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TheyWorkForYou

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</style><table class="infobox vcard"><caption class="infobox-title fn org">TheyWorkForYou</caption><tbody><tr><td colspan="2" class="infobox-image"><div class="infobox-caption">Homepage</div></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label"><div style="display: inline-block; line-height: 1.2em; padding: .1em 0;">Type of site</div></th><td class="infobox-data">Parliamentary monitoring</td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">Owner</th><td class="infobox-data">mySociety</td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">Created by</th><td class="infobox-data">generated by Parliamentary proceedings</td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">URL</th><td class="infobox-data url"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com">theyworkforyou.com</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">Commercial</th><td class="infobox-data">No</td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">Registration</th><td class="infobox-data">Optional</td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">Launched</th><td class="infobox-data">2004<a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a></td></tr><tr><th scope="row" class="infobox-label">Current status</th><td class="infobox-data category">Active</td></tr></tbody></table>

TheyWorkForYou is a parliamentary monitoring website operated by <a href="MySociety" title="MySociety">mySociety</a> which aims to make it easier for UK citizens to understand what is going on in <a href="Parliament_of_the_United_Kingdom" title="Parliament of the United Kingdom">Westminster</a>, as well as the <a href="Scottish_Parliament" title="Scottish Parliament">Scottish Parliament</a>, the <a href="Senedd" title="Senedd">Senedd</a> and the <a href="Northern_Ireland_Assembly" title="Northern Ireland Assembly">Northern Ireland Assembly</a>. It also helps create <a href="Accountability#Political" title="Accountability">accountability for UK politicians</a> by publishing a complete archive of every word spoken in <a href="Parliament_of_the_United_Kingdom" title="Parliament of the United Kingdom">Parliament</a>, along with a voting record and other details for each MP, past and present.

TheyWorkForYou does not publish original content: it <a href="Web_scraping" title="Web scraping">scrapes</a> from the official sources, then presents debates and information about representatives in a more <a href="Computer_accessibility" title="Computer accessibility">accessible</a> version. For example, TheyWorkForYou's version of <a href="Hansard" title="Hansard">Hansard</a> may be searched, and each section has its own <a href="Permalink" title="Permalink">permalink</a> so that it can be shared easily.

The site aggregates content from the Hansard records of the <a href="British_House_of_Commons" class="mw-redirect" title="British House of Commons">House of Commons</a>, <a href="House_of_Lords" title="House of Lords">House of Lords</a>, <a href="Scottish_Parliament" title="Scottish Parliament">Scottish Parliament</a> and the <a href="Northern_Ireland_Assembly" title="Northern Ireland Assembly">Northern Ireland Assembly</a>, along with other publicly available data such as the <a href="Member_of_Parliament" class="mw-redirect" title="Member of Parliament">MPs</a> Register of Members' Interests, election results, and voting records, providing a "digital dossier on your local MP".<a href="#cite_note-2">[2]</a> It also has a facility to alert users by email to speeches by an MP or specific words appearing in Hansard. In 2008, <a href="The_Daily_Telegraph" title="The Daily Telegraph">The Daily Telegraph</a> rated it 41st in a list of the 101 most useful websites.<a href="#cite_note-3">[3]</a>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="History">History</h2></div>

TheyWorkForYou was not originally built by mySociety, but was adopted by them in 2006. Its original version was created almost entirely by volunteers using the <a href="Parsing" title="Parsing">parsing</a> software of <a href="Public_Whip" title="Public Whip">Public Whip</a>, and launched at <a href="Need_To_Know_(newsletter)" class="mw-redirect" title="Need To Know (newsletter)">NTK</a>'s NotCon '04 conference.<a href="#cite_note-4">[4]</a> At the time, <a href="Cory_Doctorow" title="Cory Doctorow">Cory Doctorow</a> called it "the most amazing, subversive piece of political webware I've ever seen".<a href="#cite_note-5">[5]</a>

