** The following is an eNewsletter from http://www.humanrightstools.org **
Dear readers,
This is the first of two newsletters on
the same topic: how information technology can be used to increase the
accountability of leaders and representatives.
Have you ever wondered what your nation
is saying at the United Nations? How its voting on particular issues? Find out
what by visiting UN Democracy, which gives easy access to the transcripts of the
General Assembly and Security Council:
http://www.undemocracy.com/
http://www.undemocracy.com/
As an example, it makes it easy to read
what President Ahmadinejad or President Bush have been saying during recent
speeches:
http://www.undemocracy.com/Iran/ahmadinejad
http://www.undemocracy.com/United_States/bush
http://www.undemocracy.com/Iran/ahmadinejad
http://www.undemocracy.com/United_States/bush
It also makes it much easier to find
document like resolutions and statements, for example below the Security Council
documents are sorted by year and by topic:
Year: http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil/documents
Topic: http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil
Year: http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil/documents
Topic: http://www.undemocracy.com/securitycouncil
We caught up with the team who put this
amazing resource together, Julian Todd and Francis Irving. We found out that
behind this website is a group of dedicated volunteers, who put this together on
a shoestring budget, with nothing else than ingenuity, hard work, and superb
activist motivation! OK, and now for the interview:
Editors: How is this website meant to be used? What kind of information does it provide?
Editors: How is this website meant to be used? What kind of information does it provide?
Francis: All the UN's documents are
squirreled away on their hard to use websites, and make it actually impossible
to send anyone links to a document, or find it with a search engine.
UNDemocracy.com brings all that out into the open - putting the documents into
Google, and letting you refer easily to a document.
Julian: By making them accessible to the
general internet they can be referenced by research tools such as wikipedia.
When you dig out facts buried in obscure reports, or come across the sorry
official excuse given for a US vote against an overwhelmingly popular cause,
it's important to be able to bring it to the attention of others who would be
interested through the power of Web 2.0.
Editors: How is it done, technically?
How do you keep it up to date? Are all the documents added by hand?
Francis: It's done automatically, by
fancy software we wrote which parses the United Nations documents website, and
loads the data into our website.
Julian: The PDF documents are pulled off
their server with difficulty whenever they are found. For searchability, the
General Assembly and Security Council meetings are converted into structured
HTML using a program that starts with the pixel coordinates of every word on the
page. Corrections have to be made by hand when names of countries are mistyped
or titles are left out.
Editors: Who is behind this? Tell us a
bit about the people who developed this website. What kind of financing did you
have?
Francis: Nothing, it was built by one
person, Julian Todd, with bits of help from others. He had the original idea,
and does it in his spare time as a volunteer.
Julian: I paid for the server and
bandwidth rental, which accounts for the only up-front cost of the whole
project. You don't need money to do good things on the internet. All you need is
a bit of imagination and the ability to ignore your family when they tell you
that it is immoral to work for no pay.
Editors: What is your next project? If
you had a million dollars to spend on a nonprofit idea, what would that
be?
Francis: I don't have a new idea (bet
Julian does) - but I'd still use the money usefully. To start off we'd make the
UNDemocracy site even better - make it easier to use, and make it cover more
documents. I'd next improve our other website Public Whip, making it easier for
people to maintain voting analyses of MPs. (http://www.publicwhip.org.uk) I'd
put the rest into a foundation to make sure both sites can be kept running
reliably and be improved over time, as they deserve.
Julian: I am not someone who can convert
money into productivity by other people. It would be better to give the money to
someone who is probably able get people to
work, for money if necessary, and send the keen ones in my direction for
collaboration. There are people who can motivate, but can't program. And there
are people who can program, but can't motivate.
Editors: Ok, thanks a lot for the
interview, Francis and Julian, but thanks also for all the work you've been
doing to produce this great resource. Both useful and inspiring!
For our readers, as usual, please
forward this to your friends and colleagues who share your interest in human
rights, or post it to your blog and mailing lists. If you have received this
from a friend and would like to subscribe, you can do so here: http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm
Best regards, and good luck in your
efforts to defend or raise awareness about human rights.
Daniel D'Esposito, Editor
Human Rights Tools
editors [at] humanrightstools [dot] org
http://www.humanrightstools.org
Human Rights Tools
editors [at] humanrightstools [dot] org
http://www.humanrightstools.org
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