Read my posts on the mySociety blog. Portfolio below updated periodically.
The goal of mySociety’s Climate programme is to reduce the carbon emissions that are either directly controlled or influenced by local government in the UK. From 5-8 July, we will run a prototyping week to understand what mySociety could bring to the problem of improving energy efficiency in the
An ambitious and welcome vision for FOI in government, but big changes are needed to see it happen.
Learning from different approaches across Europe
What we learned about the public's understanding of local government.
Dividing local government services into service delivery, regulation, and place making.
ARIA's exclusion from FOI is part of a broader attack on government transparency.
Our polling finds support for making voting instructions public, but also that MPs are seen as responsible for their own votes.
What if, instead of one way of comparing local authorities, you had... five?
Focusing on the effects on FOI of proposed changes.
mySociety's evidence to the 2021 PACAC inquiry into the Clearing House
What are users of TheyWorkForYou alerts interested in?
Party comparisons are displayed in more places and calculated in an improved way.
FOI is in trouble, and needs its own defender.
Work-in-progress: Using BEIS emissions data to identify similar councils, and put them into clusters.
Explore FOI statistics for UK central government and Scotland.
Appealing to the Court of Accountants.
How do appeals to ICO and OSIC vary in outcome and time taken?
Understanding what makes Environmental Information special in Freedom of Information and the (minor) differences in how this is interpreted in Scotland.
Improvements to strengthen access to information in the UK
How we combine national datasets to analyse UK-wide services.
Councillor attitudes towards citizen engagement
For some categories of reports, including a photo makes it more likely an issue will be resolved.
How we're approaching official and user collected data.
What is Beneficial Ownership? How can the data be used?
Looking at the different demographics of use of civic tech services.
Different uses of civic tech sites have different demographic profiles, allowing multiple interpretations of their impact.
mySociety/Public Square report about the current usage of digital tools for democratic participation.
A small number of people are often responsible for most of the data - but is this good or bad?
mySociety report exploring WhatDoTheyKnow statistics for central government
mySociety paper replicating finding of gender differences in categories of reports to FixMyStreet.
mySociety report exploring how digital tools can contribute to a Citizens Assembly.
mySociety paper exploring the scale and administration of FOI requests to local government.
University of Stirling, the University of Sheffield and mySociety collaboration looking into the spatial patterns of reporting on FixMyStreetthe
LSE blog post exploring if the gender of a representative affects how likely men and women are to write to them.
mySociety blog and minisite exploring the role of party in the gender balance in Parliaments around the world
Democratic Audit blog post detailing how features of the electoral system affects responsiveness to constituents.
Parliamentary Affairs, Volume 72, Issue 3, July 2019.
mySociety paper looking at current patterns of reporting of dog fouling to local authorities, and the history of this as a social problem.