So, some digital information has leaked from its home. Its been played with by an excel monkey and plotted on maps. It shouldn’t have happened, but it has. Doh! doesn’t quite cover it when I think of the stupidity of some people.

While there are many political uses of the information, the lists of names of membership of any organisation should be kept private. Lists of names, as Tom Steinberg (MySociety) said, start us down a path best not begun. There are lots of lists of names missing or lost about the place, perhaps they shouldn’t be seeded as torrents or publicly searchable. Just because there are techniques to mash this data and present it in interesting ways (against ethnicity data, or social deprivation indexes, or just against voter turnout) does not mean that anyone should.

From an Information Governance and Information Security perspective, these BNP kids are going to have to get their act together. The Information Commissioner is going to want to have words with them. Perhaps there will be court proceedings for breech of human rights act and data protection legislation; although perhaps in not quite the way that Nick Griffin expects, with claims against the BNP for negligence.

It’s been a busy fortnight for open-information projects and campaigns. Widely announced and re-announced were the winners of the Show Us A Better Way (SUABW) competition, sponsored by the Government, which sought new solutions to perhaps unknown problems. SUABW asked people what web-based tools they would build from public data-sources that would  improve the way public information is shared and presented.

The winners are:

• Can I Recycle It?
• UK Cycling
• Catchment Areas
• Location of Postboxes
• Loofinder

The BBC PM report referred to a court case being thrown out because a piece of law that the case was built on had been taken off the statute book. The codified law of the British Isles is a huge chunk of public data I’d like to see freed up, so I’m hoping for great things from the Free Our Bills campaign: wide open and accessible Parliamentary Bills… searchable and remixable legislation… a wiki statue book?

Sarah Teather wrote back to me this week concerning EDM2141, saying

The Liberal Democrats believe that Bills ought to be published in such a fashion that they can be accessed as easily and as early as possible by the public.

Sarah will be adding her signature to the EDM which currently has 76 members of Parliament supporting it.

Today I’ve accessed three different MySociety websites: TheyWorkForYou, WriteToThem and WhatDoTheyKnow.  I honestly don’t know what I’d do without these powerful tools: MySociety are indespensible and we’d all miss them if they weren’t here.

I was using WriteToThem to contact Sarah Teather to urge her to support Early Day Motion (EDM) 2141 that her parliamentary colleague Jo Swinson has tabled.

 FREE OUR BILLS CAMPAIGN, 22.07.2008, Swinson, Jo

That this House believes it has a duty to publish Bills in such a fashion that they can be accessed as easily and as early as possible by the public; notes that the non-partisan Free Our Bills campaign is urging the House to publish bill texts in a new electronic format to improve accessibility and public scrutiny of legislation; further notes that the changes requested would have no impact on the content of Bills, nor upon the process by which they are currently made; considers that the new format could be delivered cheaply and quickly; acknowledges that the Leader of the House’s office did not accept a prior request for new formatting from mySociety, nor provide an explanation of why the changes could be made; and calls on the Leader of House to ask House of Commons Clerks to work with Free Our Bills campaign staff to commence publication of Bills in the new format.

I wrote to Sarah

“As you will recall from previous meetings and correspondence, I have a strong belief in the enabling potential of new media technologies in mproving accessibility and increasing timely access to information. The opportunities of new media technologies are being ignored or locked by parliamentary authorities, preventing public scrutiny of legislation by the widest possible audience.”

“EDM 2141 calls on the “Leader of House to ask House of Commons Clerks to work with Free Our Bills campaign staff to commence publication of bills in the new format.” I urge you to support this EDM and to give as much support as you can to this proposal.”

Why don’t you write to your MP about Freeing Our Bills using WriteToThem today too?

UK Citizens Online Democracy’s (UKCOD) main activity is running the mySociety project, building websites which “give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives.”

MySociety are the people behind the great web tools TheyWorkForYou, WriteToThem, PledgeBank, HearFromYourMP and FixMyStreet (a project similar to one comwifinet were hacking up in the distant past…)

I’ve just been emailed about mySociety’s ‘Free Our Bills’ Campaign. Please go and add your weight to the call for Parliament to publish these documents which are a crucial part of the process of making law in a way that is sensitive to the electronic use over the internet.

David ‘web’ Cameron has already endorsed the campaign. But I’m not about to give his site linkage, so you’ll have to find the video via The All Seeing Eye.

I’ve also just found the beta test version of whatdotheyknow.com which aims to provide a public searchable repository of Freedom of Information Act requests made to public bodies. GREAT IDEA! Now the information made public in FoI requests is made public in a much wider sense. The site is open and searchable. The site helps people to make Freedom Of Information Act requests of public bodies, reminds you when the request is timing out (not that it will of course, our public bodies are quick of the mark with these sort of things!) and make all the information in the request public.

Praise is due.

For some feature enhancements I’d recommend adding something that will take any attachments and process them so they are readable. These public bodies, especially councils, have a habit of replying to electronic messages in the fashion of material messages. It amuses me greatly to see a properly formatted letter, typed out in a word processor… attached to an email with a message saying ‘please read the attachment’. bonkers. So if whatdotheyknow.com could process attachments and display them in the webpage as well as giving us the files to download, that would be great!

After reading (and posting) Shahrar’s email I got thinking about what other information about parking and PCNs issued I could request from Brent Council under FoI.

How many of us have been issued a ticket because of a simple honest mistake, like, say, scratching off the wrong day on a parking voucher in error, or perhaps forgetting to note your registration on a temporary residents permit? Well that’s me on both counts.

How many of us have been issued a parking ticket due to an error on the part of the parking warden, like, say for example, parking a commercial vehicle in a resdential street contrary to local restrictions when no contravention could have occured as you were not driving a commercial vehicle and there were no such local parking restrictions? A bit of specific example I realise… Yes, me again.

When I make an honest mistake Brent Council will not hear your pleading and will not yeild their power to strike out the ticket, leaving you to either pay the PCN or meet Brent in court. Yet when a Brent Council Parking Warden makes a similar simple honest error, power is yielded and PCNs are cancelled.

I wonder if I Brent have data on the number of tickets that that they cancel each year due to warden error… What is of greater interest is whether Brent collect data on number of appealed tickets due to an error on the part of the driver. And can I get it?