mySociety

inequalities.net or downmystreet.co.uk

FROM: John Hudson (with Paul Dornan & Dave Hudson)

What NEED does this meet?
Inequality is rising but poverty is unevenly spread across the country. Standards of living vary dramatically from place-to-place. Environmental degradation blights some communities while others enjoy the benefits of pollution free surroundings. Access to new technologies is restricted in many areas of the country while others benefit from ubiquitous high-speed wired and wireless connections. Life expectancy for a male varies from 79.3 years if he is born in North Dorset to just 68.7 years if he is born in Glasgow City.

In short, geography matters: inequality has a strong spatial dimension. However, while government policies are the solution to these problems they also contribute to them: government spending is not distributed equally; local authorities, devolved assemblies and QUANGOs attach differing priorities to tackling inequalities; the ‘post code lottery’ increasingly determines access to, or the quality of, many key government services. Where citizens once relied on a national welfare state to tackle social inequalities and a strong regional policy to redistribute income between areas of the UK, the decentralised, slimmed down, ‘hollowed out’ state of the 21st century no longer provides such guarantees.

Inequalities.net (or downmystreet.co.uk) lays bare the statistical facts of this polarisation of society. Using GIS (geographic information system) technology, it maps social science data and official statistics to postcodes and local authority boundaries. It allows those affected by inequities, campaigning against them, researching them, reporting them or reacting to them to quickly and simply access information about the levels of poverty and social exclusion in specific areas and compare them with other areas or to the national average or to rank them nationally. Similarly, it will enable people to geographically interrogate data about government spending, public service standards or the availability of public services or key private utilities. It will do for data about social exclusion and government services what upmystreet.co.uk does for data about property prices and the availability of private services, but it will serve the cause of the marginalised rather than the middle class, the anti-poverty campaigner rather than the prospective home buyer. It will hold decision makers to account and enable activists to bolster their arguments for social change by placing the latest information and research at their fingertips.

What is the APPROACH?
In many ways the approach is indistinctive: it follows the form of upmystreet.co.uk in mapping readily available statistical information to postcode data. However, its distinctive element comes in its content: the provision of information about the failures of government policy and the negative impacts of capitalism. It provides quick and easy access to information that commercial organisations are unlikely to make a profit from and that government often wants to keep quiet about. Given this, the only viable business model is one based on that of a social enterprise. Indeed, its strength will be to draw on contributions from those already active in providing such information but to use the internet to pool their expertise and knowledge. Once the technology underpinning the site is in place we will establish a network of researchers and campaigners and look for their assistance in maintaining the resource. We believe many will be happy to help us: inequalities.net will serve their ends as campaigners and researchers and will widen access to, and the impact of, data they are already collecting as part of their work.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
What we are proposing is a sort of post-modern Fabianism. Like the early Fabians, our aim is to provide wider access to objective, factual information about poverty and social exclusion and, as such, our project is politically neutral. However - again like the early Fabians – we believe that increased access to this information will aid the cause of those seeking progressive social reform. The difference comes in that their approach to distributing information (meetings, pamphlets) carried high marginal costs whereas ours carries extremely low marginal costs. Moreover, we can offer what is in effect an automated, tailored research experience for each visitor: they will select the indicators and geographic areas they are interested in.

There will be those who will point to the ‘dangers’ of our project, arguing it will exacerbate the polarisation of society by allowing people to search for ‘no go’ areas in order to discount them as communities to live, work or invest in. However, our position is that while inequality is rising, a social and political complacency has crept into our civic culture that needs to be challenged. Inequalities.net will bring information about those inequalities to a wider audience, bolster the activities of campaigners, help disadvantaged communities make the case for increased public investment, encourage journalists to include data about social inequalities in their writing and help teachers to illustrate and discuss social issues in citizenship classes. Our view is that it is not greater access to information that poses the danger to society: it is lack of debate.

