TheyWorkForYou
Encyclopedia
TheyWorkForYou is a website run by mySociety
, a project of registered charity UK Citizens Online Democracy
, and is a tool for political campaign
ers and those interested in the Parliamentary activities of UK MPs, Lords, and Northern Ireland MLAs.
The site aggregates content from the Hansard
records of the House of Commons
, House of Lords
, Scottish Parliament
and the Northern Ireland Assembly
, along with other publicly available data such as the MPs
Register of Members' Interests, election results, Wikipedia
entries, and voting records, providing a "digital dossier on your local MP". It also has a facility to alert users by email to speeches by an MP or specific words appearing in Hansard.
In 2008, The Daily Telegraph
rated it 41st in a list of the 101 most useful websites
software of Public Whip
, and launched at NTK's NotCon '04 conference. At the time, Cory Doctorow
called it "the most amazing, subversive piece of political webware I've ever seen".
As time passed, more features were added and more areas of Parliament were covered, such as the House of Lords back to 1999. Around the 2005 general election
, Channel 4
used a branded version of TheyWorkForYou to supply their MP data. The site won the Community and Innovation award in the 2005 New Statesman
New Media Awards, with the judges saying that they "were unanimous in feeling that TheyWorkForYou was the nomination that has done most to contribute to civic society in the UK.". In the House of Lords, in a debate on the Power Inquiry
, Lord Gould of Brookwood referred to TheyWorkForYou and the other mySociety sites as "probably the biggest single catalyst for political change in this country".
In summer 2006, the Department for Constitutional Affairs
funded the creation of an API for the site so other sites could use the data from the site themselves. Later that year, Matthew Somerville added the entire Northern Ireland Assembly Hansard and all MLAs to the site. The concept has also been taken by a New Zealand
developer who has created TheyWorkForYou New Zealand
and it is hoped someone will do the same for the Welsh Assembly and other political institutions. In June 2008 openaustralia.org was launched with the assistance of mySociety
, making the Register of Senators' and Members' Interests online for the first time ever in Australia. In April 2009, an Irish version of TheyWorkForYou was launched in beta form. Called KildareStreet.com, it contains Irish parliamentary data from January 2004 to the present day.
TheyWorkForYou has become so established in the workings of Parliament itself that one MP has used the fact that her husband subscribes to email alerts on her speeches to remind him of their 30th wedding anniversary.
In early 2006, The Times
published an article stating that MPs were "making forgettable contributions to debate" or tabling numerous written questions simply to boost their statistics on TheyWorkForYou. This led to a debate in the House of Commons on the increase in questions, led by Peter Luff
. The site removed the absolute rankings and added some more explanatory text in response, and held a meeting at Parliament later in the year to discuss better metrics. In summer 2006, Jack Straw
, Leader of the House of Commons
also mentioned TheyWorkForYou as a site which "seems to measure Members' work in quantitative rather than qualitative terms."
In a Business debate on 26 April 2007, Theresa May
stated that TheyWorkForYou had been "threatened with legal action for repeating what was printed in Hansard."; Jack Straw confirmed that "publication ... of a fair and accurate account of a debate in either House is protected".
MySociety
mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy, that aims to build "socially focussed tools with offline impacts". It was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003, and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004...
, a project of registered charity UK Citizens Online Democracy
UK Citizens Online Democracy
UK Citizens Online Democracy is a registered charity in England and Wales, number 1076346.At present, UKCOD's main activity is running the mySociety project. mySociety builds websites which give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives...
, and is a tool for political campaign
Political campaign
A political campaign is an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making process within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, wherein representatives are chosen or referendums are decided...
ers and those interested in the Parliamentary activities of UK MPs, Lords, and Northern Ireland MLAs.
The site aggregates content from the Hansard
Hansard
Hansard is the name of the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard, an early printer and publisher of these transcripts.-Origins:...
records of the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
, House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
, Scottish Parliament
Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Parliament is the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital, Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "Holyrood", is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament...
and the Northern Ireland Assembly
Northern Ireland Assembly
The Northern Ireland Assembly is the devolved legislature of Northern Ireland. It has power to legislate in a wide range of areas that are not explicitly reserved to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and to appoint the Northern Ireland Executive...
, along with other publicly available data such as the MPs
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Register of Members' Interests, election results, Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
entries, and voting records, providing a "digital dossier on your local MP". It also has a facility to alert users by email to speeches by an MP or specific words appearing in Hansard.
