Our Story

In most Canadian municipalities, city council proceedings are a mystery to the average citizen. Most don't care what goes on in their city council - it's too complicated, or it's too much work to find out what council is doing. When it comes to voting time, the only information most people have to help make their decision is what the politicians say about themselves and each other.

Open Council aims to change that. 

We want to build an app that lets you keep track of how your councillor voted in each council meeting. Something like open parliament, but on the municipal level. It will also help you figure out who your councillor is, and how to contact them. It should also have some quality templates for messages to your councillor.

Data entry will be crowdsourced. There are a engaged citizens in every city that attend every council meeting, and look through council meeting minutes. An intuitive interface for these citizens to manually enter any amount of data will be the foundation of this app.

This app will make councillors accountable for their actions in city meetings by making their votes, motions and comments readily available to the public.

The Impact

Open Council will make information readily available to citizens, hopefully moving them to contact city council members with their thoughts, and make more informed choices when voting in municipal elections.

This app will be eventually made available to all municipalities in Canada.

What We Need & What You Get

We will be working with a web development agency in London, Ontario to build this app using the funds we raise. Please note that this campaign is not affiliated with any specific agency (yet). We will be issuing a request for proposals for the design to multiple agencies in London. Here's the breakdown of our estimated costs:

Design: $2400 (this includes a design of the app's interface.)

Development: $2160 (this includes installation and customization of an open source content management system.)

Initial Data Entry: $440+ (this includes going back through old City Council meeting minutes and inputting them into the system.)

Other Ways You Can Help

Here are some other ways you can help move our project forward:

Spread the Word - tell your friends about this amazing project!

Collect Data - start breaking down the council meeting minutes and organize them based on votes and actions of each councillor. Make the data public and share it with us!