What is the COMPETITION?
The obvious competitor is upmystreet.com. However, we would see our service as complementary; they use similar technologies but for differing ends. While the two will overlap in places (upmystreet provides useful information about school performance and crime rates for example) their site is primarily aimed at those with an economic interest, ours those with a social or political interest. The National Statistics website is also a ‘rival’, but again differences will persist. Our site will have more of a campaigning edge to it, lacking the need for the apolitical approach that an official government site demands.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
We already have some of the key skills needed to take this forward and are confident we could use our connections to establish a network to support the site. The initial start up costs could be quite high though and we would need assistance from a wide range people - statisticians and GIS experts in particular – to help us get the project off the ground. It would also be very useful to draw on the expertise of commercial organisations such as upmystreet or those who have worked for them in the past.

How much will my pension be?

FROM: Dr R.J.Appleton

What NEED does this meet?
People with personal (defined contribution) pensions who want to find out how much to save to achieve a level of income.

What is the APPROACH?

Approach is to get state pension amounts (from Dept of Work & Pensions site - very hard to find figures for state pension amounts) and average annuity rates from FSA tables (www.fsa.gov.uk) for projected pension pot and calculate

What are the BENEFITS to people?
It is hard to get a siomple answer to 'how much can I expect to get when I retire?' if you have a defined contribution pension plan. Projections by pension providers talk about how big a 'pot' one will ahve at 55, 60 or 65 but do not relate that to monthly or annual income (as that requires annuity rates).

Although one cannot forecast with accuracy tying up a pension pot with annuity rates (with various other bits of data such as spouse's pension, retirment ages ofn 55,60,65, income level or linked to RPI, etc) will give a lot more idea to people about what they can expect to retire on. This will help with decisions regarding levels of contribution. (Current annuity rates are low, so currently this approach is likely to underestimate the pension income).

What is the COMPETITION?
Don't know of any place to get this as a consolidated view across state and annuity providers.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
Failrly simple, although an annual update may be required to state pension figures as DofW&P only keep these in a PDF file (making it hard to prase automatically).

I have manually obtained average annuity rates from FSA by repeatedly filling in their query form, and averaging out the projected monthly pension amounts in the response table.

The World At A Glance

FROM: Brad Evans

What NEED does this meet?
This idea serves the general well being of the Earth. It is a way of keeping all informed of the state of the world's violence, environmental degredation, disease and human inequities. A focus point for discussion and hopefully action.

What is the APPROACH?
A website displays the globe divided into 10 km square blocks. This globe is searcheable, magnifiable and spinnable. Each block has colours and/or symbols indicating it's state based on information from various concerned groups.

First there would be an indicator of violence as it applies to the local population of each block. Are the inhabitants in danger of immediate violence from war, civil unrest or perhaps their own government and police force?

Then there would be an indication on how human needs are being met. Is there sufficient availability of drinkable water, food and medicines?

Then an environmental indicator would attest to the safety of the environment for human beings. Factors such as pollution, old landmines and/or some other local danger.

Once immediate humman needs are expressed by indicators, then we can move on and have indicators expressing political freedom, average affluence and longevity.

And after human needs are expressed then there would be indicators of the quality of the land, environmental degradation and the effects of overpopulation.

Administered well, the World At A Glance would contain unbiased, up to date information for all to see.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
All the above information is available in some for or other, but I feel that it needs to be compiled into one easy to read and understand situation map. The World At A Glance will remind people that things are not well outside of their own sphere. It will help groups and governments decide where resources and efforts need to be directed.

Some governments may be embarrased into addressing the troubles in their countries. Many school children around the world will seek to change all the indicators on the World At A Glance to the best values.

What is the COMPETITION?
I'm sure that some governments and some think tanks have situation maps of the world. There are situation maps for certain commodities.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
The technical expertise of building this would come from the open source community. That part would be free. Most of the effort would be in coordinating and rating the information and its sources.

A templates of factors and scales would have to be devised with the help of experts. That fact that these experts would be people who have devoted their lives to addressing human need, would mean that they would be probably be willing to participate freely.

I think a line from the movie 'Field of Dreams' can describe how people might be attracted to this project .. "If you build it, they will come".

Preventable Diseases Lifestyle Database

FROM: Robert Johns

What NEED does this meet?
When I was 7, a family friend sadly died of a heart attack. I remember asking my Mum why people had heart attacks and she said that in most cases it was because they didn't eat the right foods, didn't get enough exercise and didn't look after themselves very well. So I asked her what I should eat so that I didn't get a heart attack, and she just shrugged her shoulders and said, I don't really know, just healthy stuff. And so I asked her, was that why Nan was so old, because she looked after herself, at which point she got a bit impatient and said it was time for school.

