Open Tech Calendar

An event looking at how technology is helping to raise public scrutiny of politicians. We'll be looking at some real-life examples of targeted campaigns and tools that help us to understand what politicians are up to and how we can have a say in their priorities.

Joaquim d'Souza and Hazel Sheffield
In March, the Huffington Post published #SoldFromUnderYou, an investigation revealing that local councils are selling off billions of pounds worth of publicly owned property just to make ends meet. #SoldFromUnderYou was the result of a year of Freedom of Information requests sent to all 353 English councils by the Bureau Local, part of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and reporting by journalists through the Bureau Local's network of local reporters. It came with a map, created by Joaquim d'Souza, allowing anyone to search the location of the 12,000 spaces that have been sold since 2014. Joaquim and Hazel Sheffield, who worked in collaboration with the Bureau Local on the project, will speak about how the investigation came together, how they created the searchable map, and what's next for the project.

Seena Shah, Director of Marketing at PolicyMogul
Seena is listed as a top 50 women in digital under 30 by The Drum. Her interest in change at Government level led her to her current role with PolicyMogul where she is Director of Marketing. Seena will be discussing how important it is to have diversity in those who influence policy and policy-makers, in order to create a politics that is truly reflective of society.

Matt Chocqueel-Mangan, Policy Tracker & Vote for Policies
Matt is an experienced agile coach and digital service designer, on a mission to create what he describes as a 'sustainable democracy'. Matt created Vote for Policies and more recently Policy Tracker which focus on transparency and accountability to increase participation.