mySociety

Free Local Knowlege

FROM: Martyn OConnor

What NEED does this meet?
How do you know whether the hotel you book or the place you want to visit is really the best for you? How do you know which is the quickest route from one place to another in an unusual town?

What is the APPROACH?
Have local people who are willing to share their knowledge sign up on a postcode basis and anyone can put a query to the area they are interested in so that real people can then reply offering real, up to date human assistance and experience.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
There's no going somewhere and thinking "Next time I'd avoid this..."

What is the COMPETITION?
Not that I know of

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
Not particulary. I could probably build something myself in php and mysql with some time to think about it.

Orphans of the World

FROM: Beth Mash

What NEED does this meet?
As it stands now, an agency adoption of a child in Eastern Europe or Asia is usually anywhere from $20,000 (Asia) to $35,000 or more (Russia). The adoption angencies give dinky discounts for the adoption of older children, but not enough of a discount to actually help very many children find new homes. Because the agencies control the referral process, it is difficult for adoptive parents to arrange an adoption without paying huge fees. There are already some small regional/local photolisting services in various parts of the world, but why not let the kids over the age of 10 photolist themselves. Many of the urban/suburban orphanages are within walking distance of an internet cafe, and some of the orphanages are already online.

Even in the U.S., where child protective services is supposed to photolist all of the waiting kids, they never actually get around to it. There are perhaps 3 to 5000 kids photolisted at the most, although the number of kids legally free for adoption is well into six figures.

Obviously, there are some privacy concerns that have to be addressed with any photolisting, but those issues have been worked out with the photolistings that are up and running now.

It would be great to have a world-wide photolisting that would not be controlled by any one agency.

What is the APPROACH?
One worldwide photolisting vs. current patchwork of hard-to-find websites which are often out of date. Many photolistings currently in place treat the photolisted children as the property of the listing agency. If you want to adopt Child X, you MUST you the expensive services of Agency Y.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
All photolisted orphans under one website "roof" with a search function that searches through all available orphans simultaneously.

What is the COMPETITION?
There is now a more or less nationwide USA photolisting, BUT I believe that children are only listed there after they have been listed for a long time on their individual state photolisting site (this may vary from state to state.) As I stated previously, the total number of children on this site is a small fraction of the number who are "eligible" for listing.

Additionally, the social workers in each jurisdiction are gatekeepers for the government photolistings. If a child is in foster care, and becomes free for adoption, he will be photolisted IF AND ONLY IF his social worker gets around to it. Sadly, many foster parents will tell you that they have worked with social workers and local child protective services offices where photolisting the available children is NOT a priority. (As long as the child is NOT adopted, the local CPS office continues to receive federal funding for the child, which operates as a conflict of interest.)

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
I don't have any idea.

Local Services portal

FROM: Paul Chapman

What NEED does this meet?
This has a two fold need

1. To allow a low cost distribution of videos about Council Services

2. To allow residents to find out contact numbers and services

3. To allow people wanting to move into an area to find out about the area.

A third need is to allow residents to fill in forms for things like housing benefit, Council tax etc. However, this would require some fairly extensive security elements

What is the APPROACH?
If you've seen movies.com then this is what I'm thinking about for local services. The movies.com motion shows the video element. These are streamed videos, instead of being movie reviews and news it would be information about local services.

Councils should be able to register on the site as providers and a standard interface based on XML.

Eventually if full agreement can be obtained from councils then the site could become self financing by charging councils for various transactions such as council tax applications, housing benefits etc.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
Primary benefit is that residents can find about an area without having to navigate a councils own site which in many ways do not have a standard navigation, and in some cases may not have a standard set of information.

Councils would benefit because the way they provide services would have a 'shop window'

Better ways of providing services can be shown and councils that may not have thought of can see how other councils have solved problems.

Videos with an educational/informative element are cheaper to distribute over the web

What is the COMPETITION?
A service like this has been set up in the US which later failed. Partly because the technology at the time was in it's infancy. The emergence of XML as a standard communications technology means that most technical problems can be solved. In many ways it would be easier to implement the non transactional elements before introducing the more complex chargable transactional element.

Here are some of the US versions

http://access.wa.gov/siteinfo/

http://www.fedworld.gov/

http://www.firstgov.gov/index.shtml

http://www.governmentguide.com/main.adp

In Singapore they have http://www.ecitizen.gov.sg/

The nearest thing in the UK is http://www.ukonline.gov.uk/Home/Homepage/fs/en but this is in no ways as detailed as I am considering. This tells you more about how government works rather than telling you what government does.