But that got me thinking, there obviously are quite straightforward reasons why a lot of people get heart attacks and, as I realised when it became clear it wasn't just a star sign, cancer. In fact over the years reading various reports of whole streets of people living near mobile phone masts getting ill, or hotdog sausages being the top of the cancer hitlist of foods to avoid, or simply a chemical in the inside of tin cans causing cancer in young people, I thought hang on, it's all a bit random, why doesn't someone just record all the details of everyone who has these diseases and then see what the most common factors are.

Obviously being only 7 years old, the scale and logistics of such a project didn't occur to me (despite my no doubt precociousness!), but my thought was that if Joe Bloggs, who was a lorry driver and died from a heart attack at 41 was put together with all the other people who died early, and it was found that maybe a significant majority did no exercise whatsoever, whereas maybe James Bloggs who was a lorry driver and did a mere 30 minutes exercise a day lived to 100, there might be a lesson for countless numbers of people.

What is the APPROACH?
What I'm proposing is a database that is filled in by the public, but is only accessed by medical professionals and specially designated people, the people who really have the power to make a difference. It will record as many lifestyle details as is possible, whether it be through specific questions, check boxes etc, or by free text areas. They can then use the information in ways that best serve the community, whether it be through awareness campaigns or legislative changes (eg banning certain ingredients from certain foods, or dangerous chemicals from, say, swimming pools.), or just as a catalyst to further research.

Also, there would be the option for people to put in why they think they or family members became ill, or for old people to say why they think they have lived so long. Two examples to illustrate this: maybe if just two or three of Harold Shipman's patients' relatives had had somewhere to raise their concerns, many more deaths could have been prevented. And if say a significant number of 100 year olds are found to have begun drinking alcohol after the age of 40, that could tell us something else.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
The aims of this would be to make people's lives longer, more pain-free and help to lower the amount of preventable disease that causes so many premature and needless deaths every year. The information from the database could be used in so many positive ways (I'm sure you're thinking of others right now!), and it is feedback that people will believe, a lot more than say a glossy magazine article that says "drink more green tea" then next week says "green tea gives you cancer". If you have cold hard facts that say that, for example, of all the 90+ year olds who drink green tea, 87.5% drink it without food, and of green tea drinkers who develop cancer, 81% drank it to excess (these examples are all totally made up by the way, but I hope they illustrate the point), this is solid evidence that people will respect and heed.

Basically, if an alien came to Earth (or a 7 year old!) and asked why people died of so many preventable things, and we said well, it's just that we never really recorded what it is that people actually do with their lives to make them healthy or not, then I see a bit of a gap in human development that could be filled well here.

What is the COMPETITION?
There are a great number of detailed lifestyle databases out there, mainly created by large companies to know their customers better, tailor products towards them and be more proactive in selling their product or service. Having a database in the way that I am proposing would not necessarily make a company any money or assist them in getting new business, which is where the work of Mysociety fills a gap; getting a project such as this off the ground with the needs of society rather than corporate profit as a focus.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
I actually think that it will be extremely difficult to implement, although not necessarily as expensive as other ideas. In fact, there is a high chance that after a few years it will turn out not to be feasible and be closed. But what this will have achieved is to get the idea out there, lessons learnt from the first attempt, so that in the long run something akin to what I'm suggesting can be made that really does have some long term benefit. I don't propose an overnight cure for all preventable disease, just the beginnings of what could be one of the biggest life saving tools of the current age.

A forum for exchange of historical geopolitical information.

FROM: Paul Jensen

What NEED does this meet?
It is currently difficult to find information which aids comprehension of how things are changing within different countries - like income levels, health care, education, or consumption or production of food, arms, etc. Although a good deal of information is available it is usually not in a form that invites study and comparison.

For example, a question like "how is the distribution of income changing in Asian countries compared to European countries?" requires hunting up the information from a variety of sources, then trying to discern the trends, and then creating additional information to convey the analysis.

