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.
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
- review a decision with the Information Commissioner (IC Review) or
- 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 Accountability, Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Attorney-General's Department, Australia, committee, Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, Ethics, FOI, FOIA, Freedom of Information, Freedom of Information Act, Freedom of Information Act 1982, Freedom of information legislation, Information Commissioner, John McMillan, law, media reporters, OAIC, office of the Australian Information, office of the australian information commissioner, open government, openaustralia foundation, Right to Information Act, Right To Know, senate, Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee Leave a comment
They Vote For You
We believe everyone should know what our politicians do on our behalf in parliament. If we don’t, how can we hold them to account meaningfully? How can we begin to talk to them about what we want them to do?
Trust in politicians is at an all time low. Yet we live in a time when technology has the potential to bring us ever closer to our representatives. It’s time we started using it.
What we see on television or read about online or in newspapers about parliament focuses on arguments in Question Time. We see adversarial battles, emotional rhetoric and partisan spin. It can be a distraction. It’s not an accurate view of what goes on in parliament.
We need to look behind what they say, and examine how they vote, because the most important things that politicians do in parliament is vote. They vote to make new laws, and update and amend the existing ones. Changes to the law can and do have a profound effect on our society, and the way we go about our daily lives. Yet if you want find out how they voted, you have to roll your sleeves up, trawl through pages and pages of Hansard, Votes and Proceedings and Journals of the Senate and try to make sense of it all. This is not something anyone can do easily.
Parliament should be easy, and accessible. That is why today the OpenAustralia Foundation is launching a new site They Vote for You, so you can find out how your representatives in parliament vote on issues you care about.
Our political researchers have been working to accurately summarise votes and connect these with easy to understand policy positions. So, now you can see where everyone in parliament stands on issues that you could talk to them about, issues that your MP or Senators might vote on again in the near future. Do you agree with them, or not?
How, for instance, has your representative voted on “a minerals resource rent tax“, “decreasing availability of welfare payments”, “increasing surveillance powers”, “decreasing availability of abortion drugs”, or “increasing restrictions on gambling”?
They Vote for You is a small but vital piece of “civic infrastructure” which help build the roads and bridges that 21st century citizens need to help them get to where they want to go.
You might ask if parliament should be putting all this together? Well, yes perhaps, but the machinery of parliament is slow, and we are not. In many ways, it’s easier for us to do it than it is for them. That’s why we are filling the gaps and hopefully in the process, change everyones’ expectations of what democracy looks like in the internet age.
And you can help.
If there is a policy missing that you would like to see you can do your own research and add it, much like Wikipedia. See a mistake? You can fix it yourself. A mistake could be as simple as a spelling error, or as subtle as one word in a description which changes how you interpret the result of a vote.
In our short life as a charity, the OpenAustralia Foundation, has already created several other non-partisan pieces of civic infrastructure. OpenAustralia allows you to keep tabs on what politicians say in Federal Parliament. With PlanningAlerts you receive an email any time something new is planned to be built or knocked down in your local area. With RightToKnow you can access inside information on what your government is doing by making a Freedom of Information request really easily. With ElectionLeaflets we monitor the leaflets that people receive in the mail during elections. If you live in Victoria, you can upload election leaflets you get in the mail for the upcoming state election.
The right to know what politicians say in parliament and how they vote on our behalf is one that has been fought for and won by citizens. It is a right that we must not take for granted.
Now it’s time to bring it bang up to date.
(An edited version of this was published at Guardian Australia)
And what a hackfest it was
September 15th is The International Day of Democracy and this year also marked the start of the Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW). GLOW is a week of openness activities around the world, with events hosted by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership and members of the parliamentary openness community. To celebrate GLOW, the OpenAustralia Foundation ran one of our legendary hackfests on the weekend of the 20th and 21st.
And what a hackfest it was. Our most successful ever – if the number of code contributions is anything to go by. 18 pull requests from over half a dozen different authors in just one weekend is a excellent achievement. These contributions have made valuable and tangible improvements to a number of our civic projects.
We started the weekend with an introduction to parliamentary and legislative openness and an exciting new project we’re soon to launch. This progressed into a discussion with participants about what challenges they want to use civic tech to address and what everyone wanted to work on over the weekend. Matthew set the scene for the weekend:
“Let’s make stuff. What will you make?”
