You Work For Them

This project is being created for Accountability Hack 2015.

Users

"You work for them" is a service for MPs, so they can understand more about the people they represent when they are making decisions in Parliament. It is important that MPs represent all of the people in their constituency, not just their friends or people like them.

Proposition

MP's should represent all their constituents.

We are concerned MPs may favour:

  • people like them
  • people who voted for them
  • people who write to them

Our approach is to remind MPs of all the different people they represent. An MP will visit "You work for them" enter their name or the constituency they represent. They are then provided with various statistics, appropriately sourced and visualised, about their constituency and some of the key issues being debated in Parliament.

Data

  • 2011 census from ONS Open API

    • Total population
    • Household statistics
    • Housing stock
    • Age breakdown
  • Electoral Commission

    • Constituency list
    • Electoral results

What next?

  • Add more data
  • Extend the scope to Scotland and Northern Ireland
  • Show a map

Lessons learnt

We usability tested the service with four people pretending to be MPs. This provided valuable insights about the data and how best to present it. It would have been better to test the service with real MPs.

There is not always good quality information about some of these topics MPs are discussing (for example, regarding the EU Referendum Bill, there are no proper statistics about how much of our law comes from Europe).

It was surprisingly difficult to get a list of current MPs. We had to manually remove the name of the MP who has died since the election.

Credits

Tie by Gregor Črešnar from the Noun Project atom by Diego Naive from the Noun Project Suitcase by Carla Gom Mejorada from the Noun Project Wrench by Condimento Gráfico from the Noun Project caring by Luis Prado from the Noun Project Shopping Bag by Umut Büyükekmekci from the Noun Project Factory by Carla Gom Mejorada from the Noun Project