/government-fyi

We make it easy for you to understand how government works.

Primary LanguageJavaScript

Government-fyi

The Simplest Non-Partisan guide to Canadian Elections 🇨🇦

https://ourgovernment.fyi/

Build Status Netlify Status

Government FYI landing page

Inspired by ballotfyi

Quick Start

You only have to do this step if you are making a code change, for policy changes you can do it all from the web browser.

  1. npm install
  2. npm start

How to Contribute

Anyone can contribute to the OurGovernment.FYI project. Whether or not you know how to code we're looking for all types of contributors.

  1. Writing Code
  2. Adding Goverment Policy
  3. Design
  4. Digital Marketing

Watch these Loom Videos to see how to contribute.

  1. You will need a Github account. It's free and takes 15 seconds to sign up.

  2. Open a pull request with your changes.

    1. We get notified whenever a new PR is opened but if you need a faster response, tweet tomiwa (@tomiwa1a) on Twitter or @atilatech on Instagram or Twitter

Adding Government Policy

Best Practices for Including Sources

  1. Try to get the source directly from the campaign's website, if not, use authoritative sources of news.

    1. The definition of "authoritative" is subjective, so just try and use your best judgement

  2. Try to reference specific policy proposals instead of generic claims

Specific:

Eliminate interest from federal student loans and introduce a “targeted debt forgiveness program that forgives up to $20,000 in student debt.

Generic:

Work with provinces to cap and reduce tuition fees, “building toward” making post-secondary education free and part of the public education system.

  1. When referencing budget estimates, avoid using the party's own estimates on how much a policy will cost. They tend to be biased. Instead find an independnt source. A good example is Parliamentary Budget Officer. Here's their estimates for the 2021 Federal Election.

  2. Try to reference websites instead of PDFs. Some people may be on their phone and not have wi-fi and PDFs automatically download the file.

    1. However, this is hard to do as many parties publish their policies as PDFs so if the best source you can find is a PDF, that's okay.

  3. When linking a website, use copy link to highlight so that the link takes the user to the specific quote.

Example of Copy Link to Highlight

  1. When linking a PDF, ensure you include the specific page that a policy is taken from in the URL

    1. Add #page=page_number to the end of the url
    2. Example: https://juventudedesporto.cplp.org/files/sample-pdf_9359.pdf#page=5

  2. Sources should be recent: Don't reference anything published more than 12 months before the currrent date.