Over the weekend participants were encouraged to run breakout sessions on topic or projects that interested them. Nick explored political donation data, Luke gave us a detailed look at our soon-to-be-released parliamentary vote tracker project and Matthew provided an introduction to web scraping on our morph.io platform.
We were very pleased to have representatives from the Australian Federal Parliamentary Library attend our hackfest. To our knowledge this was the first time staff from any of Australia’s parliaments have attended a hackfest in an official capacity. They quickly discovered that we share many of the same interests in parliamentary data and Hannah generously shared her knowledge of parliamentary procedure in another exciting and informative breakout session.
When the dust settled Sunday afternoon our show and tell revealed the impressive results of a fun weekend hacking parliamentary, legislative and democratic data. In addition to the many pull requests, Sash had created a beautiful new rich email template for OpenAustralia.org, Matthew had used MapIt to finally solve the problem of easily mapping your location to electorates, Alex added great new Parliamentary Bills data to the OpenAustralia.org scraper, and Tracy developed much improved forms with Luke on our soon to be released parliamentary voting project.
Thank you to everyone that participated, you made it the amazing weekend that it was. Thanks to Googlers Tim and Jack for volunteering all weekend and thanks once again to our hosts Google for their continued support.
See you at the next pub meet or hackfest,
P.S. Check out more great photos of the hackfest by Lisa Cross.
Time for another hackfest – Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW) edition
The OpenAustralia Foundation is pleased to invite you to another one of our legendary hackfests. In some of our previous hackfests we’ve opened PlanningAlerts to over 1.8 million more Australians and brought hacks and hackers together to launch our Freedom of Information project Right To Know.
Places are limited so RSVP for free now or read on for more details below. You can RSVP on our Meetup group.
This time we’re going back to the old school and will be concentrating on opening parliaments, politicians and elections. Our event is timed to coincide with the Global Legislative Openness Week (GLOW). This week sees events hosted by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership and events like ours hosted by members of the parliamentary openness community around the world.
As usual we’re inviting anyone interested in open government, not just developers, along to our event that will run on the weekend of the 20th and 21st of September 2014. Once again we’re being generously hosted by Google Sydney.
While you’re welcome to come along and work on anything you’d like, here’s some ideas to get you started:
- Spruce up OpenAustralia.org or add new features
- Features like expenses data for our federal politicians
- Or maybe transcribing their financial interests into a database
- Visualising party preferences
- Writing scrapers on morph.io to liberate more parliamentary data
Oh, we’ll also be providing special access to our latest project that allows you to analyse votes in our federal parliament!
This is roughly what the weekend will look like:
Saturday
10:30 – Doors open
11:00 – Introduction and talk(s)
12:00 – (Free!) Lunch, chat and meet people to work with
13:00 – People have eaten and found something and someone to work with
17:00 – Pack up and have a drink somewhere
Sunday
10:30 – Doors open and hacking starts
12:00 – Lunch
15:00 – Show and tell
16:00 – Grab another well deserved beer
Grab your free RSVP now – we hope to see you there :)
Sydney Pub Meet Now A Regular Feature
Before the night was even over at our last pub meet people were asking when the next one would be so we’re making it a regular thing!
From now on, the last Tuesday of every month will feature the OpenAustralia Sydney Pub Meet. We’ve now got a fancy Meetup group set up so please join and RSVP if you can make our next meet on the 29th of July.
Once again we’ll be cosy by the fire of the Library room at the Woolpack Hotel, a short walk from Central station, where you can enjoy good pub food and craft beer.
See you there!
Don’t forget to join our Meetup group and RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/OpenAustralia-Foundation/events/194788272/
Sydney Pub Meet – 24th June 2014
We’re having a Sydney pub meet on Tuesday the 24th of June 2014 and you’re invited.
Come along, say hi, and have a chat about open government, transparency, FOI, and civic hacking with us and friends. You can even get a sneak peek at our upcoming project.
We’ll be sitting by the fire in the cosy Library room of the Woolpack Hotel, which is a short walk from Central Station. There’s good pub food and craft beers on tap – join us at 6:30 PM (for 7 PM).
Please RSVP so we can make sure they have room for us. You can find all the details on the Eventbrite page.