The closest thing to what I am thinking of is these two US Sites;

http://www.firstgov.gov/index.shtml

http://www.governmentguide.com/main.adp

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
Implementation should be in three phases;

1. Information portal.

2. Video streaming of Information

3. Transactional elements of council requirements such as filling in council tax forms, claims for single occupancy refunds, etc;

Generally the information portal elements and the video streaming can use existing technology so it should not be too difficult.

The third phase however needs the agreement with councils so the major problem is political rather than technical.

Phases 1 and 2 would have a low cost as they use existing technology or technology which can be developed comparitively quickly. The third phase would need the agreement of councils and negotiation on the structure of the XML documents which the site would use to report transactions to client councils. However since they should be used to the service by then this should be easier.

F-Y-MP Plus

FROM: Louise Ferguson

What NEED does this meet?
People who need to fax/mail not just MPs, but MEPs, regional assembly representatives in various parts of the UK and perchance local councillors too.

What is the APPROACH?
The basic model is there already, with FaxYourMP. Extending this to other elected representatives will provide plenty of added value.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
People sit there chugging out individual emails to all these people. Some MEPs have their ISP set to not receive email (pretty pointless and causes lots of aggro for those wanting to get in touch with them). Let's put them all onto the same footing, open up the channels of communication, and produce stats to boot.

What is the COMPETITION?
FaxYourMP has, I hear, had the councillor part in the pipeline for some time, but it always goes onto the back burner. MySociety could make it happen.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
MEPs and regional assemblies would be straightforward. Councillors would be a little more problematic/time consuming, owing to keeping the data up to date. One step at a time.

Empathy Engine

FROM: Martin Long

What NEED does this meet?
Everyone will most likely at some point have a problem or a difficulty that they cannot solve all by themselves, and will want to turn to others for support. This could be for help with a practical problem, a social problem, or any other difficulty. Family and friends may not always have the necesessary knowledge or experience to be able to help. However, the likelihood is that there is someone out there on the Internet who does. I propose a method for helping to find those people. Problems could range from large to small - from needing help in choosing a new car, to coping with an illness. The idea is to find people who have done, or have had to deal with, the same thing.

What is the APPROACH?
I suggest either a searchable Website of some kind, or a Napster-style client program. Users could register themselves as having experience of or wanting to help with certain problems. Searching the site / program for the problem would allow users to obtain contact details (email, Instant Messenger etc) of those who could help.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
It would provide a convenient place to turn to find someone who could help, or at least understand, whatever problems you might be having. It might also have the side effects of allowing people in similar situations to communicate and make friends, and encourage people to reciprocate by sharing their own knowledge and experiences.

What is the COMPETITION?
There is nothing else like this that I know of. There are support groups and other places to look for information, but the advantage of this proposal is that you could quickly end up communicating one-to-one with someone with experience of the problem.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
It may require a fairly complex search engine and user registration system, and I imagine creating a client program would be more compex and expensive than using a Website.

Share Your Car

FROM: Marie Griffiths

What NEED does this meet?
Global warming is a threat to us all, much of the CO2 gases are emitted from cars. People spend hours in traffic jams and thousands of people are killed on the road each year.

What is the APPROACH?
I registered the domain www.shareyourcar.org during the petrol blockage. The idea is to date match people who are going your way. I am a web designer so I thought that this would not take to long to do. I have been busy with work up till now but now find myself unemployed. I have set up two internet businesses www.kittens.co.uk and www.holidayreport.co.uk. But they haven't taken off as much as I had hoped. I do have the user management and location data though.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
With Car Sharing, you reduce the pollution, you also reduce trafffic, you also reduce accidents, you also have more awake drivers, again less accidents. I already carshare myself with 3 people.

What is the COMPETITION?
http://www.studentzone.org.uk has the same idea but is focused at students only.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
I would need a commerical licence for a database, Web hosting and a budget for my time to work on this. I estimate £40,000 over 5 years part time. I might need a tie in with someone like multimap as well.

TeacherNotes

FROM: Mark Beaumont

What NEED does this meet?
Teachers are constantly writing material for their classes. From tests to mock exams, demonstrations, even handouts consisting of several pages, they are a valuable part of the learning process.

I taught A-Levels for 5 years and during that time it occurred to me that much of the work that I was doing must be being repeated by thousands of other teachers all across the country. This is ludicrous. I propose a system whereby teachers can catalogue and then swap their handouts with colleagues from other schools reducing the duplication of work that takes place right across the country.

