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MySociety.org is one of the world's most dynamic centres of e- democracy innovation. Its associates, both independently and together in a official capacity, are is churning out smart e-democracy sites that have the right kind of mojo to turn heads. See the press release listed below. http://WritetoThem.com is a follow-on to FaxYourMP. Other projects from those who associate with mySociety (most of them in a volunteer capacity) have worked with projects such as: http://www.theyworkforyou.com http://www.downingstreetsays.com http://www.publicwhip.org.uk http://www.faxyourmp.com http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican http://www.upmystreet.com http://www.voxpolitics.com With access to this collective intellectual capital, ideas are sure to flow. Here are the projects they have coming down the pipe with support in part from a UK government innovations fund: http://mysociety.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/LaunchProjects GiveItAway - Lowering the barriers to giving stuff away, instead of throwing it away. PledgeBank - Want to help a cause, but worried that your effort will make no difference? FaxYourRepresentative - The working name for WriteToThem.com NotApathetic - Don't want to vote, but also not apathetic? Let them know why. YourConstituencyMailingList - Want to hear from your MP & discuss what they say? They are building these tools in an open source sort of way. I'd love to see versions of these tools adapted and deployed in many countries. My friends at mySociety have a special page just for non- UK folks trying to figure out what is relevant to them: http://www.mysociety.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/NonUK Cheers, Steven Clift http://dowire.org ------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 13:40:16 +0000 From: Tom Steinberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: WriteToThem.com ... PRESS RELEASE WriteToThem.com (Launching Today) allows British Citizens to write to any of their elected representatives, from MPs to councillors, easily and for free. Date: Monday 14th February 2004 - For immediate release Contact: Tom Steinberg - 07811 082158 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] What it Does mySociety is pleased to announce the beta launch of WriteToThem.com WriteToThem.com allows any British citizen to discover the identity of and then send a message to any of their elected representatives, for free. When a user visits the site, they enter a postcode, after which they are shown a list of their elected representatives, along with their various remits. WriteToThem covers Councillors, Members of Parliament, Members of the European Parliament, Northern Irish, Welsh and London assembly members, and members of the Scottish Parliament. The service then faxes or emails the representatives accordingly. The focus on ultra-usability keeps the skill, time and hassle required to an absolute minimum. The Goal Much is written about the reasons why democracy appears to be in trouble. mySociety believes that one of the simplest explanations is that it isn't easy enough for citizens to get in touch with their elected representatives. Most people don't know who their councillors, or MEPs, or MPs are, let alone how to get in touch with them. FaxYourMP proved over several years that if you provide a simple, attractive system that is trusted by both citizens and representatives, you will successfully build better connections between the electorate and the elected. 60% of people using FaxYourMP reported that they'd never contacted their MPs before. WriteToThem.com takes this to a new level by connecting citizens with those crucial but less-well-know representatives; politicians who often have far more power over the issues they really care about than just their MPs. mySociety mySociety is a charitable project founded by former policy analyst Tom Steinberg, in conjunction with the grassroots community of volunteers who built FaxYourMP. It's mission is to build sites that deliver simple, tangible benefits to citizens at very low cost per person helped. Tom was inspired by the success of the hugely popular and multi-award winning volunteer run FaxYourMP.com. He was especially influenced by the principles it embodied, but frustrated by what he saw as a failure in the voluntary and public sectors to understand why this site was so useful, so popular, and so well loved. He launched mySociety with a call for ideas and proposal from the public in October 2003. In March 2004 mySociety was awarded funding from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's e-innovations fund (see below), and in September 2004 development started on WriteToThem.com, the successor to FaxYourMP.com mySociety is the project of registered charity UKCOD. Public-Voluntary Partnership mySociety has been funded by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's e-Innovation's Fund, through a partnership with West Sussex County Council. The purpose of the e-Innovation funds is "To encourage practical examples of new and innovative approaches to joined up working, effective service delivery and community engagement." By partnering with mySociety ODPM has tapped into the rich vein of grassroots civic programming, combining the reach and the resources of government with the specialist skills and established reputation of sites like FaxYourMP.com and TheyWorkForYou.com. mySociety will be producing four more projects from e-innovations funding over the next few months. Other Support mySociety is extremely grateful to Government Evaluations, a company which gathers and sells contact data on elected and unelected officials across UK government. GovEval has sponsored WriteToThem with free provision of data, and we are hugely grateful for this support. Quotes Brian Eno, Musician & Thinker: "Politicians bewail the apathy of voters, but fail to address the reason: people don't feel engaged in their government, and don't feel empowered to alter anything that it does in their name. Since this engagement and empowerment is the fundamental precondition of democracy, this is a serious deficit. Tools such as these address this issue by bringing government right into your living room and onto your monitor. They encourage engagement, and they encourage the formation of active communities of interest. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the future of democracy might come to depend on them." Richard Allan MP, Member for Sheffield Hallam: "Well-designed, easy to use, comprehensive and fit for purpose - WriteToThem is everything a good website should be, and will I am sure form an important block in building links between people and their representatives." Roland Mezulis, Chief e-Government Strategist, West Sussex County Council: "The partnership between West Sussex County Council and mySociety looks like it will be very fruitful and enable us to develop solutions that will allow closer community engagement and open new channels for communication. WriteToThem is the first example of a series of innovative approaches that the partnership will sponsor and that will offer new ideas for local authorities to support sustainable local communities." Stephen Coleman, Professor of e-Democracy, Oxford Internet Institute: "Representative democracies in the digital age need new communication tools and ways of facilitating interactive communication. WriteToThem is a perfect example of such a simple democratic tool." Nigel Evans MP, Member for Ribble Valley and Fulwood: "As an MP it is amazing how many letters I receive which should be going to other MPs....people take a guess as to who their MP is and sometimes this involves a delay in getting that correspondence through to the right MP- this system takes away the mistakes- and therefore urgent messages can be dealt with more swiftly. It also means that the constituent doesnt need to be overly concerned by any boundary changes that will happen after the next election, and is happening in Scotland at this election. I want to be contactable, and I would encourage as many constituents to use this system as possible. Instant communications is the name of the game, and this tool will deliver it to a growing number of people" Contact: Tom Steinberg - 07811 082158 - [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------- End of forwarded message ------- ^ ^ ^ ^ Steven L. Clift - - - W: http://publicus.net Minneapolis - - - - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota - - - - - - T: +1.612.822.8667 USA - - - - - MSN/Y!/AIM: netclift UK Office Hours - 1pm - 11pm - - T: 0870.340.1266 Join my Democracies Online Newswire: http://dowire.org *** Past Messages, to Subscribe: http://dowire.org *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To UNSUBSCRIBE instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** New RSS XML Feed Available: *** http://www.mail-archive.com/do-wire@lists.umn.edu/maillist.xml