See you Tuesday :)
Parliamentary vote tracker project: A Case Study – Asylum Seeker Policy
This post is part of a series on our parliamentary vote tracker project. Read our previous post to learn more about the concept of policies and policy selection. You can also read our previous posts: a technical update and an introduction to what we’re doing and why.
Co-authored by Natasha Burrows.
Specific wordings of policies have been an issue throughout the process of policy development. The one that springs to mind is our policy relating to asylum seekers. The problem here is exacerbated given the heightened politics surrounding the issue. Narrowing this policy down to something that is objective and can be measured has been quite difficult.
In a draft, the policy was written like this: For “a stronger system for asylum seekers arriving by boat”. This wording was borrowed from the UK Public Whip site. However, this way of phrasing the policy was flawed because both of the two main parties, Labor and the Coalition, broadly agree on the need to implement a “stronger system” with regards to asylum seekers arriving by boat. However in the last session of Parliament, the Coalition often voted against Labor’s measures for a stricter system, specifically in regards to the so-called Malaysia Solution. As a result of the phrasing of our policy, our data suggested that the Coalition was voting against a stricter system for asylum seekers arriving by boat. However in reality the Coalition was really just voting against Labor’s policies for a stricter system for asylum seekers, while at the same time proposing their own strict system.
The language has also been an issue. What exactly does a “strict system” entail? Our reasoning for keeping the language broad (and, admittedly undefined) with a word like strict was because asylum seeker policy for boat arrivals in Australia is quite broad. It comprises of issues relating to visas, mandatory detention and offshore processing. To narrow this down to only one specific component of asylum seeker policy risked making the policy too specific for the legislation that was presented to parliament. However broad language risked presenting issues and policies with a pseudo-political-correctness. In reality, developing a succinct, understandable and objective policy is much harder than we first imagined.
Ultimately, we decided to split the broader policy into four parts: “For greater scrutiny of detention centres”; “For offshore/regional processing of asylum seekers“; “For temporary protection visas“; and “For the Refugees Convention and Refugees Protocol“. So far this phrasing seems to be working.
Because our whole modus operandi is to increase openness in Parliament, it only makes sense for us to open up the processes by which we are doing this. We really do want as much feedback as possible.
Parliamentary vote tracker project: The concept of policies and policy selection
This post is part of a series on our parliamentary vote tracker project. You can also read our previous posts: a technical update and an introduction to what we’re doing and why.
Advice from Richard Taylor has been a great anchor throughout the process of developing policies. This is that:
The first priority when creating new policies is that they should attempt to provide the public with information on voting behaviour that is intelligible and interesting to a wide range of users. The second priority should be that a reasonable, neutral observer would conclude that the language and topic contained in a the policy description was a fair representation of an MP’s voting behaviour, whatever side of the policy they end up on. The title and description of the policy can always be improved later.
For now we are continuing along, aware that the flaws that we have can indeed be improved later. We acknowledge the current flaws in our project and are looking for advice on how to improve them.
For now we have put together a patchwork of factors that we believe are important when defining a policy. These factors have been a checklist for us when deciding on a policy focus. These have included:
- Issues that rank highly as concerns to Australians in polling data. For example Ipsos consistently ranks crime, cost of living, healthcare, education and asylum seekers as the top five concerns to Australians, so policies we have chosen engage with these concerns.
- The focus on the issue in the media. While this has not been a deciding factor in policy selection, we have decided policies with an understanding of the coverage it is getting in the media. Often, however, we have been inspired to focus on issues that are not necessarily getting a whole lot of media coverage, for example ‘For Stronger Unions’.
- Any potential impacts on the Constitution. For example, legislation introduced in the last sitting of the 43rd Parliament (2010-2013) had the potential to impact the Constitution, specifically how the relationship between the federal, state and local governments interact.
- The turnout in Parliament, meaning how many representatives are present in Parliament during a division.
- The number of rebellions in Parliament. A rebellion occurs when a representative votes crosses the floor to vote against the rest of their party.
Parliamentary vote tracker project: what we are doing and why
Hello! Welcome to a series of posts about the OpenAustralia Foundation’s new conception, a parliamentary vote tracker. This project is based on the Public Whip, a site developed in the UK by Julian Todd and Francis Irving. The point of this project is to make the processes and procedures of parliament more accessible to the general public. Our project takes voting data from Hansard to see exactly how our MPs are voting on legislation.