I'd like to see a forum created for sharing historical geopolitical information in a form that allows everyone to use the data and create their own data files to share in a manner similar to the way a digital music file can be created and shared now.

What is the APPROACH?
Historical information for a given quantity can be represented by a standard spreadsheet with a few common headings - like the attributes available for music files - that allow tools to visualize the information and compute new spreadsheets. For a geopolitical time series, a matrix of the statistic over time and across countries is appropriate.

Tools can then be written to combine several of these into other forms - using the population of each country and the total income for each country to compute per capita income, for example.

There also needs to be a variety of ways to view the information. Seeing the per capita income dynamically change on a animated map, for example, allows overall trends to be quickly grasped.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
Having easy ways of exchanging information that is essential to making informed decisions would likely spur more interest and involvement in decisions that impact all of us.

What is the COMPETITION?
There are lots of the pieces around, and lots of data. But the exchange forms that make wide use possible are not currently available. I know of no Napster-like forum for this type of information.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
I have a prototype tool now in place at called Time and Place along with a small collection of files.

What is primarily needed are some great ideas of how to create a forum for this information and how to categorize it for ease of sharing (Genre, Title, Author, etc.). Formalizing the exchange standard is the only task that has wide impact on the other things that need to be done.

Innovative tools are also needed, such as an animated map display. Once a few basic tools are available, these tools can be created, tried, discarded, and new ideas explored. The nice part about this type of forum is that with an exchange standard in place, the work can be done independently with little need to coordinate.

Viridian Indexer

FROM: mark simpkins

What NEED does this meet?
Based on a sentance by Bruce Sterling. In one of his Viridian Rants he mentioned the idea on an icon on his desktop, of a factory spewing pollutants into the air as he used his computer. To remind him that the power being used is polluting. We need a set of tools for people to be able to monitor and query the possible polltion levels for their usage of technology etc. By building a common set of tools to describe visualise the level of pollution from various sources people will be able to monitor thier usage and maybe reduce it. A couple of years ago I was at the Chelsea Flower Show with the BBC, running a network of 30 + computers, which were left running day and night. In amongst all those plants I wanted to know how much power / pollution was being generated.

What is the APPROACH?
First to produce a set of on line caluculators so that electrical device usage (TV, computer, kettle, oven) can be entered and a 'viridian index' be produced. This should also be extended to cars/motorbikes etc. and flag comparisons with public transport.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
Saving the atmosphere. As the viridian design line goes, we can't upgrade the atmosphere.

What is the COMPETITION?
Yes, there are a number of online calcualtors out their to give you some idea of your impact on the environment, but they are disparent, not connected and often hard to find and ugly. Viridian design is also about design, sleek, looking good and also saving the world :)

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
Inital work. collation of power usage data into databases (easily updateable by the community) and a set of tools to visualise the output.

Later stages would involve working with product manufacturers to build in monitoring, put the viridian index on packaging etc.

Eyesore

FROM: Michael Scott

What NEED does this meet?
The need to improve the visual enviroment. Everyone knows an eyesore when they see one.

What is the APPROACH?
A website that enables people to post pictures of eyesores. A zoomable UK map provides a view of eyesore density. Areas are singled out as prime offenders. Notifications are sent to responsible parties. Comments, positive and negative ratings, additional photographs can be applied to eyesores by website visitors. Kudos can be accrued to eyesore removers. An eyesore can be anything from a permanently unemptied rubbish bin at your local bus stop to a hideous corporate skyline blocker. The sole restrictions would be that it has to be photographed and publicly visible.

What are the BENEFITS to people?
The website would give a central place to let off steam, and perhaps shame some offenders into removing, or at least rectifying, some of the more conspicuous eyesores. Also, as "eyesore" is a relative term, there would be a light hearted, "it takes all sorts" side to the website which would make browsing fun.

What is the COMPETITION?
No competition as far as I can see. Collaboration would likely come from the media, who would see it as a source of human interest stories, and architectural associatons, who would see it as a platform for promoting informed opinion.

What BUDGET & LOGISTICS are required?
Basically just another photo database website with some specific user interactive features. As a software developer, with 8 years website experience, I would be happy to put it together myself with a small team. Photo and comment vetting would be an issue, though perhaps a wiki-like approach would be sufficient in most cases.