Building Open Australia
Matthew Landauer
matthew@openaustralia.org

About four years ago...

NotCon ‘04

Creating stress/excitement maps of
London

Dealing With The Top 10 Worst
Situations In Urban Exploration

Telling the time using a Marks & Spencer
prawn sandwich and a BBC micro

Unveiling of TheyWorkForYou
A new project from the people behind
FaxYourMP and PublicWhip

It had effect

It changed the behaviour of
MP’s

UK’s Channel 4 got involved

Elsewhere in the world

USA: opencongress.org

NZ: theyworkforyou.co.nz

Fast forward...

to late 2007

The plan

OpenAustralia.org

non-partisan

Modify existing UK
TheyWorkForYou to make it
“Australian”

That’s relatively easy

The challenge

<speech id=\"uk.org.publicwhip/debate/2007-11-14a.648.5\"
speakerid=\"uk.org.publicwhip/member/1950\" speakername=\"Paul Goggins\"
colnum=\"648\" time=\"11:30:00\" url=\"http://
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm071114/debtext/
71114-0001.htm#07111427000847\">
<p pid=\"a.648.5/1\">The strong message....</p>
<p pid=\"a.648.5/2\">I believe that in recent days...
</speech>
<speech id=\"uk.org.publicwhip/debate/2007-11-14a.649.0\"
speakerid=\"uk.org.publicwhip/member/1818\" speakername=\"Owen Paterson\"
colnum=\"649\" time=\"11:30:00\" url=\"http://
www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm071114/debtext/
71114-0001.htm#07111427000848\">
<p pid=\"a.649.0/1\">Does the Minister agree ...</p>
</speech>

Ruby / Mechanize / Hpricot

We’ve got a very crude
prototype

Please come join the effort!

Have an impact

There is so much to do

Email me
matthew@openaustralia.org
or go to openaustralia.org
for more information

Questions