In 2008, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
rated it 41st in a list of the 101 most useful websites
History
TheyWorkForYou was originally built almost entirely by volunteers using the parsingParsing
In computer science and linguistics, parsing, or, more formally, syntactic analysis, is the process of analyzing a text, made of a sequence of tokens , to determine its grammatical structure with respect to a given formal grammar...
software of Public Whip
Public Whip
The Public Whip is a parliamentary informatics project that analyses and publishes the voting history of MPs in the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
, and launched at NTK's NotCon '04 conference. At the time, Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...
called it "the most amazing, subversive piece of political webware I've ever seen".
As time passed, more features were added and more areas of Parliament were covered, such as the House of Lords back to 1999. Around the 2005 general election
United Kingdom general election, 2005
The United Kingdom general election of 2005 was held on Thursday, 5 May 2005 to elect 646 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party under Tony Blair won its third consecutive victory, but with a majority of 66, reduced from 160....
, Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
used a branded version of TheyWorkForYou to supply their MP data. The site won the Community and Innovation award in the 2005 New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
New Media Awards, with the judges saying that they "were unanimous in feeling that TheyWorkForYou was the nomination that has done most to contribute to civic society in the UK.". In the House of Lords, in a debate on the Power Inquiry
Power Inquiry
The POWER Inquiry was established in 2004 to explore how political participation and involvement can be increased and deepened in Britain. Its work is based on the primary belief that a healthy democracy requires the active participation of its citizens....
, Lord Gould of Brookwood referred to TheyWorkForYou and the other mySociety sites as "probably the biggest single catalyst for political change in this country".
In summer 2006, the Department for Constitutional Affairs
Department for Constitutional Affairs
The Department for Constitutional Affairs was a United Kingdom government department. Its creation was announced on 12 June 2003 with the intention of replacing the Lord Chancellor's Department...
funded the creation of an API for the site so other sites could use the data from the site themselves. Later that year, Matthew Somerville added the entire Northern Ireland Assembly Hansard and all MLAs to the site. The concept has also been taken by a New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
developer who has created TheyWorkForYou New Zealand
TheyWorkForYou (New Zealand)
TheyWorkForYou is a volunteer-run website, and is a tool for political campaigners and those interested in the Parliamentary activities of New Zealand MPs...
and it is hoped someone will do the same for the Welsh Assembly and other political institutions. In June 2008 openaustralia.org was launched with the assistance of mySociety
MySociety
mySociety is an e-democracy project of the UK-based registered charity named UK Citizens Online Democracy, that aims to build "socially focussed tools with offline impacts". It was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003, and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004...
, making the Register of Senators' and Members' Interests online for the first time ever in Australia. In April 2009, an Irish version of TheyWorkForYou was launched in beta form. Called KildareStreet.com, it contains Irish parliamentary data from January 2004 to the present day.
TheyWorkForYou has become so established in the workings of Parliament itself that one MP has used the fact that her husband subscribes to email alerts on her speeches to remind him of their 30th wedding anniversary.
Controversies
When the site launched, it did not have the right to reproduce Hansard, and no licence for it existed. A licence was later given, and click-use licences for Parliamentary copyright information were created as a result.In early 2006, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
published an article stating that MPs were "making forgettable contributions to debate" or tabling numerous written questions simply to boost their statistics on TheyWorkForYou. This led to a debate in the House of Commons on the increase in questions, led by Peter Luff
Peter Luff
Peter James Luff MP is a British Conservative Party politician. He has been the Member of Parliament for Mid Worcestershire since the 1997 general election, and was MP Worcester from 1992 until 1997...
. The site removed the absolute rankings and added some more explanatory text in response, and held a meeting at Parliament later in the year to discuss better metrics. In summer 2006, Jack Straw
Jack Straw
Jack Straw , British politician.Jack Straw may also refer to:* Jack Straw , English* "Jack Straw" , 1971 song by the Grateful Dead* Jack Straw by W...
, Leader of the House of Commons
Leader of the House of Commons
The Leader of the House of Commons is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom who is responsible for arranging government business in the House of Commons...
also mentioned TheyWorkForYou as a site which "seems to measure Members' work in quantitative rather than qualitative terms."
In a Business debate on 26 April 2007, Theresa May
Theresa May
Theresa Mary May is a British Conservative politician who is Home Secretary in the Conservative – Liberal Democrat Coalition government. She was elected to Parliament in 1997 as the Member of Parliament for Maidenhead, and served as the Chairman of the Conservative Party, 2003–04...
stated that TheyWorkForYou had been "threatened with legal action for repeating what was printed in Hansard."; Jack Straw confirmed that "publication ... of a fair and accurate account of a debate in either House is protected".
External links
- TheyWorkForYou.com
- http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/personal_tech/article1808580.ece
- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article707997.ece