Council, and > > it's a nightmare. Where meeting minutes exist online they're > > published as Word docs, and they're written in a "narrative" style - > > for all its faults, Hansard is a world away from local government when > > it comes to scrapeable transparency. So far we've been working on > > indexing the docs and presenting that content alongside search results > > from the main SCC site. It's not TWFY, but at least it provides a > > better way of exposing individual activity that would otherwise be > > buried away in documents. > > > > Does anyone have any experience of managing to persuade LAs towards > > presenting the source information in more usable formats? > > > > On 16 Jun 2009, at 14:14, CountCulture wrote: > > > >> Quick note about something I've been working on in my spare time: > >> > >> http://theyworkforyoulocal.com -- a small app to scrape and parse local > >> authority info. > >> > >> At the moment, it's barely more than a proof of concept, with only about > >> 20 or so councils parsed, and even then only current councillors, > >> committees, committee membership and forthcoming meetings are parsed. > >> > >> On the upside, it's fairly quick for me to add new parsers for councils > >> (and reuse ones already written if they use same CMS), there's an API > >> built in (basically just add .json or .xml to get the info as json or > >> XML), and there's lots of potential. > >> > >> Getting this far has also been an education in understanding what a > >> full-blown twfy_local might look like (in general there seems no way to > >> see how councillors voted, for example), the need for such a resource > >> (there's no publicly available central repository for council election > >> results, for example), and the sorry state of local authority websites > >> (just finding a list of councillors is a challenge on some, and don't > >> get me started on the HTML markup). > >> > >> Comments welcome. Code is at > >> http://github.com/CountCulture/twfy_local_parser/ (I'll probably GPL it > >> soon). Bug reports at > >> http://github.com/CountCulture/twfy_local_parser/issues and offers of > >> help to countculture at googlemail dot com. > >> > >> I'd especially be interested in hearing from anyone who's got any > >> knowledge about local authority CMSs (e.g. there seem to be several > >> different versions of Modern.Gov producing different URLs), or sources > >> for more data other than the local authority websites (e.g. eGR, > >> info4local). > >> > >> Cheers > >> > >> C > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Mailing list [email protected] > >> Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: > >> > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > >> > > > > > > --- > > Tim Duckett > > +44 (0) 7525 786 492 > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list [email protected] > Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public >
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