What is the APPROACH?
Many teachers become authors and write books in their subject. However, where a teacher does not have sufficient material for a complete book, their is no easy way to publish. I am certain that a Website enabling teachers to publish small documents that they have written themselves would be massively popular.

The general premise will be similar to the peer-to-peer model employed by services such as Napster. There will be a download to upload ratio so that teachers have to offer material before they can pull documents from other teachers. And finally, there will be a subscription fee that centres will be asked to pay.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
I had this idea when I was writing a Computing mock A-Level exam. It occurred to me that around 1000 centres offer Computing A-Level and each of their teachers must be writing an exam similar to mine. This seems like a massive duplication of workload. Surely if the advent of the Web has taught us anything, it is that information can be shared very easily. The current system of hundreds of teachers all writing and preparing similar material should have become outdated years ago. I am seeking to put this right.

What is the COMPETITION?
None and believe me I have looked. The nearest competition is from teachers' guides that accompany course text books, but this is not really the same thing.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
The project needs three things to be successful. 1) Management. Me. I have a PhD in Computing and am capable of designing and planning the system at a conceptual level. I am also a freelance writer and can use my jounalistic skills to generate publicity. 2) A Website that allows sellers to logically "meet" buyers. This will be quite complex as Websites go and although I am a developer, I do not have the required skills myself. I will need to buy outside help. Such sites are standard and can be bought off the shelf. Ball park figures for such a site £7k. 3) Publicity. the success of such a scheme will depend on a critical mass of users. I will need a budget as large as possible to promote, by direct marketing, my site to teachers. Est: Up to £5k

Event Registration System

FROM: Tim Aumann

What NEED does this meet?
Charitable groups run events all the time that require to sign up - anything from a class or seminar to summer camp programs and trips. Each charity currently buys or develops software for managing these events (or worse, different sowftare for each type of event!). The idea would be develop a flexible, open-source system that a charity could use for event registration.

What is the APPROACH?
This approach is distintive in two ways. First, by offering the service for free, you free up charitable resources. Second, by offering a flexible yet standard method for event management, you make the entire event management process easier for the charity.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
People will be able to sign up for events that interest them easily and quickly online. Charities will not have to expend resources developing event management systems.

What is the COMPETITION?
Not that I know of. There are event management packages that can be purchased from for-profit organizations.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
It depends on how flexible you want to make it. With flexibility comes expense. A simple "sign me up for this one-off class of seminar" application would be cheaper than system that could also handle signing you up for multiple classes at different times at the same event. Same with if you add in a mehtod for online payment. But overall, it should not be too expensive. Probably a couple of man-months or so to develop and code. Using open-source toosl such as Java and MySQL would cut the operational expenses.

Lifestyle Organiser

FROM: Derry Birkett

What NEED does this meet?
In the world of internet, data is everywhere but information is not. What I propose is an small website or application that gathers local information relevant to one's aims into one place. e.g. If someone is interested in sustainable development they will login to that section and the sustainable development community will present itself to that person by means of contacts, local events, literature, websites, etc. thereby facilitating entry into said area.

What is the APPROACH?
The plan is to link local people to other local people with the same ideas and facilitating the community's growth and interaction by providing a centralised information centre highlighting events and movements by which each member can learn, develop and contribute.

The approach is distinctive by its localised nature. Turning vague ideas and hopes into realisable goals by the presence of other members and events in the same geographical area.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
Each person will have access to relevant information aimed to facilitate their integration into their chosen area, be it literature, art, environment or whatever. The idea is to gather relevant information and deliver it to interested party.

What is the COMPETITION?
A similar service is www.upmystreet.com but it lacks a community depth and is not providing the same information.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
The project is relatively straightforward and fairly low cost. A dynamic website would be a start; linking similar entities (organisational or personal) into one centralised container. This could be acheived through an extranet, allowing each entity to contribute it's information to a targeted audience.

Diffuculty level is low. The development is straightforward, requiring few people and little resources.

e-neighbourhood watch scheme

FROM: Paul Batley

What NEED does this meet?
Have a site where people can register say a mobile and the address and then anyone in the neighbourhood can login and warn their neighbour & the Police of any impending woodby criminal on the prowl..

What is the APPROACH?
Keep the login to a local level.. Say a village.. You could then set up an SMS service from the community website so people can contact neighbours etc in emergencies.. You could even have community messageboard & SMS Broadcasts about the community.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
Brings everyone online in your village or neighbourhood closer by making them more contactable...

What is the COMPETITION?
None that I'm aware of..

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
Well.. I'm a programmer and I don't think the SMS services and server would be of a great expense.. Even get the likes of Blue Chip companies involved setting up equipment etc...