[open-government] UK YourNextMP Update - An engine for open data on candidates, social media links

[Steven Clift]

See update below and the site:
http://yournextmp.com

Start crowd-sourcing on candidate links. Lots to fill out on candidates
with only a few data fields and no social media links yet. Making
candidates more accessible is a real win with this effort. Note all the
emerging data uses in the update below.

Join their online group to get involved:
https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/democracy-club

Follow on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/democlub

If you are outside UK and want to explore spreading use of this code (uses
Poplus components) to your area, join here: http://bit.ly/poplusgroup  And
note: http://poplus.org  And: https://github.com/mysociety/yournextmp-popit


Read on below - Steven Clift
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Democracy Club" <yournextmp at democracyclub.org.uk>
Date: Mar 7, 2015 8:14 AM
Subject: Thank you for all your help!
To: "netclift" <clift at e-democracy.org>
Cc:

 Dear netclift,

We’re emailing to thank you for your contributions to YourNextMP. We now
know about an incredible 3,339 candidates (80% of the 2010 total) and this
would have been impossible without the contributions of volunteers such as
yourself.

YourNextMP is unique in being open and free, its license means that others
can build on the data to build amazing things. It’s also unique in having
an API that allows other people to easily re-use the data in their own
projects and keep up to date. These mean that your contributions can have
the sort of impact we hope for - for every voter to have an opportunity to
know who their candidates are and what they believe in.

Here are some of the current users of the data that we know about so far

   -

   38 Degrees - Campaign organisation, helping voters connect with
   representatives and candidates
   -

   MeetYourNextMP - Open hustings database, http://meetyournextmp.com/
   -

   Position Dial - Find your political position and that of candidates,
   http://www.positiondial.com/
   -

   Election mentions - See what news sources have been saying about your
   candidates and constituency, https://www.electionmentions.com/
   -

   Wikipedia editors - Helping to keep election data on Wikipedia, an
   important source of information for many people, up to date and accurate by
   assisting editors
   -

   http://cv.democracyclub.org.uk/
   <http://mail.democracyclub.org.uk/l/MZpxfnq44VViQlwTE3LdwQ/iOez2PjG892WjDQsVGc7635kPw/i4oFaQSFL4Zi5soae1lMAA>
   uses YourNextMP data and asks the public to ask their candidates for their
   CV
   -

   The Telegraph are using the data to power some of their infographics
   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11436882/Ten-places-where-voters-will-decide-whether-Ed-Milibands-career-lives-or-dies.html
   <http://mail.democracyclub.org.uk/l/MZpxfnq44VViQlwTE3LdwQ/i4oFaQSFL4Zi5soae1lMAA/i4oFaQSFL4Zi5soae1lMAA>
   -

   Google plan on embedding the data on Google Search directly (in the same
   way as they display wikipedia pages, etc)
   -

   https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/
   <http://mail.democracyclub.org.uk/l/MZpxfnq44VViQlwTE3LdwQ/nBmVInCPSD3C2hj8jQzm0g/i4oFaQSFL4Zi5soae1lMAA>
   are linking to your constituency page from the results page of their
   survey.

and we expect many more in the run up to the election.

Tell your friends about the site, build amazing things with the data. We
hope that you can keep contributing! If you have any ongoing questions
about YourNextMP, please email the Democracy Club Google group, linked at
the bottom of this email, or hit reply.

Thank you,

Sym, Mark and the rest of the YourNextMP & Democracy Club team

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/democracy-club
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