The Road to May 2018

Having reviewed the last year and workshopped ‘what’s next’ at a couple of sessions in London and Cambridge, we’ve now drafted our goals for the year to May 2018.

We’d love your feedback! Please comment on this Google Doc.
(If you can’t, then comments on the end of this post are also good!)

General election

In the event of a general election during the year, do as we did in 2017 (or better!).

Data

1. Every election (including by-elections)
2. Every candidate
3. Polling locations for 75% councils with elections in May 2018
   1. inc. 100% for the 32 London boroughs, Birmingham and Manchester
4. Every result (winner and vote count) for May 2018

Apps

1. Run improved Where Do I Vote? service
2. Run improved Who Can I Vote For? service
   1. Full set of statements from candidates in 20 marginal London borough wards for May 2018
3. Find support for ElectionLeaflets.org or close it down
   1. Talk to five academic institutions and media companies about providing support;

Reach/impact

1. Help 250,000 people engage with election information* across Data and Apps
2. Be more useful
   1. Greater percentage of users find Who and Where useful (vs 2016 previous comparable elections)
   2. Users on Who Can I Vote For? spend long enough on the pages to read the information**

*Of those we know about — it’s hard to follow the full impact of open data

**Other suggestions for measures of usefulness gratefully received!

Club

1. New board of directors
   1. Invite and appoint at least three members, beginning with the chairperson
2. Raise £150,000 of new funding beyond existing committed funds
   1. Make sales to local authorities or Cabinet Office
   2. Test new approaches to individual member donations
3. Build better relationship with members
   1. Publish weekly blog
   2. Send monthly newsletter
   3. Plan clear onboarding process
4. Make effort to understand diversity of members, partners and end users
5. Make best efforts to ensure club is reflective of UK population
   1. Understand best practices through meeting with three well-regarded organisations
   2. Publish a code of conduct
   3. Design appropriate approach for the club
6. Research
   1. Write research plan to cover end users and partner organisations
   2. React to research discoveries with new approach or prototype products
7. Plan for personal development for staff

Labs

1. Additional data sources
   1. Start work on open historical results database
   2. Ensure 50% of May 2018 candidate pages on Who Can I Vote For? are linked to local manifestos
2. Do something not related to an election
   1. Begin work on the UK representatives database
3. Do something offline, potentially:
   1. London 2018 candidate debates in 20 wards
4. Tools for door-to-door organising (could be awareness, issues, registration, GOTV)
   1. Member-organised meetups
   2. Win new project grant to review UK civic education and design proposal for moonshot project

Now we need to develop the habits that will lead us to meeting these goals. (A fair amount hinges on the goals of fundraising, which would allow us to hire the people that can help us get there!)

Currently our habits involve Trello cards, morning video-meetings and working very hard. We’re thinking about switching to two-week ‘sprints’. Suggestions welcome…

Here’s the Google Doc again — please let us know your thoughts there, or in the comments below.