Netpolitique

TheyWorkForYou is mySociety’s most visited site, providing citizens with a range of information on their politicians, such as:

• Who their local MP is
• What MPs said in Parliament
• Summaries of how MPs have voted
• Text of debates in Parliament
• Video of MPs talking in debates
• Written questions MPs have submitted to government departments, and the answers they’ve got back
• Email alerts whenever an MP speaks, or a topic is mentioned in Parliament
• Comments and annotations from our users on what has been said

TheyWorkForYou was visited around two million times in 2007 (according to Google Analytics) and has become a small institution in British politics.

Mysociety, c’est quoi ?

C’est la principale initiative d’une association anglaise a but non lucratif, fondée en 2003 et regroupant une communauté de volontaires et de développeurs open-source rémunérés.

Cette dernière est à l’origine du développement de sites que P. Rosanvallon qualifierait de « contre-démocratique »: par exemple Theyworkforyou pour découvrir ce que font les députés anglais (historique des prises de position, archives des textes et speech) ou WritetoThem pour contacter n’importe quel député à partir de son code postal (plus de 400 000 messages déjà envoyés à ce jour via la plateforme). Mysociety a également développé le site officiel de G. Brown de pétition citoyenne. A noter qu’en France, le collectif « regards citoyens »  en France a lancé récemment le site nosdeputés.fr permettant, comme theyworkforyou, de s’intéresser à l’activité des députés à l’assemblée nationale.

Pourquoi c’est important et comment s’impliquer ?

Les responsables de l’initiative mysociety.org sont joignables via leurs coordonnées sur le site web (http://www.mysociety.org/about/contact/), et se disent prêt à étudier toute opportunité de collaboration, notamment à l’international (traduction, adaptation, support au développement). Pledgebank par exemple est conçu dès l’origine comme un site international, reposant sur le mode « si je trouve 10 personnes comme moi prêtes à faire ça alors je le fais)

• The role of politics
  
  Politicians must be able to take responsibility of their choices.
• The organizational dimension
  
  Public Administrations must change their organization and their procedures, pursuing a new idea of relationship with citizens and abandoning the self-approach.
• The Net as a right
  
  The access to the Net, specially to broadband, must be easy and cheap everywhere.
• Beyond the cultural divide
  
  Citizens must be helped to develop a new digital culture.
• The involvement of citizens
  
  There’s no Public Administration 2.0 without a strong intervention in favour of participation.
• The multi-channel approach as opportunity
  
  Service are really tailored if there’s attention to the channels more appropriate for the different users’ target.
• Disintermediation to better act
  
  To promote a Public Administration no more “one way” and finally “2.0” is important to foster a bigger disintermediation between institutions and citizens.
• Re-start form the semantics of public contents
  
  The semantics presentation of public information, services and contents must be conceived with the final users and open to folksonomies.
• Software as enabling factor
  
  Software used in public sector must be open and re-usable by other administrations.
• Foster the development of active communities
  
  User groups and social networks must be considered as a fundamental stimulus to design public web services, starting from their desires and indications.