How to find what you’re looking for on Right to Know

By Ben Fairless | Published: January 20, 2015

Following on from some recent queries on Twitter, I thought it was a good idea to sit down and provide a guide on some of the ways you can keep in touch with a request on Right to Know.

Right to Know is a simple, free service provided by the OpenAustralia Foundation that takes the confusion out of asking the Federal Government for information. It enhances accountability by showing you all requests made using the site, and the responses from the Government.

There are a few ways you can find requests, some include:

  • Searching by authority
  • Searching by status
  • Searching by user

You can also “follow” almost anything on Right to Know, which allows you to receive a daily digest when something matches what you’ve followed. Most of the time people follow single (or multiple) requests, but what you may not know is that you can follow an authority, a user, a search term or even the entire site!

With Right to Know growing (we have over 570 authorities, and over 830 users who have made 880 requests so far!) I thought it would be good to describe some of the ways you can keep up to date with requests and topics on Right to Know.

Before you begin

Anyone can search for requests, but you’ll need to register to be able to make a request, comment on a request, or follow a request.

Registering is quick and easy, all we need is your name (you can use a pseudonym if you want) and email address. We believe in transparency, so we describe how we will use your information on our Privacy Page.

Searching and following requests by authority

If you’re interested in a particular authority (such as the Department of Immigration, or ASADA) you can see all requests made to that authority, and also follow it to be updated whenever a request is made or updated.

To do this, click View Authorities on the top. Here you see a list of all authorities, and ways to group them (on the left hand side). You can also search for authorities using the search bar just above the list:

0001-allauthorities-resized

 

When you find the authority you’re interested in, just click it and you’ll be taken to the page for that Authority (I’ve chosen the Immigration Department as an example):

0002 - dibpauthpage

From this page, you can:

  • Find information on what the authority does
  • Follow (for email) or subscribe to an RSS feed to receive updates on requests
  • Find out how many requests have been made in total
  • Browse a list of all requests, or look at requests which are successful, unsuccessful, or unresolved.
  • Search for requests made to that authority

Searching and following requests by keywords

Some people might be interested in a specific topic which could apply to multiple authorities (such as “Technology”, “Open Government Partnership” or even “Religion”).

Right to Know makes it easy to find exactly what you’re looking for, using the search bar at the top of the page, or the Advanced Search feature.

If you want to follow anything about, for example, Religion, you simply search for it:

0003-searchreligion

Then on the search page, simply click the Follow button on the right hand side:

0004-religion

That’s it! Right to Know will automatically email you once a day with any new requests or comments related to that search.

Searching and following people on Right to Know

Right to Know has some amazing contributors, and sometimes it can be great to see what some of these contributors say.

To follow a contributor, simply search for the user or click their name, and you’ll be taken to their page (I’ve chosen a new user to Right to Know, Vera Lystich):

vera

Simply click Follow, and that’s it! You receive an email with that person’s comments and requests every 24 hours.

 What if I want to stop following something?

While we only send you one email per day (we combine everything you follow into a helpful daily digest) we don’t want to send you emails about things you’re no longer interested in. That’s why we include a link to change your preferences. Simply click the link to be taken to a list of the things you follow, where you can unsubscribe with the click of a button.

More Information

You can find more information on how to search and follow requests on the MySociety blog – https://www.mysociety.org/2014/09/19/how-to-keep-up-with-hot-topics-in-your-local-area/ and https://www.mysociety.org/2014/09/29/subscribe-to-foi-requests-on-any-topic/

You can also get in touch with the team at Right to Know, either via email (contact@righttoknow.org.au) or on Twitter (https://twitter.com/RighttoKnowAu).

If you want to support Right to Know, please consider Volunteering or making a small donation to the project.

 

 

Posted in Presentation, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , | 1 Response

Getting to know you

By Luke Bacon | Published: January 16, 2015
A mess of stickies, collecting and sorting observations we made while speaking with our supporters.

A mess of post-its: collecting and sorting observations made while speaking with our supporters.

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve been reviewing and trying to improve the way the OpenAustralia Foundation handles donations. While there are tens of thousands of people using our projects, over the past few years we’ve only received a very small amount of funding from small donations by individuals.

We know that many people are enthusiastic about our projects and so contribute their time and skills. Last year we launched a monthly meetup for people like this and it’s been a great success. There are also other people who aren’t able to contribute code or are busy. They can still support us with financial donations. We’d like to make this process a lot simpler and rewarding for those people, and of course increase this kind of donation.

Research aims and process

Reaching out and getting to know the individuals that have donated to us has been an one key goal of this mini-project. We’ve been follow the process for design research set out in Erika Hall’s excellent book, Just Enough Research:

  • Define the problem
  • Select the approach
  • Plan and prepare
  • Collect the data
  • Analyse the data
  • Report the results

Our goal, or problem statement is:

Describe the kinds of people who donate to the OpenAustralia Foundation and why they do it.

Because the number of number of people who had donated to the Foundation is quite small, we decided to contact them with a small survey and then conduct short semi-structured interviews with as many as possible. This would give us a chance to thank these awesome people, establish a connection with them and find out how they see the world. To quote Hall:

The goal of interviewing users is to learn about everything that might influence how the users might use what you’re creating.

Finally we would collect and analyse our data and then present the findings in a blog post (here it is).

Survey

We sent a very short Google Forms survey to the 160 people who have donated to the OpenAustralia Foundation.

The questions were:

  • Roughly, how old are you? (Under 20, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, Above 80)
  • What is your occupation?
  • Which OpenAustralia Foundation projects are you familiar with?
  • Do you regularly donate money to organisations or projects?
  • Why did you donate to the OpenAustralia Foundation?
  • Would you be happy to have a brief chat to help us learn more?

The idea was to try and keep the survey as short as possible so that people would fill it out and be happy to chat, whilst prompting some useful insights.

