OpenAustralia news
9 March 2010
Register of Senators' Interests updated
We've just updated the Register of Senators' Interests on the site. The register for Senators is now up to date up to 23 November 2009.
The same can't unfortunately yet be said of the equivalent register for the Representatives in parliament. The Register of Members' Interests only has updates and ammendments up to June 2008. We've been trying for a while to get the latest changes. Good news is that just a few days ago we were told that the latest updates are on their way to us in the post, so with a little luck you should be able to see it here soon. Stay tuned!
For a quick example see the updated register for Senator Bob Brown. It now goes to an impressive 43 pages.
As always you can find the link to the Register of Interests at the bottom of each Senator or Representative's page on OpenAustralia.
Posted at 09:52:00 by Matthew | Link to this
22 October 2009
Calling OpenAustralia volunteers
Yes, it's that time again. The OpenAustralia Foundation is having another hackfest! For the many of you out there that may be wondering, what on earth is a hackfest? It's a technical working bee of sorts. We get a bunch of great people together and work on ideas for how to make OpenAustralia.org and other related projects even better.
This time it's a special hackfest as we're planning it to coincide with the Goverment 2.0 Taskforce's recently launched competition, MashupAustralia and we're running it over the entire weekend of the 7th and 8th of November in Sydney. The Government 2.0 Taskforce has asked Australians to help show why open access to Australian Government information is good for our society and economy. They've kicked things off by arranging for an assortment of Goverment data to be made available and have also announced over $20,000 in prizes.
You don't need to be a software developer or 'hacker' to come along - everyone is welcome to this free event being hosted at Google's Sydney offices. All you have to do is head along to our hackfest site and sign up to the event.
We're all looking forward to seeing you there!
Posted at 22:03:00 by Henare | Link to this
29 September 2009
OpenAustralia Goes Mobile and Gets Social
Many of you may have been in the same situation as this - you're out having a quiet drink with friends and a loud political discussion ensues. Without access to OpenAustralia.org to settle the debate, you're stuck. Well now that's changing - from today when you access OpenAustralia on your mobile device, you'll get a site optimised for its small display so you can quickly and easily settle that "discussion" :) Thanks to Rob Manson for creating this great new feature.
A feature that we added to the site recently, created by yours truly, is the ability to share speeches on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. You may have noticed that there is a "Share This" link next to each speech listed on OpenAustralia. Simply hover over that link and select the social network you want to share the speech on and start a discussion with your friends.
If you have a Wordpress blog that you host yourself you'll be interested in a plugin that was developed by Sherif Mansour at our recent Hackfest in Sydney called PoliPress. Using this plugin you can import speeches from OpenAustralia right into your own blog to discuss them or comment on them.
We hope you enjoy the new features and if you have any ideas for what you'd like to see on OpenAustralia, please get in touch!
Posted at 12:58:00 by Henare | Link to this
12 May 2009
Our new home on Facebook
If you're a user of Facebook, come and visit our new home on Facebook and invite your friends along. Do your bit by letting even more people know about OpenAustralia.org.
Also, you can talk amongst your fellow OpenAustralia fans, leave comments, post links and all the usual stuff.
Posted at 16:30:00 by Matthew | Link to this
6 May 2009
Opening up the procedures of Parliament
So far we've shown you what they say (speeches) not what they do (procedures). Believe it or not proceedings of Parliament take place within a highly structured system. The speeches don't always give the full picture of what's going on. So, to help provide some more context, we've now added "procedural text".
Procedural text is a standardised description of what's going on. Examples include: someone putting forward a motion, reading a bill, a debate ending, or someone leaving the chamber.
We hadn't included it in the past because we simply hadn't supported the translation of the information from the official source.
Also, we have a further incentive. It's also preparation for some very exciting new developments which we hope to announce soon!
Posted at 18:15:00 by Kat | Link to this
26 February 2009
Another big step forward for government transparency in Australia
Today we proudly bring you the Register of Members' Interests. We have now made these extremely important documents available online for the first time ever.
In the Register of Interests, Representatives and Senators declare information of financial interests, stocks and shares held, gifts received over a certain value, and memberships of Clubs and Associations.
Now, the Register of Interests is available for all sitting Senators and Representatives and is available at the bottom of each of their pages.
See, for instance, the Register of Interests for the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, available at the bottom of his page. (direct link)
This latest addition was largely made possible by the generous help of volunteer Stephen Thorne at Netbox Blue who scanned the 1500 pages of the Register of Members' Interests and Bernard Wright, the Registrar of Members' Interests, for providing us with the hardcopy material.
Posted at 08:30:00 by Matthew | Link to this
19 February 2009
Multiple email alerts over the last few days
Some of you might have been getting multiple email alerts for the same day's speeches over the last few days. We're sorry about this. It turns out one of the email alerts was causing the mailing system to fail and each day it was retrying and sending out the old mails again. We found the wayward alert and fixed it. Tomorrow (Friday 20 February) you might get another duplicate email but after that everything should be back to normal.
As always, if you find a problem or something isn't working as expected please do let us know by emailing us at contact@openaustralia.org.
Posted at 17:29:00 by Matthew | Link to this
5 January 2009
Read the Register of Senators' Interests here
Today is a big milestone. We are the first website to make the Register of Senators' Interests available online. This important public document until now has only been available to the small number of people who were able to visit the office in Canberra where the documents are held. In the Register each Senator declares information of financial interests, stocks and shares held, gifts received over a certain value, and memberships of Clubs and Associations.
The register is available on each Senator's page. For example, have a look at the Register for Senator Judith Adams.
As soon as we can we will also make the Register of Members' Interests available online, the equivalent document for the Representatives. Our main obstacle right now is getting our paper copy of the register scanned. If you have access to a bulk scanner and can help please contact us.
Posted at 11:05:00 by Matthew | Link to this
3 November 2008
Government website changes everything
We've completely rewritten the engine that drives OpenAustralia. We didn't want to, the government (website) made us do it. No really. For a bit of background read our blog post "Why is OpenAustralia not getting updated?".
The outage of new update has only been over the last couple of weeks (from 13 Oct) and this all fixed now. I did quit a paying job to make it happen, so if that makes you feel like donating some money to us, please go ahead!
Catch up on the debates that happened while we were down. As of next week when parliament resumes, email updates will be back in action too.
Posted at 23:57:00 by Matthew | Link to this
4 October 2008
A new look OpenAustralia
OpenAustralia has a lovely and sleek new look courtesy of Nathanael Boehm.
We're always interested in feedback, so let us know what you think by emailing us at the usual place. Enjoy!
Posted at 12:26:00 by Matthew | Link to this