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New ideas, new directions

July 2023

Blue mountains against a yellow sky and the caption: repowering democracy

All through this year, we'll be doing some serious thinking about the state of democracy and mySociety's place within it. We're inviting guest speakers to lend their thoughts, too.

Read all about the Repowering Democracy series here — and sign up to follow along.

The Senedd has come to TheyWorkForYou. Image of the big wooden mushroom-like structure in the building.

Keep up with the Senedd

Thanks to funding from the Welsh Government, our parliamentary website TheyWorkForYou now includes debates and all Members of the Senedd.

So now you can follow along with everything that happens in English and in Welsh — and our alerts service covers Senedd activity, too.

Completists will be glad to know that, with this addition TheyWorkForYou now covers all the law-making parliaments of the UK. See more about the background to this development in our blog post.

Over to you

Share your memories of mySociety

Were you there at mySociety's beginnings? A table from an early mySociety retreat, scattered with cables, mugs, bowls and laptops.

It's taken a lot of people to get mySociety to where we are now. Are you one of them?

We're collecting memories from folk who were around in our earlier days: staff, volunteers, trustees, friends — anyone who remembers part of the journey we've been through over the last 20 years.

If you've got a memory to share, or thoughts about what mySociety means to the UK or indeed, the wider world, please share them here.

transparency

There are many reasons to use FOI

A multi-coloured mural of jigsaw pieces, slightly peeling

We've heard some really great stories around our Freedom of Information service WhatDoTheyKnow recently. The main takeaway? People really are using Freedom of Information to achieve all kinds of things.

So why not read about the campaign to save a local running track, a collaborative tool for investigative journalists, and how FOI helps when you just want to know something — like how many rubber bands the Post Office uses each year!

More transparency around removed requests

It's rare, but the WhatDoTheyKnow team sometimes have to remove requests, or parts of them, from the site. Now a new piece of development is allowing them to be more transparent when this happens.

Climate

Different councils have different decarbonisation potential

A view across London with a dirty-looking sky

Some areas of the UK face more systemic barriers to delivering climate plans than others: that's the thrust behind Alice Garvey's research.

She told us all about it, and how the Council Climate Scorecards have supported her investigation into this subject. See the whole story here.

mySociety's key services

Your donations help us run projects like these

If you're reading this newsletter, the chances are that you see the value in mySociety's work — thank you.

Donations are part of what makes that possible, so if you're able, please consider making a contribution today.
Donate now
Interested in a particular strand of our work? Pick and choose your mySociety newsletters here.

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mySociety is a registered charity in England and Wales (1076346) and a limited company (03277032).
Through our trading subsidiary SocietyWorks (05798215) we also provide commercial services.

Image credits: Mountains: Marek Piwnicki; Senedd: Senedd Cymru (CC by/2.0); Cluttered desktop: Myfanwy Nixon; jigsaw mural: Ashkan Forouzani; view across London: Kyle Kroeger (CC by-nc-nd/2.0)
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