[okfn-coord] Fwd: Proposal

Wed Sep 2 11:40:07 UTC 2009

Dear All,

Yesterday I had a call with Tom Steinberg of mysociety. He is
interested in "collaborating" on "Where Does My Money Go" specifically
in relation to a grant application to 4IP. We have already put in a
grant application to 4IP (just a few weeks ago) -- which I explained
to him. You can read more in his email below.

Questions for us:

  1. What are benefits?
  2. What are costs/risks?
  3. Should we do this (and how)?

For me there are obvious benefits (greater likelihood of getting a
grant, working with mysociety), but there are also obvious risks in
the sense of us getting "left out" of the project - in this area
mysociety are almost certainly better known at present than we are.

Regards,

Rufus

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tom Steinberg <tom at mysociety.org>
Date: 2009/9/1
Subject: Proposal
To: Rufus Pollock <rufus.pollock at okfn.org>, Matthew Somerville
<matthew at mysociety.org>, team <team at whatdotheyknow.com>

Hi Rufus,

I am writing to ask if OKFN would like to collaborate on a joint
proposal to 4IP relating to the development and growth of a website
dedicated to making UK government spending more transparent.

I am aware that you have already put in a bid to 4IP, but I would like
you to consider withdrawing it and re-authoring it in conjunction with
mySociety's team,and hopefully with some help from our uber FOI
volunteers.

The goal of the project from mySociety's perspective would be twofold
- to make a useful site that adds value for citizens on day one, but
more strategically to shape wider expectations inside and outside of
government about what spending transparency looks like when 'done
right'. The hope is that this can be used to persuade or cajole the
new administration into publishing information either in a copycat
way, or (better) in the formats we request.

I expect that the project will require substantial design hurdles to
be overcome, as well as masses and masses of semi-manual data cleaning
- and that's just for the first version. As a consequence I'm not
envisioning that this project would be likely to be built if we had to
do it purely from our own spare resources, despite its popularity as
an idea in our call for proposals. This is why the importance of third
party funding like 4IP is paramount.

Anyway, I'm concious that I don't want to be seen to be stepping on
toes, but I do think this could be a great thing for us to collaborate
on.

best,

Tom