I spent yesterday at Open Tech 2009, a meeting of self confessed geeks who are interested in making society a better place, some pretty impressive activists, and even an ex government minister. The emphasis was on getting access to data to enable ordinary people to make better decisions about their own lives. At the core of this group are some of the people behind MySociety who have radically changed the way you can follow your MP in parliament. They are now being actively consulted by Parliament about how the expenses process can be made open and accountable.
You can follow your local MP via one of these links
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/malcolm_wicks/croydon_north
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/andrew_pelling/croydon_central
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/richard_ottaway/croydon_south
My Society have several other projects, some built with government funding, it is worth taking a look at them here http://www.mysociety.org/projects/
Beyond MySociety there are many other exciting projects being put together by small local groups. The one which caught my eye was Cyclestreets.net an initiative built by Cambridge Cycle Campaign using OpenStreetMap data. It is still in Beta at the moment, but it looks pretty useful. They have built some local sites already, including one for Croydon, http://croydon.cyclestreets.net/ so try it out.
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Tags croydon, Open Tech
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