Paul The problem with a wikipedia model (apart from the usual ones -- bad edits etc) is that it doesn't give you structured data (hence dbpedia etc), and one of the goals of theyworkforyoulocal is to extract structured data and provide it in a unified interface, rather than the mishmash that's around at the moment.
Obviously if groups like Tim's do their local councils (ditto with the Manchester group), twfyl can act merely as an aggregator and referrer in those cases. Cheers C paul perrin wrote: > 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] > <mailto:[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] > <mailto:[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] > <mailto:[email protected]> > Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: > > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > > _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
