Glad I made it to NotCon (delayed somewhat by my trip from Cornwall and a distinct lack of Circle & District line) yesterday and very grateful to Lionel for letting me 'borrow' his badge so I could actually make it in to some of the afternoon sessions at what was a very well attended, even oversubscribed, event.
One of the highlights of the day was the official launch of TheyWorkForYou.com - now in beta test. I'll let them describe the site / service in their own words:
"Everything MPs say in the House of Commons is recorded in a document called Hansard.TheyWorkForYou.com helps make sense of this vital democratic resource and, crucially, allows you to add your own comments and links to the official transcripts of Parliament."
There are some extremely cool features, including RSS feeds of each MP's statements in Parliament and the fact that the parser and DB driving the site are Open Sourced. Tom Loosemore was actively encouraging people to build their own versions and tools - let the games commence!
I was reminded of the time I met one of the Hansard chaps - at a DTI PAT18 'consultation' in the late 90s - and suggested that BBC Parliament (I was working for the Beeb at the time) and Hansard could get together on the web & digital TV and turn British politics into American football... or a bloodsport! That particular idea was never going to happen, of course, but its great to see that the public will finally be getting access to the sort of resource that the all-too-powerful(?) lobbying groups have been using for years.
Many congratulations and much kudos to the whole team :)
Now if only some of the 'higher-ups' would remember that they are, in fact, Public Servants not our masters...
Posted by lankyphil at June 7, 2004 11:33 PM | TrackBack