Digital Library Services for Democracy

About a week ago, shortly after the public launch of OpenAustralia, we were contacted by Richard Allan, who has been involved with TheyWorkForYou over a number of years. He used to be a UK Member of Parliament with a strong interest in technology issues.

While he was an MP, he even wrote the first version of the email alerts system for TheyWorkForYou.

He now works for Cisco UK in the area of technology policy issues. He has a lot of dealings with European governments in the area of telecoms legislation and the like.

He also chairs a UK Task Force called Power of Information which was established by the Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson MP in March 2008 which is about opening up government information in all of its various forms.

In a very nice coincidence he was coming on a visit to Australia to speak at a conference in Brisbane and meet politicians and government officials in Sydney and Canberra.

Yesterday night he took time out from his busy schedule to meet Kat and myself for dinner in Sydney. We talked about a lot of things including his dealings with people from MySociety, his plans for telling people about OpenAustralia and his work with Cisco and the Power of Information Task Force.

OpenAustralia is a good example of what is possible by opening up information. Because the Parliament website publishes the Hansard daily online we can take that and effectively repackage it into something that is more engaging and more oriented to how actually people want to read and interact with this information.

For his meetings with Australian government officials and politicians next week he can now use OpenAustralia.org as a case study to show what people, just ordinary, but technologically capable people, can build on their own without waiting for the government to do it for them.

We had a really interesting conversation over dinner with Richard. We certainly learned a great deal. We also hope that he will be one of the many people to help OpenAustralia grow and become more popular over the coming months and years.

It’s now been just under a week since we launched OpenAustralia to the wide world. The response has been overwhelming considering just how little we did to let people know about it. You might have noticed that we’ve seemed a little quiet in the last week (i.e. no new blog posts until today) but that’s just because we’ve been trying to keep up with the messages coming our way.

So, if we haven’t gotten back to you please be patient we’ll get to you soon!

Thank you everyone for your very kind words of congratulations and support. It means a lot to us.

This is just the beginning – so expect to see a lot of new and exciting things to come.

As of June 3rd, some more information on the Register of Members’ Interests
“… as far as volume is concerned there are 7 binders with A4 sheets in them the size of the register grows progressively during the life of a parliament as members must notify ‘alterations of their interests’ within 28 days of the alterations occurring – at present its probably around the 1200-1500 pages but it would keep growing for the rest of the term of the Parliament.”

and a useful bit of history today, again from the Registrar, Bernard Wright (thanks Bernard)
“When the system [Register of Members’ Interests] was put in place in 1984 Members were also required to declare relevant interests orally when speaking in debates, but this requirement was dropped on the grounds that their interests had been declared in writing and that these declarations were public. Some members continue to make oral declarations, and the case you have cited is an example, but these are voluntary.”