So far we’ve received 38 responses. Here’s a basic summary of the responses:

  • Over 90% of respondents were over 30 years old, with 75% being evenly distributed between 30s, 40s and 50s.
  • After categorising the occupation responses, IT/Tech was the most group, followed by retired and professional services. There were two smaller groups working in government and in civil society organisations.
  • 75% of respondents said they were familiar with PlanningAlerts, 65% OpenAustralia.org and 50% Election Leaflets. 45% were familiar with They Vote For You, 40% Right To Know and 10% morph.io.
  • 65% of people said they regularly donated money to organisations or projects.

While we are dealing with a small amount of data, this information is helping turn some of our assumptions into knowledge.

Twenty-one people were happy to be interviewed and so far we’ve spoken with eleven. It’s been a pleasure to learn about the people who use our projects. A few very generous people even made donations after speaking with us.

While the survey was a few basic questions, the interviews were a deep dive. We wanted to get to know these people and find out about their relationships with NGOs, their needs and concerns.

So what did we learn?

Passionate and knowledgeable in their area of focus

The people that we spoke to were passionately interested and knowledgeable in their chosen area of focus. For a number of them, that was local planning and they were either working professionally in the area or were members of resident action groups.

These people are using one of our projects as part of a wider project or campaign they were active in.

Here are some of our observations about who these donors are:

  • These donors are generally quite self directed. Many of them were self-employed, involved in community action groups, or had established independent projects of some kind.
  • A number of people were involved with local community organisations.
  • The people we spoke to who were using PlanningAlerts (most people), had acted upon information they had received in an alert by making a submission to council.
  • People who donated made little use, if any, of more than one OpenAustralia Foundation project. They were often aware of a number of them, but were only an active user of one project. In the survey, a quarter of people selected just one project that they were familiar with.
  • Most people we spoke to had discovered their first OpenAustralia Foundation project by being directly introduced to it, often by someone from the foundation, rather than finding it through Google or social media.
  • Everyone we spoke to had found the OpenAustralia Foundation through one of the projects, not the other way round.
  • Everyone we spoke to was computer and web savvy, a number of them having experience with programming or data management.

People donated because they use the projects and support OAF’s broad work towards better access to civic information

In the survey there were two very clear themes in the responses to the question “Why did you donate to the OpenAustralia Foundation?”

  • Because they support the values of the OpenAustralia Foundation
  • Because they get value from an OpenAustralia Foundation project and want it to continue

These two themes came through strongly in the interviews—in particular it was clear that these people were successfully using one of the projects.

“I believe in freedom of information, open and transparent government, open data”

In the survey the majority of people mentioned their support for the general mission of the OpenAustralia Foundation to create better access to civic information. Some examples:

  • “Because I believe in OpenAustralia and the ideals therein”
  • “I believe public, open access to parliamentary records is important, and that politicians need to be held to greater account. They Vote For You is a step in the right direction to holding politicians accountable.”
  • “Believe in freedom of information, open and transparent government, open data – that governments should be more transparent, should publish the information they produce – briefings, data, revenue and expenditure detail – as a matter of course, without the need for FOI requests from the public or journalists.”
  • “I believe in your open data/technology agenda whole heartedly. Democracy is a closed broken old boys club and needs to be re-designed and re-built.”

“Because it provides a service I use!”

Many people also said they donated because they were getting value from one of the projects and wanted to support it. Examples:

  • “Because of the free service offered and that donations are what keep [organisations] like this going.”
  • “As a small thank you for the emails (about my MP’s speeches in Parliament) that you make it possible for me to receive without having to read/search all of Hansard!”
  • “I use the PlanningAlerts service and I value it. I also highly regard OpenAustralia Foundation and the sense of transparency and freedom it brings into the society”
  • “Because it does provide a useful service, making me aware of up coming proposed planning applications in my immediate neighbourhood that I might otherwise have not been aware of. Due to this early notification I have had some success with council and even VCAT in influencing the resulting plans to maintain respectful scale and privacy within my immediate neighbourhood.”
  • “i use it”

People don’t need to know much about OAF to donate to it, but appreciate a clear explanation when they ask

The majority of people that we spoke to knew very little about the OpenAustralia Foundation. Those who did know about the Foundation had an accurate picture of our size and structure. No-one thought the OpenAustralia Foundation was a large, well funded institution.

A number of people who had donated also donated to other non-profit websites. Wikipedia, Getup, Mozilla and Black Box Voting were mentioned.

There were quite a few questions about how the OpenAustralia Foundation is funded. A majority of people mentioned that they were concerned by the amount of money NGOs put into marketing rather than their core mission. They appreciated it when they received a clear answer from the NGO they were questioning.

People like to receive updates but appreciate brevity

Donors were generally positive about receiving regular email updates from the organisations or campaigns they supported. There were strong bad reactions to being signed up to campaigns they did not support.

People who receive organisation update emails from liked concise messages that were quick to read and scan.

A few people mentioned that the email newsletters they liked were ones that gave them some actionable information: TV shows to note down to watch or facts about the issues they were interested in to discuss with friends.

What now

In designing the way we handle donations, we don’t want to just follow the standard path. Everything we do should be focused on making our projects more useful and effective to more citizens.

The insights gained through this initial research will provide a basis for more experiments to see how we can help new groups of people get use from and support our work. We’ve already got some on the boil.

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Email is your secret weapon

By Matthew Landauer | Published: December 18, 2014

(Cross posted from the Poplus.org blog)

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to attend PoplusCon in Santiago, Chile. It was a remarkable experience spending two very intense days working through problems, sharing experience and knowledge, and making connections with incredibly talented civic tech coders and activists from around the world.

If you were lucky enough to be there as well, I hope we met and I also hope you remember the lightning talk I gave on a tool I had been working on for some time. Hopefully it’s something that you’ll find useful.

Lightning talk at Poplus Con

The tool is called Cuttlefish.

Cuttlefish

I have a cool new announcement to make about Cuttlefish.

