What is still missing

From Berlininaugust

What's Missing

• transparency sites for international/supranational organisations (eg. WTO) and treaties, analysis of treaty texts, including information on which countries sign treaties but don't ratify them.

• good (open) standard(s) for publishing democratic information (see MySociety 90 days project for an attempt to showcase what's possible if parliament provides information in a structured way)

• transparency (and deliberation) sites at the EU-wide level

• tools to encourage whistle-blowing from inside parliament/pol. institutions;

• text messaging (TextYourMP)

• directory of edemocracy sites across Europe (it was suggested that the wikiedia pariliamntary infomatics page may take this role)

• central directory pointing to sources of free government data

• collection of valuable democratic information that exist, but which is not available

• how to make sense of free text comments (large scale) or a better system than coments (see e.g. OpenStrategy)

• deliberation problem - how to best do it

• transparency sites which import informatoin about budgets, spending and contracts awarded directly into the information about politicians and parties

• sites showing whether politicians/parties fulfill their manifesto promises, ie how did manifestos compare with other propaganda (e.g. videos) or change over time; archiving of campaigning material (see OpenPolis)

• offer the expertise of citizens to politicians

• better tools for politicians to respond to their constituency (not necessarily have to work against them)

• scripts to automatically creates paper reports on MP contact details, their voting patterns etc

• ways of bridging offline-online worlds

• more routes for bringing together expertise from technology with expertise from research (e.g. Social Science, Political Science)

• more co-operation (solidarity?) amongst makers of transparency sites in case of government oppression of those sites