Tom, You can tell them to sack their Soctim web-page survey system first -- where it puts a pop-up box asking you if you like the website the first time you visit it the sheffield website.
The headings for the Sheffield webpages contain: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd";> <!-- // EasySite CMS v5 // --> <!-- // EIBS Ltd - Simplifying eContent // --> <!-- // Content Management, Document Managment, eCommerce and Online Publishing // --> <!-- // Unit 3, Wilford Business Park, Ruddington Lane, Nottingham, NG11 7EP, United Kingdom // --> <!-- // http://www.eibs.co.uk/ - [email protected] - +44 (0) 8700 129 029 // --> <!-- // Copyright 1999 - 2009 EIBS Ltd // --> So it would appear that their CMS supplier is local. EIBS also lists their other local council customers: http://www.eibs.co.uk/clients/government/ Unfortunately it's all built on crappy .NET stuff, but still, it's better than the Liverpool situation where it's all been contracted out to BT at an exorbitant rate and they won't even explain why they can't give me the numbers in their contract: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/liverpool_direct_bt_contracts#outgoing-25218 Julian. On Fri, Jun 26, 2009 at 1:05 AM, Tom Loosemore<[email protected]> wrote: > I met the Chief Exec of Sheffield County Council a few months ago, and > he was super keen on there being a TheyWorkForYou local for Sheff. In > fact, I'm pretty sure that's why he wanted to meet me. He was smart, > and pretty new to the job. > > I'd just email him (his name escapes me - after midnight) and tell him > nicely what formatting changes would make life easier. > > > 2009/6/17 Tim Duckett <[email protected]>: >> 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 >> > > _______________________________________________ > Mailing list [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