That comes a little later. First I want to tell you a little bit about the motivations behind Cuttlefish and of course what it actually does.

What is transactional email and why should I care?

Transactional email is email sent from applications in “transactions”. This could be for example, the email you get when you sign up for a new service; it could be the email alert that notifies you when a politician has spoken in parliament. In simple terms it’s anything that’s generated automatically by you doing something in an application.

Email is your secret weapon. Email is what reminds people your website exists and keeps them engaged. It’s what allows useful information to come direct to people.

As an example at the OpenAustralia Foundation we run a project called PlanningAlerts which is a really simple service that collects up applications from around Australia for people and companies wanting to build or knock down buildings. This is information that’s published on local government websites.

Now, who in their right mind goes and looks at their local government website once a week to see if there are any new planning applications that might be of interest? Maybe you would do it if it was your job but ordinary people are hardly going to do that.

What instead we do with PlanningAlerts is allow people to sign up for email alerts when there is a new planning application in their area. They don’t have to find or navigate their local government website and most importantly they don’t have to remember to regularly check.

When there’s something new it arrives in their inbox. At the moment around 50,000 people per week receive an email alert from PlanningAlerts in their inbox.

If you’re anything like us you probably send a lot of email too.

Here’s the problem – Sending email and doing it properly is actually surprisingly really hard and it gets even harder the more email you send.

Commercial route

One option is to use one of many commercially available transactional email services, such as Sendgrid, Mandrill or Amazon SES. They are great and incredibly reliable. They make sending email so much easier.

However, it does come at a financial cost. It can be inexpensive or even free if you’re not sending a lot of email. However, as a civic technology organisation you likely send a lot of email and you don’t have much money.

Then, there’s the tricky issue of working in civic tech fundamentally depending on a piece of closed-source technology. What if the service disappears or changes? What if I can’t afford to keep paying the bills?

It’s a practical limitation as well as an ethical issue.

Can open-source help?

The open-source route

Alternatively you could build the email smarts into your open-source application.

That is what has tended to happen so far in the open-source world. Every application that sends a lot of email has had to figure out for itself how to do bounce detection, link tracking and all those tricky things.

For example, Alavateli from mySociety has lots of smarts for figuring whether an email has been delivered (so that government agencies have a hard time claiming that they never received an freedom of information request when it can be shown that it was delivered to their email server).

CiviCRM can send emails to large lists of people. It has all this built-in smarts for link tracking, figuring out whether people have opened emails and detecting bounced emails. It’s not exactly easy to set up though and frankly is crazy buggy.

FixMyStreet and WriteToThem also by mySociety similarly have their own code for handling bounce detection.

The goal behind Cuttlefish is to create a platform and language agnostic open-source service for sending email so that every application doesn’t have to figure it out for itself.

Let’s solve the hard (and boring) problem once and share the winnings.

Sounds a bit like a Poplus component doesn’t it?

So here are some of things that Cuttlefish can do for you, your organisation and your civic application:

  • Send email from your application using smtp in the usual way and get all sorts of added benefits for no effort
  • A lovely web UI to browse what’s happening
  • Monitor in real time which emails arrive at their destination and which bounce
  • Works with any web framework and language
  • Automatically not send emails to destinations that have hard bounced in the past
  • Track which emails are opened and which links are clicked
  • Statistics on emails sent, soft/hard bounced and held back
  • View the full email content for recently sent emails
  • Multiple applications can each have their own SMTP authentication
  • Built in, super easy to set up, automatic DKIM signing
  • Postfix, which you know and trust, handles email delivery
  • Open source, so no vendor lock in.

Cuttlefish and Poplus

Fast forward to October, two months ago, the OpenAustralia Foundation was awarded one of the Poplus mini grants to create a hosted version of Cuttlefish which will be freely available to the Poplus community for all your email sending needs.

This involves several related parts

  • Allow you and your team to use a hosted Cuttlefish server as if it’s your own. You will be able to use a shared server without seeing any of the emails being sent by other teams because we’re adding multi-tenanting to the Cuttlefish software.
  • Making Cuttlefish server provisioning completely automatic using Ansible.
  • Providing free access to the Cuttlefish server to the Poplus community for a minimum of 1 year (until at least the end of 2015).

Also we will be applying shortly for Cuttlefish to become a Poplus component.

The big announcement

The work is done and you now have access to a hosted version of Cuttlefish

  • Completely free to members of the Poplus community
  • Send emails from your own domains
  • No restrictions on volume of emails
  • Hosted and maintained by the OpenAustralia Foundation
  • Available at https://cuttlefish.oaf.org.au now.

How can I get started?

The plan is to add a simple form to https://cuttlefish.oaf.org.au from which you can apply for access. We haven’t quite done that yet.

In the meantime, if you want access please email us at contact@oaf.org.au and include the following information:

  • Your name
  • Your email address — where you will receive the Cuttlefish invitation
  • Organisation name & website — If you’re not part of an official organisation, that’s fine too. Simply include something about the people you’re working with.
  • Describe the emails you would like to send with Cuttlefish and the applications they come from (e.g. email alerts for our parliamentary monitoring site …)

The obvious disclaimer here is don’t use Cuttlefish to send anything that could be mistaken as spam. No unsolicited emails. No mass marketing emails. Only things related to civic technology. If you have any doubts or questions just ask.

If you’d like to look at the code or would like to try installing it on your own server go tohttps://github.com/mlandauer/cuttlefish.

IMAGE CREDIT

Posted in Announcement | Leave a comment

Luke and Henare talk They Vote For You on FBi’s Backchat

By Henare Degan | Published: December 16, 2014

On Saturday Luke and I were really glad to be invited on FBi radio’s excellent Backchat programme.

Luke and Henare with Backchat hosts Luke Marshall and James Colley

Luke and Henare with Backchat hosts Luke Marshall and James Colley

You can listen to the podcast here:

Thanks for having us, FBi!

