thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

They Work for You is the title of an online project that:

“aims to make it easy for people to keep tabs on the activity of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Parliament.

You can browse parliamentary debates going back to November 2005, grouped by their relationship to Bills, Ministerial Portfolios, Committees, and MPs.

Voting record analysis by party will be available soon.”

It is based on a more developed UK site with similar objectives – they work for You.com.

Rob McKinnon was out here recently for Kiwi Foo camp and took part in some digital democracy meetings. He does this on a voluntary basis and leverages open source software to provide the publishing framework.

The summary version I heard was – politicians are real people. They also need to hear from others who are interested. The current process can get in the way. This project removes some of the access barriers and the upside will be – better quality debate; via informed responses from and by a wider selection of people.

Expected  result: more informed action/s including submissions from a wider range of people – who might not have taken part before.

I like the idea and this is one project that I will follow.