Joe
Sounds good -- and looking at Southampton, extracting the data and,
crucially, establishing the relationships between it (e.g. which
councillors are on which committees etc) is non-trivial.
One of the ideas behind TWFY Local was to get consolidate the data and
allow unified API to access it (hence the ability to access it as XML or
json from the get-go), however it was derived -- and so allow
comparisons and running against other datasets.
Partly here I was thinking about groups such as the one doing a
TheyWorkForYou for Manchester City Council, and the likelihood that
other groups like that might spring up, in which case TWFY Local would
just be a proxy for the data, and refer users to it for more detailed
info (assuming they have a greater level of detail that TWFY Local). If
the same could happen with Southampton, that'd be great.
The key here is interoperability of data -- as long as we all ensure
that the structured data is easy to get out of our sites and remains
open, we will open up all sorts of possibilities for increasing access
to and analysis of how our local councils are working.
Let me know when you've got a test app up and running -- really
interested in how you've some of the issues (might be worth you hosting
the code at github or google code).
Cheers
C
Joe Lanman wrote:
Hullo all,
Just to say that I've been working on a local council project
following discussion with some mySociety folks a while back.
So far I've been working on Southampton. I've got a decent spider
going to get documents (agendas, minutes, etc) together with basic
info (when they were published, what committee), and converting all
data to html (a lot of the docs are pdf). I've also been working on a
simple interface to access this data.
I wasn't aware of this thread until I checked today - I have been able
to get hold of localcouncil.org <http://localcouncil.org>. Wasn't sure
if it was going to be usable (might appear too 'official') but it
seemed worth getting anyway. The Theyworkforyoulocal site is
definitely along the same lines as I was thinking - very impressed.
I hope to get some sort of test app up for people to look at fairly soon.
Joe
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