PoliFLW (Round 3)

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Netherlands Project type: prototype Open State Foundation

Summary

With PoliFLW journalists will be able to effectively follow large groups of politicians simultaneously in what they publicly say and do. It will extract, transform, combine and serve near real-time data from various sources to enable users to to search, monitor, follow, alert, notify and analyse the public behavior of a large group of elected politicians and their parties. This prototype will make it possible that an increased number of politicians can be monitored, including politicians who were normally out of view. It allows journalists to provide better coverage on niche topics, local politics, backbenchers and alternative or distinct local parties. 

The solution

More government tasks and responsibilities are decentralized to local governments. At the same time, capacity for local journalists declines and it is almost impossible to follow large groups of local politicians. Without a good functioning watchdog accountability of local politics is at stake. PoliFLW will have an impact on better informed citizens, an improved watchdog function of journalists and improve democratic oversight of the behavior of elected politicians and their political parties, that are currently functioning largely under the radar.