As time passed, more features were added and more areas of Parliament were covered, such as debates and information on members of the <a href="House_of_Lords" title="House of Lords">House of Lords</a> back to 1999.<a href="#cite_note-6">[6]</a> Around the <a href="2005_United_Kingdom_general_election" title="2005 United Kingdom general election">2005 general election</a>, <a href="Channel_4" title="Channel 4">Channel 4</a> used a branded version of TheyWorkForYou to supply their MP data.<a href="#cite_note-7">[7]</a> The site won the Community and Innovation award in the 2005 <a href="New_Statesman" title="New Statesman">New Statesman</a> New Media Awards, with the judges saying that they "were unanimous in feeling that TheyWorkForYou was the nomination that has done most to contribute to civic society in the UK".<a href="#cite_note-8">[8]</a> In the House of Lords, in a debate on the <a href="Power_Inquiry" title="Power Inquiry">Power Inquiry</a>, <a href="Philip_Gould" class="mw-redirect" title="Philip Gould">Lord Gould of Brookwood</a> referred to TheyWorkForYou and the other mySociety sites as "probably the biggest single catalyst for political change in this country".<a href="#cite_note-9">[9]</a>

In summer 2006, the <a href="Department_for_Constitutional_Affairs" title="Department for Constitutional Affairs">Department for Constitutional Affairs</a> funded the creation of an <a href="API" title="API">API</a> for the site so other sites could use the data from the site themselves.<a href="#cite_note-10">[10]</a> This has enabled a variety of uses, from MPs publishing out their most recent speeches onto their own websites, to researchers combing the data for insights into the way that politicians debate.

Later that year, Matthew Somerville added the entire Northern Ireland Assembly Hansard and all <a href="Member_of_the_Legislative_Assembly_(Northern_Ireland)" title="Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)">MLAs</a> to the site.<a href="#cite_note-11">[11]</a>

As with most of mySociety's other projects, TheyWorkForYou's underlying <a href="Source_code" title="Source code">code</a> is <a href="Open_source" title="Open source">open source</a>. A <a href="New_Zealand" title="New Zealand">New Zealand</a> developer adapted it to create TheyWorkForYou New Zealand, while in June 2008 OpenAustralia<a href="#cite_note-12">[12]</a> was launched by the <a href="OpenAustralia_Foundation" title="OpenAustralia Foundation">OpenAustralia Foundation</a> with the assistance of mySociety, putting the Register of Senators' and Members' Interests online for the first time ever in Australia.<a href="#cite_note-13">[13]</a> In April 2009, an Irish version of TheyWorkForYou was launched in beta form. Called KildareStreet,<a href="#cite_note-14">[14]</a> it contains Irish parliamentary data from January 2004 to the present day.

Contrary to what these reuses might suggest, the code for TheyWorkForYou is complex and UK-specific: while encouraging others to set up Parliamentary Monitoring websites for their own countries, these days mySociety suggests their more generic platform, <a href="Mysociety" class="mw-redirect" title="Mysociety">Pombola</a>.<a href="#cite_note-15">[15]</a>

TheyWorkForYou has become so established in the workings of Parliament itself that one MP has used the fact that her husband subscribes to email alerts on her speeches to remind him of their 30th wedding anniversary.<a href="#cite_note-16">[16]</a>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="Controversies">Controversies</h2></div>

When the site launched, it did not have the right to reproduce <a href="Hansard" title="Hansard">Hansard</a>, and no licence for it existed. A licence was later given, and <a href="Click-use_licence" class="mw-redirect" title="Click-use licence">click-use licences</a> for Parliamentary copyright information were created as a result.<a href="#cite_note-17">[17]</a>

