It's great being a music fan online. There are endless tools, legal and illegal, to improve your listening experience.
But people who want to engage with civil society aren't so lucky. Music fans get Napster and KaZaA. But what tools are there for people who want to make civic life better? All they have is the ill fitting cast-offs of the business world, such as Outlook. Why don't they have Napsters?
Many people, myself included, believe such tools aren't appearing as often as they should or could. So, we are setting up an organisation you might think of as a charitable incubator for those who want to develop software to make society better, and who want to pay the bills while doing it. We're calling it MySociety.org. And we need your help.
Why is such a thing necessary? Isn't this a job for caring governments or clever companies? In an ideal world, it may well be. But we are faced with an uncomfortable reality. Examples of "civic software" are thin on the ground. Britain is a world leader with sites such as UpMyStreet, FaxYourMP.com, and TimeBank.org.uk. However, it is a leader in a remarkably uncrowded field.
This suggests there is a blockage in the market. Companies don't produce these tools because there isn't money in it. Government has a different problem. It doesn't seem able to take advantage of what the internet is best at - applications that are cheap to produce, that do something peopleneed and cost roughly the same no matter how many people are using them. Sadly, the public sector seems bound by all sorts of obligations that prevent it from being able to create such cheap and cheerful services.
Complaining about this isn't any good - we need to demonstrate how it can be done. Which is where MySociety.org comes in. We are trying to bring together great project ideas, enthusiastic developers and visionary funders to produce cheap, effective services with a demonstrable real world impact. Projects are only limited by the need to have clearly positive social outcomes, and to have costs that barely increase when more people use them. All projects will probably be released under open source licences, to allow their code to be modified and improved by anyone willing to help.
One simple example would be a site that connects people who wish to get rid of books, clothes or equipment with charities that could benefit from them. All the user would do is enter their postcode, and the specific category of stuff they wanted to give away.
MySociety.org can't work without your help. First and foremost, we need project ideas that fit the description. Next, we need to speak to enthusiastic developers. If you're rotting in a dead-end database job, this could be for you. And last, we need funding or help in kind. This is certain to be an exceptionally high social bang- per-buck exercise, as well as a chance to keep an eye on cutting edge social technologies.
You can submit ideas, register interest, ask questions, comment on other people's ideas or read the FAQ at www.mysociety.org.
