120706 Holder de ord Open Legislative Data

Bringer politikken til folket

Kristofer Rees, Head of Political Analysis [email protected] Ingrid Ødegaard, Head of Digital Strategy [email protected]

Open Legislative Data, 06.07.2012 Paris

Who are we?

! Based in Oslo, Norway

!   Non-profit

! About 20 volunteers

! We connect voting data and electoral promises

!   Prototype of site is live at http://beta.holderdeord.no

! We’ve won an advertising campaign worth €3 mill. – to be run prior to elections 2013! J

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How does democracy work?

Get  elected  

Make  laws/  Pass  policies  

Accountability?  

Campaign  promises  

7/6/12 www.holderdeord.no

How does democracy work?

Get  elected  

Make  laws/  Pass  policies  

Accountability!  

Campaign  promises  

Open  data  =  Transparency  

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The problem

!   Data needs to be accurate and correct

! Verifiable and methodologically sound

Our  model  needs  to  be  both  accurate  and  accessible.    

!   Present data in a way that people can relate to

!   Make political processes easier to understand

Accuracy   Accessiblity  +  

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Our solution – a topic-based model

The  war  in  Afghanistan  

Property  tax  

Wage  regula;ons  

”See  what  poli,cians  voted  and  promised  on  topics  that  are  important  to  you!”  

! Based on these topics, we collect related votes and promises and present them on the same page.

!   The viewer can now compare votes to the promises and decide if the politician has done what he or she promised.

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How does our model work?

Topic:  The  war  in  Afghanistan  

Promises  related  to  ”the  war  in  afghanistan”  

Votes  related  to  ”the  war  in  afghanistan”  

Created  by  us  

Data  

What  needs  to  be  voted  to  be  in  favor  of  topic.    Posi;on  

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Topic page

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How do we create topics?

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How to categorize promises

1.  Collect promises

2.  Make qualitative judgements:

–  Is the promise general or specific?

–  Assign relevant categories to the promise

3.  Register source

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Examples of promises

NB:  Transla;on  by  Google  Translate,  not  accurate…    

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Challenges and lessons learnt

! Making sense of intricacies in the parliamentary system

! Defining topics

!   Processing incoming votes

!   Technical architecture

! Finding out what triggers people

! Get input for stakeholders

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A call for collaboration!

! We are eager to discuss and share experiences and best practices

!   Wiki: https://holderdeord.atlassian.net/wiki/

! https://github.com/holderdeord/

! http://beta.holderdeord.no

! [email protected]