Author: eddowding
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UK Metro mayors budgets
https://medium.com/@thedancingflea/the-west-midlands-combined-authority-where-does-the-money-come-from-40098bc22876
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Using the Represent API for #GE2017
What does it do? Represent and the Represent API are a toolbox for a modern democracy. The API includes the ability to: Create and verify profiles Create polls and questions, and vote on them. View, analyse, and weight results, including demographic and location data Compare with local census data (UK only) Compare users with each…
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Bringing digital disruption to government
A few weekends ago we were invited to speak at TransPolitica, a conference on real world policy changes for a radically better future. Together with Tim from the CivicTech coworking hub RainGods (home to Represent’s London office) and Dan from MegaNexus we discussed how social enterprises are revolutionising democracy and the political process: from better information, to…
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ProgCode network – civictech in the USA
CivicTech is a global phenomena, arguably most coming of age during Obama’s first campaign, and more recently Donald Trump’s campaign has made powerful and inventive use of the resources available in the 2015 election to target and mobilise voters. The Bernie tech movement are building a network of tech volunteers and are creating open-source tools for…
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Do we still need political parties?
This article originally appeared in the New Statesman, 4 October 2016 Technology has changed everything. Apart from politics. When the Uber of democracy hits, will parties still have a role? It’s party conference season. Political parties appear to be doing well – about a million people are now members, and donations have increased. But on both sides…
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Only 3 days left to have your say on the role of faith and grammar schools in education in England
The Government wants to know what you’d like from the education system. Represent.me has made it REALLY easy for you to tell them. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken part in a Government consultation before (most people haven’t) but they are pretty hard to engage with. Piece-by-piece it’s all very reasonable, but together it all adds…
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Add any question to your Group or Collection
If you have a Collection or are a group admin you’ll know that you can add existing questions to them. This saves the site filling up with lots of similar questions, and adds weight to popular ideas. But you’ll also know it’s been a little frustrating to do. You used to have to go to your…
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Putting @you at the heart of what we do
A little quick and nice feature we added a few weeks ago was nicer ways of sharing your profile. With a hat-tip to the tried and tested format of twitter, instagram, facebook, skype, and .. well pretty much every user-centric service, we’ve gone with the represent.me/username format. Here’s mine: https://rep.roundbear.org/eddowding You can find your username on your profile.
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One X is not enough to determine your future.
So what next? TL;DR: Democracy is being updated at https://rep.roundbear.org — the world’s first online peer-to-peer governance platform. Get involved. Ultimately, after the denial and amazement, this is our opportunity to make Great Britain do bold, brilliant, and inspiring things. We have no one holding us back, and no one to blame. The future is ours to…
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Your UK polling day toolkit – everything you need to get to the polls and vote
Polling stations across the UK will be open today from 7am until 10pm today. We’ve put together everything your need to make your voice count. Find your polling station If you have your polling card to hand your polling station should be clearly marked. But, life is not always that simple. Find your nearest polling…
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How do we make delegative democracy a reality? or “What do points mean?”
Delegative democracy (aka ‘liquid democracy’) is what most people invent when answering the question “How do we make politics better?” We start at “well we should all be able to vote on everything”, but then realise we don’t want to vote on everything and also probably don’t know enough detail to trust ourselves. So we…
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What we’ve been working on: sort by consensus, Android & iOS apps, improved design, and more
It’s been a productive few months for us. With the new design you can now easily access the full power of Represent: location-awareness, topics, groups, comparing to other users, and far fewer distractions. We also added an iOS app to join our Android app, so you can ‘do the citizen thing’ rather than scrolling endless…
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“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
I’ve just been reminded of this excellent snippet from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish “On [this] world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.” “Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.” “I did,” said Ford. “It is.” “So,”…
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Will there be a European Spring? Or an Arab Summer? We’ll find out in 10 days.
How do the attitudes of young people in Tunisia, Egypt, libya, Algeria, Morocco compare to those of young people in the UK? And how do those differ from the older people in those countries? That was the question given to us a few days ago by the British Council and Bootstrap Company for a presentation at…
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We’re growing!
Member snapshot as of today. 47,373 answers 838 people That’s an average of 57 votes per person. Not bad when you realise that you’ll only vote 14 times in general elections.
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Successful participatory democracy experiment is actually quite boring
A common first reaction to the idea of more participative democracy is that dangerous and radical things will happen – ie the “we’ll bring back hanging” cliché. So it is that I love this finding an experiment by our friends at Loomio reported on Civicist. At the end of the four weeks, after five discussions consisting…
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Good things to read
Inspired by the #SummerOfTech alternative summer reading list for MPs (and everyone) here are our picks, and some other good things we’ve been reading here at Represent. Our favourites: More Human: Designing a World Where People Come First by Steve Hilton Blueprint for a Revolution by Srdja Popovic Betterness by Umair Haque Rebooting Democracy by Manuel Arriga Hardcore…
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Things we’ve been reading recently
25% of Estonians electoral votes are cast online. Laws have been updated to address the issues of privacy, security and trust, without reverting to isolation and protectionism. Manuel Arriaga, author of the excellent Rebooting Democracy discusses the possibility of a “Citizen’s Chamber” as an additional political entity in Foreign Policy. “Being able to affect how things are run in…
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This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind
via Bloomberg There are two main points to take from this graph. 1. Change is happening faster – that much is obvious. 2. Compassion is changing. This one’s a little harder to discern, but either: a) Our ‘circle of compassion’ is expanding to include more people who aren’t like us, or b) Our ‘circle of social…
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8 ways online democracy changes everything.
The chances are you’re not going to get the MP you voted for — but that might not matter for very much longer. There is a quiet revolution taking place in democracy, bringing new thinking to how we take decisions together. For the first time ever, what you want — your preferences, values, and ideas — can be heard locally, nationally,…