In early 2006, <a href="The_Times" title="The Times">The Times</a> published an article stating that MPs were "making forgettable contributions to debate" or tabling numerous written questions simply to boost their participation statistics on TheyWorkForYou.<a href="#cite_note-18">[18]</a> This led to a debate in the House of Commons on the increase in questions, led by <a href="Peter_Luff" title="Peter Luff">Peter Luff</a>.<a href="#cite_note-19">[19]</a> The site removed absolute rankings and added some more explanatory text in response,<a href="#cite_note-20">[20]</a> and held a meeting at Parliament later in the year to discuss better metrics.<a href="#cite_note-21">[21]</a> In summer 2006, <a href="Jack_Straw" title="Jack Straw">Jack Straw</a>, <a href="Leader_of_the_House_of_Commons" title="Leader of the House of Commons">Leader of the House of Commons</a>

also mentioned TheyWorkForYou as a site which "seems to measure Members' work in quantitative rather than qualitative terms".<a href="#cite_note-22">[22]</a>

In a Business debate on 26 April 2007, <a href="Theresa_May" title="Theresa May">Theresa May</a> stated that TheyWorkForYou had been "threatened with legal action for repeating what was printed in Hansard" but <a href="Jack_Straw" title="Jack Straw">Jack Straw</a> confirmed that "publication... of a fair and accurate account of a debate in either House is protected".<a href="#cite_note-23">[23]</a>

<ul><li><a href="Elections_in_the_United_Kingdom" title="Elections in the United Kingdom">Elections in the United Kingdom</a></li>

<li><a href="List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_Kingdom" title="List of political parties in the United Kingdom">List of political parties in the United Kingdom</a></li>

<li><a href="Politics_of_the_United_Kingdom" title="Politics of the United Kingdom">Politics of the United Kingdom</a></li></ul>

<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="References">References</h2></div>

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</style><cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/about/">"About us - TheyWorkForYou"</a>.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-2"><a href="#cite_ref-2">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFBooth" class="citation news cs1">Booth, Jenny. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/checking-up-on-the-ruling-class-5fc7gdh6q2g">"Checking up on the ruling class - Times Online"</a>. <a href="The_Times" title="The Times">The Times</a>. London.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-3"><a href="#cite_ref-3">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6554835/The-101-most-useful-websites-2008.html">"The 101 most useful websites"</a>. <a href="The_Daily_Telegraph" title="The Daily Telegraph">The Daily Telegraph</a>. 30 March 2008.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-4"><a href="#cite_ref-4">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFArmitage2004" class="citation web cs1">Armitage, Tom (8 June 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070930223203/http://www.newstatesman.com/forum_view.php?newDisplayURN=300000084377">"MAKE THEM WORK FOR YOU"</a>. <a href="New_Statesman" title="New Statesman">New Statesman</a>. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/forum_view.php?newDisplayURN=300000084377">the original</a> on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 18 November 2024.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-5"><a href="#cite_ref-5">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFDoctorow2004" class="citation web cs1">Doctorow, Cory (6 June 2004). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://boingboing.net/2004/06/06/theyworkforyou-fines.html">"TheyWorkForYou: finest advocacy web-app in the world"</a>. <a href="Boing_Boing" title="Boing Boing">Boing Boing</a>. Retrieved 18 November 2024.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-6"><a href="#cite_ref-6">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/news/archives/2006/06/01/weve_added_the_l">"We've added the Lords, and more: TheyWorkForYou news"</a>. TheyWorkForYou. 1 June 2006. Retrieved 18 November 2024.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-7"><a href="#cite_ref-7">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050425231413/http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/E/election2005/yourmp.html">"Find out everything you need to know about your MP"</a>. <a href="Channel_4_News" title="Channel 4 News">Channel 4 News</a>. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.channel4.com/news/microsites/E/election2005/yourmp.html">the original</a> on 25 April 2005. Retrieved 18 November 2024.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-8"><a href="#cite_ref-8">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20050714022505/http://www.newstatesman.com/nma/nma2005/nma2005winners.php">"New Media Awards 2005 - The Winners"</a>. <a href="New_Statesman" title="New Statesman">New Statesman</a>. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/nma/nma2005/nma2005winners.php">the original</a> on 14 July 2005. Retrieved 18 November 2024.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-9"><a href="#cite_ref-9">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFGould2006" class="citation web cs1"><a href="Philip_Gould%2C_Baron_Gould_of_Brookwood" title="Philip Gould, Baron Gould of Brookwood">Gould, Philip</a> (15 June 2006). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/lords/?id=2006-06-15c.330.10&s=theyworkforyou#g335.0">"Democracy: Power Inquiry"</a>. TheyWorkForYou. Retrieved 18 November 2024.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-10"><a href="#cite_ref-10">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.ukcod.org.uk/">"mySociety"</a>.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-11"><a href="#cite_ref-11">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/news/archives/2006/12/11/the_northern_ire">"The Northern Ireland Assembly: TheyWorkForYou news - TheyWorkForYou"</a>.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-12"><a href="#cite_ref-12">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://openaustralia.org">"Open Australia"</a>.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-13"><a href="#cite_ref-13">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.openaustralia.org/news/archives/2009/02/26/another_big_step">"Another big step forward for government transparency in Australia: OpenAustralia news (OpenAustralia.org)"</a>.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-14"><a href="#cite_ref-14">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.kildarestreet.ie">"Kildare Street"</a>.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-15"><a href="#cite_ref-15">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://poplus.org/posts/Pombola/">Pombola on the Poplus website</a>