Posted in Media, Projects, They Vote For You | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Designing They Vote For You

By Luke Bacon | Published: December 8, 2014

For the last three and a half months I’ve been working with the OpenAustralia Foundation to design their latest project, They Vote For You. For me, as always, this was a broad interpretation of the role “designer”: digging into functionality, language, information architecture, appearance, feeling, right down to the purpose and direction of the site. At the core we are trying to respectfully support citizens in using the tool to achieve something they want. I’m very proud of where we’ve taken the project and to now be joining the team permanently.

I’ve gained so much from others who’ve opened up and I want to pay it back by documenting some of our process. Sharing experience is also a key part of the Open Source Design Manifesto, “I will share my design experiences; both the good and the bad”.

There were a lot of unknowns and first-times throughout the project. For me it was a new team and their strong commitment to a project methodology with which I had little experience, Agile development. I was also tasked with a lot of Ruby on Rails development—I had a little experience from Detention Logs, but had never written ruby for a client project.

Similarly, the OpenAustralia Foundation hadn’t worked with a designer in this capacity before: someone working on broad iterations of design and implementing it in code during major application development. Previously they’ve handed a fairly established interface over to a design phase. That is still a common process, but in the wake of responsive design practices more and more designers are being embedded into teams, helping to develop an application or website from day one.

Photograph of Luke Bacon presenting the website to a crowd of volunteers.

Luke Bacon presenting They Vote For You at the OpenAustralia Hackfest September 2014, a month out from launch, Photo by Lisa Cross

Approach

The first recorded commit in our working repository for They Vote For You is 5th of August 2003, 11 years ago. The original version, Public Whip, has been running in the UK for a decade. As with most OpenAustralia Foundation projects They Vote For You is an implementation of a project proven overseas.

Many would have wiped away the decade-old PHP implementation and started from a clean slate. We briefly discussed doing this with the front-end page templates, but decided to keep them in place. There was 10 years of experience in the current version that we wanted to get as much value from as possible. We progressed by making changes in small iterations as our understanding of the project developed. Some of the site remains largely unchanged. The decision the build atop those foundations has defined the project.

We kicked things off with a whole day workshop to discuss our approach and get a feel for each-others’ perspectives. I ran a 20 second gut test exercise which helped me understand the others’ feelings towards basic colour, imagery, typographic concepts.

Most importantly we established design principles to guide our decision making:

  1. Focus on enabling actions that citizens want to take and access to the knowledge that they are looking for. Reduce the cost of them taking action. The action is the important bit. Citizens don’t need to understand the bureaucracy in order to use and access government.
  2. Assume people are smart & busy—present the important information up front and put detail within reach.
  3. Strive for universal accessibility.
  4. Design and implement with Progressive Enhancement.
  5. Create change by doing. Implement ideas quickly and assess—don’t be frozen by documentation and proposal.
  6. Maintainability is crucial, this project should last and evolve long into the future.

The next day, with great support from Matthew, Henare, I dove into the code. We targeted simple, obvious improvements; removing duplicate content and streamlining pages. As I went I took advantage of my fresh perspective to document the questions I was asking of the key interfaces. These user questions were helpful early on, but to be honest, I haven’t returned to them for a month or so.

The project’s persona

I picked up Aarron Walter’s much referenced Designing for Emotion and was inspired to create a design persona for the project. I haven’t seen other open source projects publish something like this but it’s been extremely useful. They Vote For You’s persona is a statement of how our site fits into the world of our citizens. It avoids design jargon and talks about a character, something anyone should be able to engage. Like the design principles, the persona helps the team make consistent, thoughtful design decisions. It is something to aspire to. I don’t think we’ve achieved every aspect of it, but bit by bit we’ll get there.

I think it can also help people outside the core team contribute. It includes some general references for colour and typography so you can get a rough understanding quickly: ‘more towards Wikipedia Mobile, not like Heroku’ for example. Someone making a contribution to the project should be able to look to those basic guides and avoid doing something completely out of character.

Using familiar tools

I think we made a good decision to aim for something simple and straight-forward. Whenever I tried to get fancy it never fit anyway. I’d alway come back to the logical, familiar choices that made communication clearer.

The typeface is one example. I researched a bunch of open source typefaces as potential candidates for the site. I played with Open Sans, Source Sans Pro and Clear Sans in particular. While Source Sans Pro and Clear Sans are great for reading and comparing data and interface elements, key tasks in They Vote For You, we also had a lot of extended text and needed something more comfortable for reading paragraphs. Those typefaces also have a more neutral, almost futuristic feeling, and our design persona calls for something humanist with a bit of character.

Many typographers recommend that you get to know how a small set of typefaces perform best by using them across many projects. I’m quite familiar with FF Meta by Erik Spiekermann which we often used at Collagraph. Fira Sans is a humanist, sans serif typeface based on FF Meta, designed by Eden Spiekermann for Mozilla and released under an open source license. It has a personality that stands out against the sea of Helvetica. It’s also designed specifically for digital displays and to perform well across a huge range of devices. I think it works very well in They Vote For You and it felt like a logical choice to use something I knew was reliable.

Screenshot of They Vote For You showing the use of the Fira Sans Typeface

Fira Sans in use on They Vote For You.

The team

I think the biggest contributor to the success of the process so far is the support and openness everyone at the OpenAustralia Foundation gives each other. We all know that this is an unusual and challenging project. We give each other the space and support to voice our arguments on a given decision. At other times we can step back and allow someone to pursue a bold and uncertain solution.

Photograph of civic hackers discussing a project at the OpenAustralia Hackfest 2014

OpenAustralia staff going through parliamentary process with Hannah from the Parliamentary Library at the OpenAustralia Hackfest September 2014, Photo by Lisa Cross

Henare has said he didn’t like the yellow section headings when I first implemented them, but over time has come to appreciate its affect. I think we did a good job of knowing when to keep discussing and when to give something a chance. At other times someone would step in to veto an addition. Those moments were crucial in protecting our aim for simplicity, it’s very easy to start adding unhelpful detail.

