[CivicAccess-discuss] Show your support for open gov. data at ibelieveinopen.ca

[Jennifer Bell]

Thanks for your comments, see inserted.

--- On Sat, 9/20/08, Robin Millette <robin at millette.info> wrote:

> From: Robin Millette <robin at millette.info>
> Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] Show your support for open gov. data at ibelieveinopen.ca
> To: "civicaccess discuss" <civicaccess-discuss at civicaccess.ca>
> Received: Saturday, September 20, 2008, 11:35 PM
> Le Sat, 20 Sep 2008 18:35:35 -0700 (PDT),
> Jennifer Bell <jenniferlianne at yahoo.ca> a écrit :
> 
> > The website ibelieveinopen.ca that I mentioned earlier
> this week is now live.  The site collects sigunups from
> citizens and pledges from political candidates on five
> issues related to government transparency.  We're still
> working on tweaking the look/feel and adding more pages to
> display the results, but the basic signup mechanism is
> working and ready for use. 
> > 
> > Pledges 4 and 5 are about open access to government
> data, so should be specifically of interest to this group. 
> I'll be sending out emails to MP candidates early next
> week -- it would be great to have a 'seed group' of
> citizen signups before then.  
> 
> I signed, I thought it was very simple and to the point.
> Daniel had a bunch of excellent points I won't repeat. I
> notice (perhaps it's a timezone issue) 5 Québécois
> already signed. Are you planning to offer the site in
> french? It would surely help me promote it inside and mostly
> outside Montreal.

Yes, there will be a French option -- however language selection / internationalization wasn't part of the free code base I received (natch).  In the very short term, I'll be putting up a language change link that will ask for volunteers to help with translation.

> Are you using
> http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?section=ele&document=index&dir=40ge/can&lang=e&textonly=false
> for your list of candidates?

No.   I've been using data from the party websites.  At the time I was gathering the candidate names that list wasn't available.  I'll double check my list with that one.

> And regarding postal codes and ridings, can you make that
> available right now as a web service, or are you going to
> release the data after the elections, or maybe even during?

That's the plan.  However, I'm going to focus on UI improvements first.

> > If this is an issue you feel strongly about, please
> show your support.
> > 
> > http://ibelieveinopen.ca
> 
> Yes I do!
> 
> P.S.: it would be great if your site was an Open Network
> Service as
> defined here:
> http://opendefinition.org/osd

Yes, it will be.  
 
Again, thanks for your comments.

Jennifer



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