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<li id="cite_note-16"><a href="#cite_ref-16">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFSnelgrove2007" class="citation web cs1">Snelgrove, Anne (11 July 2007). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2007-07-11a.1510.0&s=theyworkforyou#g1548.0">"Social Policy and the Relief of Poverty"</a>. TheyWorkForYou. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070930214545/https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2007-07-11a.1510.0&s=theyworkforyou#g1548.0">Archived</a> from the original on 30 September 2007.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-17"><a href="#cite_ref-17">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFBrooke2006" class="citation news cs1">Brooke, Heather (8 June 2006). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foi/story/0,,1792224,00.html">"Make it work for us, Ms Tullo"</a>. The Guardian. London. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060909001156/http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foi/story/0,,1792224,00.html">Archived</a> from the original on 9 September 2006.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-18"><a href="#cite_ref-18">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFHurst2006" class="citation news cs1">Hurst, Greg (27 February 2006). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110629114928/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article735429.ece">"The MPs who can't stop talking"</a>. <a href="The_Times" title="The Times">The Times</a>. London. Archived from <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article735429.ece">the original</a> on 29 June 2011.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-19"><a href="#cite_ref-19">^</a> <cite id="CITEREFLuff2006" class="citation web cs1">Luff, Peter (28 June 2006). <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2006-06-28a.348.0">"I am grateful for that point, with which I agree"</a>. Written Parliamentary Questions. TheyWorkForYou. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20071224190148/https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2006-06-28a.348.0">Archived</a> from the original on 24 December 2007.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-20"><a href="#cite_ref-20">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/help/#numbers">"Help - Frequently Asked Questions - TheyWorkForYou"</a>.</cite>

</li>

<li id="cite_note-21"><a href="#cite_ref-21">^</a> <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/200611200043">New Statesman - The net effect on parliament</a>

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<li id="cite_note-22"><a href="#cite_ref-22">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1 cs1-prop-unfit"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070927235532/http://www.epolitix.com/EN/News/200607/d0f49cdc-3958-4033-b03e-dae559762464.htm">"PoliticsHome.com"</a>. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.</cite>

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<li id="cite_note-23"><a href="#cite_ref-23">^</a> <cite class="citation web cs1"><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debate/?id=2007-04-26a.1035.3">"The website TheyWorkForYou.com has...: 26 Apr 2007: House of Commons debates - TheyWorkForYou"</a>.</cite>

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<div class="mw-heading mw-heading2"><h2 id="External_links">External links</h2></div>

<ul><li><a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.theyworkforyou.com/">TheyWorkForYou.com</a></li></ul></div><div><div class="zim-footer">

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