Screenshot of the /people page on They Vote For You

The lemon section header on the People page of They Vote For You

When

When is the right time to work on a specific element or layer of design? When is a design iteration done? When will we readdress it? For me, the hardest question through out this project has been ‘When?’

Aarron Walter suggests a Maslow’s Pyramid of UX: we should strive to design systems that fulfil people’s needs by being functional, reliable, usable, and finally pleasurable.

Working through my usual process, building up something from scratch, I knew when it was time to start thinking about colours or the finer, graphic layout challenges. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. There were large sections of the site untouched, wording that was still confusing and unhelpful, but the team wanted me to start adding this top emotional layer. It didn’t feel right when we hadn’t achieved functional or reliable in many cases.

That week of the project was extremely difficult for me. I thought I was spending time on the important things and the team wanted me to do something else. I became unsure that I was the right person for the project.

I was being rigid with the wrong aspects of the process—I think I had to go through a mini-crisis at that time to break it. This was not a project, team, or workflow like any I’d worked with before, and I was going to have to adapt to make it work. The order and answers I intuitively wanted just weren’t coming through, and I wasn’t developing the things that the others needed so they could be developed through interation in time for launch.

I started making small, focused decisions and then just taking the next step—slowly cutting a path. Suddenly, sometime later, I looked around and realised I was back on track. In late September we set ourselves a deadline to launch in mid October. Nothing works like a deadline to help you adapt, get over it and move on.

Back to basics

When I was feeling most unsure I returned to design basics: empathise with the user and create simple stories through the site. Surprise is a classic way to stop someone and make them consider something. An unusual bright orange makes people consider the short, direct question “How does your MP vote on the issues that matter to you” on the homepage. More than 60% of people follow that narrative and search for an MP.

They_Vote_For_You_—_How_does_your_MP_vote_on_the_issues_that_matter_to_you_

The colour scheme more broadly comes simply from the design persona:
light and refreshing in stark contrast to the formal, exclusive character communicated through the school-tie maroons and navy blues of traditional parliamentary design. Lemon yellow, lots of white space and a bright, cool blue were a simple, colour theory grounded choice—I’m no expert there but was brushing up with The Elements of Colour at the time. So far, we’ve had very positive reactions.

There’s a lot of room to keep evolving the personality of the site, particularly through the feedback and interface text. Injecting appropriate emotion could reward and support people in contributing to the resource.

Talking about design

I hope that explaining some of the choices and the ups and downs we made is useful to you. There are not enough discussions about visual and emotional design decisions in open source/civic hacking projects. It’s as if we think these aspects are just poured on by magical, inspired designers. I’ve found it extremely helpful to document and discuss as we’ve gone along, it’s been the foundation that has allowed me to be flexible.

They Vote For You will continue to evolve to better serve citizens. You can play a part. If you have ideas or changes you think would improve the project, please let us know by creating an issue on the repository. Check out the

Posted in Development, Projects, They Vote For You | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

How your MP votes, now on OpenAustralia.org

By Henare Degan | Published: December 3, 2014

OpenAustralia.org is ancient by internet standards. When it was created 7 years ago Twitter had just launched. There was no Instagram. Or GitHub.

After all this time it keeps chugging along, still making our Parliament more accessible and understandable.

Today is a rare and happy day when we add something new to the venerable site. You can now see how your MP voted on all sorts of issues, right on their OpenAustralia.org page:

An MP's votes on OpenAustralia.org

All this information comes from our latest project, They Vote For You. The links next to each issue also allow you to drill down and find out more about how your MP voted in detail on They Vote For You.

Give it a try by visiting www.openaustralia.org.au and searching for your MP.

There’s something really nice about our oldest project working hand in hand with our latest project. We’re sure you’ll keep finding it useful too.

Posted in Development, OpenAustralia.org, Projects, They Vote For You | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How do you edit division summaries?

By Mackay Ash | Published: December 2, 2014

There are many ways to edit division summaries. Here, I’m going to explain an approach that’s worked well for me.

Choose a division

First, I choose a division to summarise.

I like to choose divisions that are relevant to policies that I’ve created, such as For decreasing availability of welfare payments. This means I often pick divisions based on what they’re called. In this case, I see a division called Bills — Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Seniors Supplement Cessation) Bill 2014, Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (2014 Budget Measures No. 4) Bi… [Fig. 1]. Since that sounds relevant to welfare payments, I click on it.

 

Fig. 1 Choosing a division

Fig. 1: Choosing a division

Find out what the MPs were actually voting for

After choosing, I need to find out what the members of parliament were voting for in the division. Every division is a vote on a particular motion, so I need to find that motion text.

To do this, I take note of the time, date and place of the division: 7:48 pm, 22 October 2014, House of Representatives [Fig. 2]. I then click on preceding debate [Fig. 2], which takes me to OpenAustralia. There, I see that the motion seems to be “that these bills be now read a third time” [Fig. 3].

I want to confirm that this is the right motion text so I need to go to the official Hansard. To get there from the division page [Fig. 2], I can click on edit or provide a summary of what was voted on in this division and then select House Office Hansard under ‘Useful links for you to research’. This takes me to the Parliament of Australia website, where I can click on 22 October 2014, look at the text immediately preceding the 19:48 division and see that it is the correct motion text [Fig. 4].

 

Fig. 2 Note the time date and place

Fig. 2: Note the time, date and place

Fig. 3 Look at the motion on openaustralia

Fig. 3: Look at the motion on OpenAustralia

Fig. 4 Confirm the motion text on Hansard

Fig. 4: Confirm the motion text on Hansard

What does this actually mean?

Since I’ve been editing divisions for a while now, I know what it means to read a bill for a third time. If I didn’t, I would look it up on Google or browse through the House Powers, Practice and Procedure (also available under ‘Useful links for you to research’ on the division’s Edit division summary page). There, I can find the Making laws infosheet, which explains how a bill passes through the House of Representatives. The Parliamentary Education Office also has some useful factsheets that relate to both houses of Parliament, such as the one on Making a Law.