In Australia we are truly lucky to have an established democracy. However, this system is not as open and accessible as it could and should be. Information about our politicians and how they represent us is freely available but the data is convoluted and too difficult to understand. The language used in Parliament and copied into Hansard is often complicated, and the processes are too far removed from what is easily understood. One of our main goals in this project to make what happens in parliament – the debates, the votes and the proposed and passed legislation – more easily available to the public eye.
This is why we have been working on this project. Our end goal is for any member of the public to access our site and be able to see how a Member of Parliament or Senator votes on any number of issues. We are dissecting the votes in Parliament to make each division (or vote on a piece of legislation) easily understood. Our conception focuses on the context surrounding a piece of legislation, what the legislation actually proposes, the impact it has and the debate surrounding it in Parliament. We aim to be able to distil these votes down so that anybody can come to our site and understand exactly what each vote in Parliament really means.
We are narrowing these issues down to specific policies. Under this notion, a policy is a statement that you can objectively measure votes against. Most basically, policies are just a group of divisions (votes) in parliament. As a Research Assistant, my role is to look at these votes and develop policies by which to measure a Member of Parliament’s or Senator’s stance on an issue. A key aspect of this is keeping the language plain, which is something that Hansard is not.
Firstly, let’s get up to date on the lingo. A division is simply an official vote in parliament. For example, representatives may vote on a motion to read a bill for a second time (or, put another way, vote on a motion to agree with the main idea of a bill). Divisions are only called when there is not a clear indication of how many representatives either vote aye (yes) or no in relation to motions. This in and of itself is a problem with parliament – we only have data on controversial votes. Most of the legislation passed in Parliament does so without a division. This is because when there is bipartisan support on an issue it is clear that it will be passed and a division is not called.
Along the way we have spitballed, debated and drafted the best way to select and articulate what exactly our policies should be. Defining these policies and our method of selection has been one of the largest hurdles in the project so far. We are still deciding how best to address these concerns, and are really open to any feedback and advice you have, dear users of the internet.
A long overdue tech update about Australia’s first ever parliamentary vote tracker
Back in July last year Matthew told you that we’d started work on a new project and it’s high time for an update on the progress of that project. I want to share with you what we’ve been doing, where we’re at right now, and some exciting new development that we’re undertaking before we launch this pioneering project for all Australians.
The open source code for our vote tracking project is once again inherited from the UK. The great thing about this is that our parliamentary systems have a lot in common, at least on the surface. Dig a little deeper (and writing code to analyse parliamentary voting is certainly doing that!) and you find many subtle but crucially important differences.
These are the kinds of questions we’ve needed to answer and then represent in code:
- Can MPs vote both aye and no as in the UK?
- Can the speakers and their deputies vote? If so, under what circumstances? Are they representing their party when they vote?
- Is there a way to actively abstain in the Federal Parliament?
- Should tellers be included when tallying up votes?
A key part of this project is interpreting the data we’re analysing and making it easy to understand – without a PhD in political science. To this end, we’ve been excited to have some political researchers on our project team. They too will be sharing some posts about the process they’ve gone through in the coming weeks.
Like our work on OpenAustralia.org, this work has uncovered a number of issues in the official record. Things like people voting when they aren’t MPs any more. As always we’ve sent these fixes to Parliament House to be corrected. By the way, this would be so much easier if they just had an open bug tracker :)
The code we inherited for this project was written by some brilliantly smart people but some of it is over a decade old and it wasn’t being actively developed. It’s a simple fact that over time complexity creeps in and technical debt builds up. This has lead to making some difficult decisions about how to move forward.
We’ve started work on a Rails port in an effort to strip back complexity in both the codebase and usability. We’re not rebuilders by nature so this was a decision that was not made lightly but we’re confident this will mean the project will have a brighter future.
We’re approaching this port carefully, in the same way Matthew did with PlanningAlerts. The PHP code still works and it’s built in such a way that the still active UK site could take advantage of our work and “upgrade” to this version.
To be able to present our best work possible there are still a small number of bugs to resolve. Once that’s done we’ll focus on getting the Rails port ready for launch. We don’t have a date right now but it should be within the next few months.
If you’d like to find our more you can see all the development live on GitHub (including those issues I imported recently, yay!). Please drop me an email if you’re interesting in getting early access and helping out. Also, don’t forget to keep an eye out for some really interesting posts from our political researchers in the coming weeks.
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