[CivicAccess-discuss] supporting a civic access project

[Tracey P. Lauriault]

where is the voting spot! I am a reputablebar in toronto with my reputable
friend se, and neither of us could find the vote pot!

mighta been the cognac, or the hot toddy, maybe even the peanuts- alas help
us help you!

hic cup!

On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Michael Lenczner <mlenczner at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> Ilona and I worked up a project and submitted it to one of those
> trendy online competitions.  We need some voting for it so if you had
> the inclination to head over there and give us a good rating, we would
> very much appreciate it.
>
> Basically the project is to improve OurParliament, create a second
> youth-friendly version of it called Citizen Factory, and develop a lot
> of online youth educational content about how parliament works.  As
> the project is designed, the data, the code, and the educational
> content created will all be open / creative commons.  :-D
>
> And if any of you have suggestions about where else we could pitch
> this project to get the rest of the funding, those would be
> appreciated as well!
>
> The url is below.  And I included the project description.
>
>
> ---------------------------------------
> Apathy is Boring needs your help - Vote for Citizen Factory!
> In keeping with our mission of making Canadian democracy accessible
> (and sexy!), AisB has applied for funding to launch Citizen Factory, a
> website that will provide Canadians with real time updates on the
> actions of our elected officials. From your MPs' voting record to the
> status of bills on environmental protection, Citizen Factory will make
> all info about Parliament accessible and understandable.
>
> To get Citizen Factory off the ground, we need your help. Show your
> support by visiting
> http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/17338 and rating our
> innovation, Citizen Factory, with 5 stars - and tell your friends to
> do the same.
> Thank you!
>
> content from the
> application------------------------------------------------------------
>
> WHAT IS YOUR IDEA?  WHAT MAKES IT INNOVATIVE?  WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
>
> The Citizen Factory Project will offer real time info about how
> Canada's democratic process works through a website created for youth
> by youth.
>
> President Barack Obama's campaign was characterized by the message of
> change based on more frequent and higher quality interactions between
> citizens and their government. Projects like TheyWorkForYou.com (UK,
> run by MySociety) and OpenCongress.org (US, run by the Sunlight
> Foundation), as well as Obama's Change.org are innovative examples of
> this new dynamic.
>
> By using technology to inform and involve more citizens in the
> workings of their democracy, these initiatives all aim to improve
> connections between elected officials and their constituents through
> increased transparency and accessibility. However, none of these
> projects are specifically geared towards youth.
>
> Apathy is Boring will change that by creating The Citizen Factory
> Project. By adapting the technology of OurParliament.ca, a citizen-run
> bilingual website which aggregates government and civic information,
> Citizen Factory will offer youth real-time updates on the actions of
> their elected officials and youth-friendly information about how
> Canadian democracy works.
>
> Since 2004, Apathy is Boring has been using art and technology to
> educate youth about how to get involved in their communities. During
> that time, we have been recognized as a leader in the field of youth
> engagement. By partnering with OurParliament.ca, Apathy is Boring will
> collect relevant government information and adapt it for a demographic
> that is increasingly opting out of traditional forms of civic
> participation. The importance of projects like Citizen Factory are
> concretely supported by research such as Mimi Ito's work for the
> MacArthur Foundation and studies by the Canadian Chair of Electoral
> Studies Professor Henry Milner. Citizen Factory will capitalize on new
> tech possibilities of the web to engage young Canadians with the
> democratic process in real time.
>
>
> WHAT WILL BE THE IMPACT OF YOUR IDEA?
>
> We believe it should be easy to be informed of the activities of your
> representatives. The main impact of this project will be to give the
> next generation of Canadian voters the resources they need in order to
> be engaged actors in the democratic process. By taking civic
> information which is currently inaccessible to youth (and most
> citizens) like representatives' voting records and "Web2.0"-ing it,
> Citizen Factory will help make sure that Canadian youth can easily
> access government information. This will be supplemented with
> youth-friendly educational resources explaining what this information
> means.
>
> Concretely the project will also help develop the ecosystem of
> democratic online projects in Canada and beyond. It will support
> improvements to the scraping and aggregation system of OurParliament
> as well as the development of an API (application programming
> interface) and RSS feeds so that third-party websites can easily
> access and repurpose OurParliament's database. All of the software and
> educational content created will be FLOSS and Creative Commons,
> therefore they can be reused and repurposed by other projects.
> We anticipate that this project will help guide the development of
> similar youth-oriented materials within transparency and citizen
> engagement initiatives in other countries.
> _______________________________________________
> CivicAccess-discuss mailing list
> CivicAccess-discuss at civicaccess.ca
> http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss
>



-- 
Tracey P. Lauriault
613-234-2805
https://gcrc.carleton.ca/confluence/display/GCRCWEB/Lauriault
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.pwd.ca/pipermail/civicaccess-discuss/attachments/20090129/6acec57b/attachment.html>