I adopt some of the language of those factsheets and simplify the words ‘read the bills a third time’ to ‘pass the bills’.

Now I know this motion is about passing the bills, I need to find out a bit more about the bills themselves.

What are these bills about?

Since this division refers to three bills, there is a bit more work for me to do! I start at the bills’ homepages, which I can get to by clicking on the links under ‘External links’ on the division page [Fig. 5]. In this case, there are links from each of the bills to click on and explore.

These homepages [Fig. 6] give me the following information:

  • a short summary of each bill
  • the progress of each bill through the two houses of Parliament
  • the explanatory memoranda (though remember these are political documents so need to be taken with a grain of salt!)
  • a link to the bills digest (if it’s available)

 

Fig. 5 Find the bills' homepages under external links
Fig. 5: Find the bills’ homepages under ‘External links’

Fig. 6 The bill's homepage
Fig. 6: the bill’s homepage

How to find the best bills digests

Bills digests are my favourite resource, but there are several versions of each one on the Parliament of Australia website. All of them have the same information, but some are easier than others to read and work from because of their formatting or type (for example, PDF or ePub).

The link to the bills digest that is on the bill’s homepage will take you to a rather poor version, which I do not recommend using. At the top of that poor version, there is the option to download the PDF version [Fig. 7]. If you like PDFs, take that option. Personally, I prefer not to use PDFs because they’re harder to copy and paste from, so I’m going to find my preferred version.

From the poor version, I hover my curser over ‘Parliamentary Business’ and click on Bills and Legislation [Fig. 8]. I then go to Browse Bills Digests, which is in the column to the left [Fig. 9]. I click on the correct time period (in this case 2014-2015) and then click on the links for my bills [Fig. 10]. This takes me to my preferred version of the bills digest, complete with proper formatting!

 

Fig. 7 The poor version of the bills digest

Fig. 7: The poor version of the bills digest

Fig. 8 Click on bills and legislation

Fig. 8: Click on ‘Bills and Legislation’

Fig. 9 Click on browse bills digests

Fig. 9: Click on ‘Browse Bills Digests’

Fig. 10 Find your bills

Fig. 10: Find your bills

Useful links to start me writing

There are several useful links on the Edit division summary page [Fig. 11]. As well as the links to Hansard and parliamentary powers, practice and procedure (which I mentioned above), there’s a link to the research guide. This guide includes a ‘Guide for division summaries’, which gives advice on what information I should include in my summary and how I can best structure it. There’s also a Markdown link that tells me how to format my text. Finally, there’s the style guide, which helps me to write as clearly and plainly as possible. After I’ve read these three pages, I know I’m ready to start.

 

Fig. 11 Edit division summary page
Fig. 11: Edit division summary page

Writing summaries

I start with the title. My aim is to make it as brief and understandable as possible. Using the Guide for division summaries, this is what I come up with: ‘Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment (Seniors Supplement Cessation) Bill 2014 and two related bills – Third Reading – Pass the bills’.

Then I write the body of the summary. I start with a brief sentence or two on what the vote was. Then I describe what the bill does and some of the background of the bill. I use as many subheadings as I think are needed to make the information accessible.

The two questions I always ask myself when writing summaries are:

  1. Do I understand what this vote is about?
  2. Will someone reading this summary understand what this vote is about?

Link, link, link!

I add links as I write, including links to the bill’s homepage and its bills digest.

Add relevant policies

Once I finish the summary and am happy with it, I save it and add any policies that may be relevant. To do this, I click on the Does this division relate to a policy? link on the division page [Fig. 12] and then select the relevant policy [Fig. 13].

 

Fig. 12 Does this division relate to a policy?
Fig. 12: Does this division relate to a policy?
Fig. 13 Add related policies
Fig. 13: Add related policies

Summaries will change over time

I may re-read the summary I’ve written in a week or so and decide to re-edit it to make it better. Or maybe someone else will. These summaries can always be made clearer and more accessible, so don’t be afraid to change them.

I’m sure that as more people get involved, we’ll find different and better ways to approach summarising divisions. I know I’ve changed my approach hugely over the past year and am looking forward to seeing how it continues to change.

Good luck!

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Keep an eye on the policies that matter to you

By Henare Degan | Published: December 1, 2014

They Vote For You

Believe it or not there is no easy to understand explanation of every vote in our Federal Parliament. That’s why They Vote For You relies on the hard work of people like you to summarise votes and research Policies so that we can all better understand how our MPs are voting on our behalf.

Largely thanks to the magnificent political research of Micaela and Natasha there are over 900 divisions that have been summarised and dozens of Policies created on They Vote For You. In fact, just this week there has been more than 40 changes.

Luke and I have recently been working on a way to keep track of all these changes. Today we’re pleased to introduce email alerts for changes to Policies and their related divisions. Here’s how it works.

You’ll need to log in or sign up first. Then find a Policy you’re interested in getting alerts for and click the Subscribe link:

A policy page with a subscribe link

Now when any edits happen to a policy or any of its related divisions you’ll get an email:

Here's what an email alert looks like

Here’s what an email alert looks like

If you ever want to unsubscribe from an alert you can visit the policy page again or see all of your subscriptions on one page by clicking on Your subscriptions under the user menu:

Your Subscriptions

We’re keen to add more useful email alerts to the site – what would you like to see? Leave a comment or Tweet us @TheyVote4You.

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Show your support for FOI laws today!

By Kat Szuminska | Published: November 26, 2014

 

Today you have an opportunity to support effective Freedom of Information (FOI) laws in Australia. If you support strong FOI legislation then you really can do something to help, and you have to do it today!

Tomorrow the Senate will be voting on a Bill which we at the OpenAustralia Foundation believe will undermine your rights to access Freedom of Information. We made a short submission two weeks ago.

