Big thanks to Crikey!

By Nat | Published: September 10, 2008

Just want to say a big thank you to Sarah Stokely and the rest of the Crikey! team for providing OpenAustralia with a complimentary one-year subscription to Crikey! which means that we’ll now try and tie in current political news with what’s going on in the Australian Senate and House of Representatives.

We’ve been posting links to interesting, topical and contentious debates through the @OpenAustralia Twitter feed but now with the daily Crikey! newsletter we will pick out and publish summaries of key news items in Australian politics and link to relevant debates.

Considering the 140 character limit of Twitter the news summaries and extracts from Crikey! will be rather short so you’ll be getting the most value out of this news feed from OpenAustralia if you go and get yourself your own Crikey! subscription too; perhaps you can start with the 21-day free trial.

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"Are you a lawyer?" update

By Matthew Landauer | Published: August 25, 2008

I mentioned in a previous post how we are looking for some legal help to set up a legal entity with the aim of getting charitable status.

The latest news is that the Public Interest Law Clearing House of NSW (PILCH) has reconsidered our application and agreed to help. In the next couple of weeks they’ll be finding us a lawyer who can help with the formation of a legal entity.

Hooray!

The current OpenAustralia.org site is but a taster of what’s to come. This next step will ensure that we can continue to build the kinds of tools that ultimately, we feel, be part of making the world a better place.

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The Senate is Here!

By Matthew Landauer | Published: August 17, 2008

To quote the latest news item on www.openaustralia.org:

Just in time for the next sitting, for your civic pleasure, we bring you the Senate. Read the Senate Hansard as far back as 2006, and get to know those lovely people working on your behalf, the Senators.

No bills pass without the say so of the Senate, so get over there and see what they’re up to. Better still, write to them and ask them what they’ve been doing on your behalf over the recess.

While we’ve tried to bring you a perfectly working website, it is in beta, so if you find anything broken, or see anything wrong, please drop us a line.

So, head on over to the main site and check it out.

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Interview about OpenAustralia

By Matthew Landauer | Published: August 13, 2008

Read an interview with me by Maxine from WebDirections about OpenAustralia and some of the many ideas we have for its future.

WebDirections runs a host of conferences in the area of web development.

I’m a little late as this was over two weeks ago but hey, better later than never.

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Are you a lawyer?

By Matthew Landauer | Published: August 6, 2008

Are you a lawyer? Can you offer us advice about setting up a legal entity and charitable tax status for OpenAustralia?

Setting up a charity under the correct legal status is a complicated business in Australia. We need help. We’re not lawyers ourselves and we want to do this right. OpenAustralia is strictly a non-partisan information service and is no shape or form political but we want to make sure that we dot our i’s and cross our t’s when it comes to our legal status.

So far we’ve contacted the Public Interest Law Clearing House (PILCH) NSW and a lawyer from Freehills but have received no concrete reply.

So, if you’re a lawyer or you know a lawyer that could help us and has experience in this area please point them at this blog post or contact us.

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The Register of Members’ Interests is on our doorstep

By Matthew Landauer | Published: July 3, 2008

A copy of the Register of Members’ Interests for the House of Representatives has quite literarily arrived on our doorstep! We can now begin the task of scanning and transcribing. Please contact us at contact@openaustralia.org if you want to help with the transcribing. If we get enough people this won’t be too big a task.

We won’t put the result online until the committee that looks after the Register has met and discussed what we’re doing. This won’t happen until the end of August when the House of Representatives is back from recess. That gives us plenty of time to get on with the job.

We’ve blogged about this several times before: “The Register of Members’ Interests is not available online“; “Register of Members’ Interests update“; “I’ve got it written down here on a piece of paper“; “The register is on its way“.

Let the fun begin.

Posted in Announcement, OpenAustralia.org | 1 Response

The Register of Members' Interests is on our doorstep

By Matthew Landauer | Published: July 3, 2008

A copy of the Register of Members’ Interests for the House of Representatives has quite literarily arrived on our doorstep! We can now begin the task of scanning and transcribing. Please contact us at contact@openaustralia.org if you want to help with the transcribing. If we get enough people this won’t be too big a task.

We won’t put the result online until the committee that looks after the Register has met and discussed what we’re doing. This won’t happen until the end of August when the House of Representatives is back from recess. That gives us plenty of time to get on with the job.

We’ve blogged about this several times before: “The Register of Members’ Interests is not available online“; “Register of Members’ Interests update“; “I’ve got it written down here on a piece of paper“; “The register is on its way“.

Let the fun begin.

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Who’s blogging about OpenAustralia?

By Nat | Published: July 2, 2008

It’s only been live for a few weeks but already OpenAustralia has received great coverage and publicity from the online community.

Here are some links to articles and blog posts about OpenAustralia:

… plus more.

Thanks everyone for promoting, discussing and providing feedback on OpenAustralia. Also make sure you follow us on Twitter at @OpenAustralia.

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Who's blogging about OpenAustralia?

By Nat | Published: July 2, 2008

It’s only been live for a few weeks but already OpenAustralia has received great coverage and publicity from the online community.

Here are some links to articles and blog posts about OpenAustralia:

… plus more.

Thanks everyone for promoting, discussing and providing feedback on OpenAustralia. Also make sure you follow us on Twitter at @OpenAustralia.

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The Register is on its way

By Kat Szuminska | Published: June 29, 2008

The sample volume of the Register of Members’ Interests is in many ways a mundane looking tome. Representatives’ entries look like forms any one of us might fill in. Some standard and diligent, no doubt from years of filling in the same forms with exactly the information requested in the headings, others’ perhaps overly detailed. Cover letters volunteering information absolutely not requested when Members feel they should do so. Typically, we see shares, names of banks mortgages are with, homes, and cars, along with membership of clubs and associations. However, there are no amounts specified in the pecuniary interests stated. Its only possible to infer from some of the headings where there is a requirement to register items over a certain figure. eg. Gifts worth over $750.

The Committee of Privileges and Members’ Interests was not able to discuss our republishing of the Register of Members’ Interests online last week. It is not expected to meet again until August when Parliamentary sittings resume. In the meantime, the Registrar for the Committee of Privileges and Members’ Interests is arranging to send the full Register of Members’ Interests to OpenAustralia. We’ll then transcribe these entries, many of which (at least in the sample volume) are forms filled in by hand. The pages are however sparsely filled which makes the whole enterprise look much more manageable. The first step will be digitizing all the pages, which we’re hoping will involve a friendly neighbourhood bulk scanner. Step two may be a couple of passes, typed entries we hope will run through some OCR software, and then we may well be asking for some volunteers to help with the handwritten entries. Look out for an update soon!

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