User:Ainali/Social media for public organizations/Unlock
Title of your project *
[edit]govdirectory.org
Describe your idea in one sentence *
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A crowdsourced and fact checked directory of official governmental online accounts and services.
YOUR IDEA
[edit]What problem does your idea solve? *
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It is hard to find the online accounts for public organizations, and even if you find one, you might not find one on a platform you have an account on, making it harder than it needs to be to communicate.
It can also be hard to know which account is the official one. There might be false accounts that looks like the official one, sometimes with the purpose of spreading disinformation, sometimes only for fun but both might be harmful for those who looks for the correct information.
Separately, it can be hard to find all of a certain kind. For example: the Twitter accounts for all provinces in Chile, or the Instagram accounts for all environmental protection agencies in EU countries.
How does your idea address the problem? *
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Our project sets off to create a potentialy global directory of government agencies and their online presence by utilizing Wikidata. Wikidatas community, sourceability, versioning, and potential custom tooling that we create will ensure that not only should the information be correct but when it isn't because of vandalism or something else users will be able and suggested to validate the information. This could be used journalists, web-archivists, and many others.
We can't collect all this data ourselves so we intend to create contribution tooling and workflows so that users and the existing Wikimedia community can continue this effort even past our initial proof-of-concepts.
Who is the target group of your idea and why are you sure that your idea is needed by the target group? *
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As participants in open movements, civic tech enthusiasts and having a background as civil servants, we know that already today these groups are part of the target groups:
- journalists - to be able to pick up news, and audit what it is written
- web-archivists - to enable them to save communications for posterity
- activists - to reach the right public body to put political pressure on them
- the public - to receive timely information about current regulations and events
These groups already uses the type of information we are looking to centralize but we hope that we will lower the barrier for both the groups that we know about and others by making the information more widely available.
How does your idea contribute to (re-)building trust in the digital age? *
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Knowing who is online and where, and making public online presence more transparent have a number of benefits:
- you can receive timely and official information,
- it is possible to hold them accountable, and
- it enables archiving of communications to protect it for the future.
Being sure that you are actually communicating with the intended agency and not a fake account puts the information given in a different light.
All this together makes it easier to evaluate the information you read and therefore enables trust in it.
Which similar ideas already exist and what makes your project different / stand out? *
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The US digital registry is a good example of what we are trying to do. It is a transparent directory that is searchable and discoverable in various ways. https://usdigitalregistry.digitalgov.gov/
However, it is only for one country and on federal level, we want a global directory and on all administrative levels. (This will be a great source of input to the directory.)
We want this directory to be localizable so that anyone can access the information in their own language.
How far along are you with the idea? What is the current status, what have you already achieved? *
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So far it is mostly an idea with a few demo queries that proves that Wikidata can provide this kind of information. Our research on Wikidata shows that Wikidata modeling in the topic area is already in place. We have also researched and experimented with various contribrution workflows and the tooling that such workflows might consist of.
What are some of the milestones you will be working on in 2021? *
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- having a website that can display all the available data
- add filter options to restrict the displayed data to subsets
- collect complete and cleanup data for at least one country and topic so that the features can be showcased.
- collect at least one link in every country so that everyone can relate to at least something.
- setup of contribution workflows and tooling, so that users and the community can build on top of our initial work
Why do you want to participate in the accelerator? Where do you need specific support? *
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We have a quite homogeneous background and trust in public organizations. This project however, in particular, need a wider viewpoint in able to make the directory trustworthy from people all over the world. Therefore we believe that the user experience need special consideration. While we are aware of these shortcomings of ours an accelerator could help us to be held accountable through persistent feedback.
We have limited experience in designing highly localizable services and might need help with ways of designing that.
Your project’s web address, if available
[edit]govdirectory.org
YOUR TEAM
[edit]Tell us about your team. Who are you? What do you do for a living? *
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We are Albin Larsson and Jan Ainali (User:Abbe98 and User:Ainali on Wikidata). We are both long-time Wikidata users.
Jan Ainali works at the Foundation for Public Code, helping public organizations collaborate on software development. Jan was the CEO of Wikimedia Sverige and has been a requirements analyst in software development.
Albin Larsson has a background working at publicly funded institutions, most recently at Europeana Foundation with R&D related to linked data and AI, Albin is now a freelancer who tries to work on open source and open data projects for a living. Albin has received several adwards and scholarships for his work relating to open data and startups.
How long have you been working together? *
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We have run a weekly livestreamed Wikidata editing show together for over a year and were previously colleagues at the Swedish National Heritage Board. On the Wikimedia projects we have collaborated since 2014 and outside them we also participated in hackathons together.
What makes you the ideal team to work together on this idea? *
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Since we both have deep experience in Wikidata, we can easily communicate possibilities with each other and build upon the ideas collaboratively. Albin's deeper knowledge in coding and Jan's experience in requirements development complements each other nicely. The love for open data and building services that can be useful for the world is a common motivating factor.
Our experience with community focused effort such as our Wikidata livestreams as well as our networks allows us to engage with open communities which is crucial to the success of this project.
Which roles and responsibilities does each team member have with regards to your project idea?
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Jan will take the lead on overaching systems engineering and design. Albin will take the lead on: software architecture / programming (website and tooling)
Things we both will do: SPARQL queries, engaging the Wikimedia communities, engaging the outside world