If you’ve made an FOI request on Right To Know your request has become part of the 748 public FOI requests which we presented to the Senate as part of our submission.

The amendments proposed in theFreedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014 undermine your ability to access government information in the future. It makes it easier for agencies to refuse requests, leaving no truly independent oversight of our Freedom of Information mechanism.

It’s likely the Coalition will vote in favour of this bill with Labor and The Greens opposing it. This leaves cross-benchers with the balance of power in the Senate on this vote.

If they vote against the bill, it will not pass.

If you want the cross-benchers to oppose this bill, then you need to tell them how you feel by calling, tweeting (#OAIC, #Auspol, #FOI) or emailing them.

Their contact details are below.

If you call, simply say you wish to talk to someone there about the Freedom of Information Bill currently before the Senate, and make as few or many points as you wish.

Here are some key points you could mention:

Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014:

  • Abolishes the Office of Australian Information Commissioner, a key element of the FOI reforms of 2009-10.
  • FOI review will no longer be free and non-litigious. It will sit entirely with AAT ( Administrative Appeals Tribunal) with an application fee of $861, and be in ‘lawyers territory’. This makes it costly and out of reach of many people.
  • Abolishes role of independent monitor, champion and advocate of open transparent government.
  • Out of step with practice in Qld, NSW, Victoria and WA, and international trend (over 40 countries).
  • Fractures connection between FOI, privacy and broader information management including proactive publication.
  • The Information Commissioner’s role to provide government with guidance on FOI will be transferred from an independent Commissioner to Attorney-General.

Here are the cross bench Senator contact details:

Senator Day
(02) 6277 3373
senator.day@aph.gov.au
@senatorbobday

Senator Madigan
(02) 6277 3471
senator.madigan@aph.gov.au
@SenJJMadigan

Senator Xenophon
(02) 6277 3552
senator.xenophon@aph.gov.au
@Nick_Xenophon

Senator Leyonhjelm
(02) 6277 3054
senator.leyonhjelm@aph.gov.au
@DavidLeyonhjelm

Senator Lazarus
(02) 6277 3204
senator.lazarus@aph.gov.au
@SenatorLazarus

Senator Wang
(02) 6277 3843
senator.wang@aph.gov.au
@SenatorZWang

Senator Muir
(02) 6277 3040
senator.muir@aph.gov.au
@muir_ricky
https://www.facebook.com/SenatorRickyMuir

Senator Lambie
(02) 6277 3063
senator.lambie@aph.gov.au
@JacquiLambie

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Submission for the “Inquiry into the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014”

By Kat Szuminska | Published: November 18, 2014

 

Australia Parliament House

 

The Secretary of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee recently invited The OpenAustralia Foundation to make a submission on their Inquiry into the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements). These amendments make it harder and more expensive to argue the case if and when agencies refuse requests for information under FOI law. This makes it harder for ordinary people to access information. Here’s what we wrote.

 

The OpenAustralia Foundation would like to thank the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs for inviting us to make a submission to the inquiry the committee is conducting into the Freedom of Information Amendment (new arrangements) Bill, which is presently before the Senate.

We Recommend that the committee oppose the Bill

The OpenAustralia Foundation (OAF) recommends that the committee opposes the amendments proposed in the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014 (the Bill)


Specifically, OAF recommends that the committee oppose the repeal of the Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010 to abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.


OAF recommends that the committee oppose amendments the Freedom of Information Act 1982 to move functions relating to FOI matters exclusively to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the Attorney-General’s Department and the Commonwealth Ombudsman.


Let’s have options to review and appeal FOI decisions

OAF recommends that following an internal review, a choice be made available to FOI applicants

  1. review a decision with the Information Commissioner (IC Review) or
  2. appeal directly to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), waiving the IC Review.


Freedom of Information is essential to a secure democracy

The Government holds information gathered on behalf of the Australian people. The Government is required to make documents in the public interest freely available to the public. Governments also need to give open access to people wanting specific information.


Australia was an early adopter of securing the rights of citizens to access information, but the rest of the world is moving quickly and we’re now falling behind.


Only half a dozen countries secured the rights of citizens to access information when Australia enacted the Freedom of Information Act 1982. As of September 2013, at least 95 countries around the world now have Freedom of Information laws. These are also known as Access to Information and Right to Information laws. [1] This access is a key component of transparency, accountability and participation. It’s a way for all citizens to scrutinize Government and public sector information, to become better informed, and to take full part in our democratic system. FOI is increasingly strengthened as part of Open Government initiatives, in which Governments are expected to be open and promote openness.


Today Australia ranks at only 49th in the global index of right to information standards [2] We can do much better.


RightToKnow.org.au


Freedom Of Information (FOI) is a crucial part of the checks and balances in any democracy, and key part of transparency and accountability of Government.


The process of making a freedom of information request is not very straight forward. OAF created the RightToKnow.org.au site with the aim of demystifying and simplifying this process and helping more Australians make FOI requests.


The site not only shows all requests but the paper trail of correspondence in pursuit of the request from those requesting documents and those holding them. Read more below at About RightToKnow.org.au


The site provides an unparalleled public view of the workings of the Australian Federal FOI system.

We’ve collected evidence

In appendix A OAF presents the 748 public FOI requests and their related correspondence made to Australian Federal authorities through RightToKnow.org.au* between Oct 16th 2012 and Oct 31 2014.


199 of these requests were successful or partly successful. 384 requests were unsuccessful (refused or did not turn up any documents), and 165 remain unresolved. These await reply, await classification, are overdue, or long overdue for a response.

How agencies behave

These publicly available FOI requests and their correspondence have given us all an opportunity to see first hand how agencies handle requests.


The evidence we present shows that there are big differences across agencies’ handling of FOI requests. Some agencies handle requests professionally and courteously. Thank you to those agencies.


Some agencies show a systemic culture of secrecy and a disrespect for FOI requests at work; they’re the ones gaming the system.

