Canadian Parliamentary bill aggregate
Active since November 2011, Democratize.ca collects data about bills from parl.gc.ca LEGISinfo and presents it in what aims to be a more accessible way. Users are able to vote and comment on a bill, view details about the MP who sponsored it, and navigate to other bills on the same or another issue. Many more features are in development.
This repository represents the transition from a closed-source project to open source. The associated software will be made available under the GNU General Public License (GPL), mainly
- to allow others to contribute to the development of the actual site
- to offer a starting point for other Parliamentary data scraping projects, apps, etc.
- to enable people in other countries or individual provinces or municipalities to start a similar site for their respective legislative assemblies without having to start from scratch
- to keep this area of development, that is the Open Parliament movement, free, open, not exclusive, and more or less united.
Speaking of "Open Parliament", much acknowledgement is due to the work of Michael Mulley at openparliament.ca, who tirelessly parses the Hansards, Q&A periods and more and whose site was one of the inspirations for Democratize.ca.
Democratize.ca also took inspiration from Kevin McArthur's Mycelium (mycelium.chanterelle.ca), which archives video clips from the Q&A sessions.
Without a doubt, there will be more added here soon.