A systemic culture of secrecy

Australia has unbalanced laws about releasing information. The Government appears acutely aware of the risks associated with releasing information but much less aware of the risks of not releasing enough information. We have a system which severely punishes those public servants who release information which in it’s view ought not be public, and consciously or not, systematically encourages and protects those who avoid publishing information they could easily share. Thus it becomes safer for every public servant to hold documents close, and release as little as possible by default. This all helps to create the culture of secrecy.

 

We’re not  surprised when we see agencies interpret FOI law to the most minute detail with the purpose of avoid releasing information to the public by default. They argue against the release of even mundane documents where the material is uncontentious or even publicly available in another form already. At the same time, obstructive agencies also display what might be wilful misinterpretation or incompetence in their failure or inability to give the documents requested.


Such responses show that there is a culture of working harder to refuse rather than share their documents, Whether due to failing inefficient old information storage and retrieval systems, fear or lack of leadership, they’re acting in flat contradiction to their responsibilities under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act).


Australia needs the OAIC

It is these agencies’ behaviour which is most in need of ongoing guidance and training, and scrutiny.


Under this bill, important FOI functions would move from the OAIC to the The Attorney General’s Department (AGD). They would be be responsible for issuing guidelines in the Bill. However the AG’s Department is not independent and it is clear that they are not modelling best practice in this area. The AGD along with other agencies routinely delay requests for documents made under FOI law [3]. Is this because the AGD sees FOI as responsibility of the legal department to defend against requests from citizen, and not as a service for citizens?


For accountability, citizens need access to a free merit review system administered by an effective Independent office.  We already have that office, in the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).

Citizens Do Have a Right To Information and a right to review

Framing FOI as a legal problem, not a civic right is plain wrong. FOI decision makers and officers use the language of legal exemptions in interpreting the Act, rather than emphasise the need for openness and of ‘maximum disclosure’ made more explicit in 2010 reforms to the FOI Act. [4]


Having learned all the standard tricks of the refusal trade, agencies have become very adept at refusing FOI requests as a matter of course. In doing this they are knowingly gaming the system. They know that on refusal a request will go to review, making more work for the OAIC. This puts pressure on genuinely difficult to assess requests, which leaves the OAIC overwhelmed and very under resourced. Practically speaking it is their safest and (pending a review) cheapest course of action, and so we are not surprised when they do it as a first response. This tactic is also used to avoid answering time sensitive questions, so that by the time they are answered the issues raised are less relevant to public discussion.


In an interview in February of this year John McMillan, the Information Commissioner said

I’m not going to name individual cases, but I have a great concern that agencies will say, ‘Let’s just deny it. The person can appeal to the OIC, it may take them a year or two to get around to it,’ in which case the sensitivity will go out of the issue… I accept that that happens at the moment. So there is gaming of the system going on.[5]


Before RightToKnow.org.au came along, the only people who knew about these tactics were ‘insiders’, many of whom who take this situation for granted. Now everyone can see what they are up to. See Appendix A


Keep Freedom Of Information Free

To give ordinary users of FOI access recourse when their requests are denied, refused or avoided, then FOI law gives the a right of appeal to an independent office. An external review system which is accessible, free, and appropriately resourced to enable independent and timely assessment of whether the citizen’s rights of access were upheld is essential.


The current system is a long way from perfect, but the suggested changes in the Freedom of Information Amendment (New Arrangements) Bill 2014 would be a step backwards for transparency and would not serve the public interest.


Don’t charge people for a review

The proposed $861 charge levied on people seeking a review acts only as a barrier to entry for ordinary people who still want answers when a government agency denies or obstructs their request. People will stop asking for a review and the public interest will be undermined.


If the OAIC is abolished, agencies routinely refusing requests know it will go on unchecked, and as a result, far fewer cases will be investigated. In the end, fewer people will trust the FOI system and fewer requests will be made. Determinations will lead straight to a costly review process needing expensive legal assistance. That would be a terrible outcome for FOI and for Australia’s democratic health.


There are those who do wish to go straight to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), including media reporters following a time critical story. Their commercial interests and others argue for an alternative route to justice, one they are happy to pay for, but we should not make ordinary people pay for a process which does not best serve them.


Let’s keep the OAIC.


About RightToKnow.org.au

Right To Know aims to make it easier for everyone to make Freedom of Information requests in a few different ways.


  • Helping you make your successful request is the main focus of the site
  • Bringing all the authorities together saves time, you don’t have to trawl the web for the right authority first
  • To make the process easier to understand, it uses plain english
  • To get a feeling for the scope, wording of successful requests, it offers you dynamic search for related requests so you can see how others have done it
  • Clearly communicates your rights of access
  • Guidance appears as and when you need it to keep the request flowing through Right to Know and the Public Authority to whom your request is being made


RightToKnow does not provide help for individuals accessing private or personal information held by government.

About OpenAustralia Foundation

The OpenAustralia Foundation encourages and enables people to participate directly in the political process on a local, community and national level. We believe that we can help to reinvigorate Australia’s civic culture by using powerful and exciting new technologies to inform and empower people, to address the growing disconnect between the Government and the people who elect it.


We currently do this through our five online projects TheyVoteForYou.org.au RightToKnow.org.au, OpenAustralia.org, PlanningAlerts.org.au and ElectionLeaflets.org.au. These websites aim at finding better ways of making government, the public sector and political information freely and easily available and usable by all Australians. We aim to inform people so they can make a positive difference.


The OpenAustralia Foundation is a strictly non-partisan organisation. We are not affiliated with any political party. We are simply passionate about making our democracy work.


Notes and References

*Not included here or at RightToKnow.org.au  one or two requests which were hidden from the website because they contained inappropriately personal requests for information (not what the site is for). This is made clear on the site’s help page.


[1] Right to Information Index: http://right2info.org/access-to-information-laws

[2] http://www.rti-rating.org/country_data.php

[3] Posted in OpenAustralia Foundation, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment