The website is based upon a system I built a few weeks ago to monitor our own expenses at Consumer Focus Labs . The site was designed to match the processes at Consumer Focus, but when Richard and I realised that MPs expenses were being published, we realised we could make use of the same codebase with a few minor changes.  I need to note at this point that the website was a personal project and not supported by Consumer Focus.

We rushed through these changes on Wednesday afternoon, sorted out some hosting and put the site up. Our initial plan was to get a few interested people to help us convert the data and start loading the information into the site bit by bit.

When the data was published yesterday morning, I realised how much of a mammoth task it was going to be. After a quick discussion, we decided to set up a generic username and password for the admin system so that lots of people could help convert the data.

Once MySociety posted the site on Twitter, everything went crazy. It very quickly became clear that the basic back end was a data entry nightmare and things needed to change. Some changes were quickly scoped out and implemented in between untimely distractions such as this and real work. We removed a number of fields from the forms including location since any location details had been completely redacted from the PDFs. I hacked some of the code to make things work and broke the site a few times in the process.

By 5.30 when I left the office to head home, I was absolutely shattered. I decided it was best to take a step back and take stock before making any further changes. I’d like to thank everyone for their messages of support through the day, and also everyone who sent in useful feedback. I haven’t been able to implement all of them yet, but hopefully a few more will be added over the next few days. I’d also like to thank the Guardian and Financial Times for mentioning the work we’ve done.

So, what lessons can be learned from this exercise?

Firstly and most importantly, plan! We threw the site together assuming the overall format of the data would be similar to the expenses claims made at Consumer Focus. In fact, it was much more complicated, and much more fragmented, with some (almost all!) crucial details missing. We also should have put much more effort into the data entry part of the site. While a basic system might be ok for internal use among a small number of people, it really isn’t appropriate for a crowd sourcing site- particularly when so many things can go wrong.

It is also worth considering that speed isn’t everything. We launched the site at 8.30am on Thursday. The Guardian waited until 3.30pm to launch their site and it was still successful. In hindsight we probably could have waited for a while and got things right first off.

Where next for WhatTheyClaimed.com?

I’m going to try and make some more changes over the next few days, in the hope of making things work a bit better. But in the long term, I don’t have the time to commit to the site. So if anyone is interested in taking over the project and giving it the attention it deserves (and needs!), then get in touch – whattheyclaimed@dafyddvaughan.co.uk. I’ve already had messages from a few people interested in working on the site.

Consumer Focus Labs will be publishing its expenses using the original system shortly – if you are interested in that then keep an eye on our website for the announcement. We’ll also be releasing the code for anyone to use to produce their own expenses websites. We hope that MPs will make good use of it to publish their expenses in the future.

The general opinion is split into two areas – freelancers and contractors/employees.  If you are a freelancer, the answer seems pretty simple. Unless you have signed an agreement with a client that hands over all rights to them, you are the copyright owner, and so you can use it in your portfolio.  If you are a contractor or employee, things are much more complicated.  This isn’t helped by the UK’s outdated copyright laws, recently declared to be the worst in the world by Consumer Focus – the new public organisation responsible for campaigning for consumer rights.

If you are a contractor, you should check the terms and conditions of your contract. If there is a clause handing all copyright to your employer, then there is nothing you can do.  If on the other hand, there is no condition, you might be covered by fair use (this is a part of copyright law that allows certain actions that would normally be regarded as infringement).

For employees, the picture is even bleaker. Anything you create during work hours belongs to your employer.  This even covers things like photographs taken during work time using your own camera!  In these situations, fair use might still come into play.

In the past, when the printed portfolio was king, this issue wasn’t that important. After all, who would know that you are using work you produced while in employment in your portfolio?  Now that it is essential for a developer / designer to have a digital portfolio open to everyone, this is issue has come up time and time again.

I would argue that your portfolio is covered by copyright fair use as you are not selling on the work, and not causing the copyright owner financial harm.  Additionally, you may be providing your employer with free publicity.  If you do go down this route, it is important to credit your employer.  Also remember that claiming full credit for something you didn’t do or only had a part hand in comes under a different issue – plagiarism (you can see my thoughts on this here).  You could also argue that as a website is in the public domain, there is nothing wrong with a screenshot of it – sites display screenshots of other sites all the time - it is accepted practice.

Recently I’ve been talking to lots of designers about this topic. It seems that lots of web companies don’t mind their employees showing work on their portfolio. Some even seem to go as far as to encourage their employees to do it because of the extra publicity it provides.  There are, however, a minority that see things differently.

Of course, I’m not a lawyer, so you shouldn’t take anything I’ve said as legal advice. However there are plenty of places on the internet that do offer this advice and these are well worth a read (1, 2, 3, 4).

If you are an employee and leave to take on another job or become a freelancer, you need to seriously consider the legality of your portfolio. Also remember that what may have been OK while you worked for the company, may not be once you leave.

What do you think? Should a designer be allowed to display a copy of the work he/she has done in their digital portfolio? Have you had problems with your online portfolio?  Let me know – I’d be interested to gather a better picture about this issue.

I understand how screen readers work and have tried out some myself, but seeing someone use one in a real situation was really humbling.  I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it is to use a large part of the internet for someone who suffers from a disability that affects their ability to use a computer.

Robin showed off number of web apps that worked well with screen readers such as FixMyStreet.com, a service that allows you to report problems to your local council.  Another site that worked well was Google Maps (in particular the ability to get directions to a specific location).

What really surprised me however was how poor the accessibility was on new Downing Street website.  When the size of the text on the site is scaled up, the design just breaks completely.  For a public service website, this is quite disturbing, and really needs to be addressed ASAP by their web team.

I wonder how many other Government / public service sites do not consider these issues?

Last weekend I was pleased to launch CllrTweeps.  The new site, inspired by TweetMinster, aims to list every local councillor in the UK who is on Twitter.  After our first week online, we have already tracked down and verified the first 100 councillors using the service.

The first version of the site is run from a very basic Wordpress template.  As great as Wordpress is, it isn’t really cut out for this kind of site.  Luckily, we’re already working hard on version 2, which will bring a more organised directory, cleaner look, and provide us with a good basis to add in more feature such as post code search and mapping. You can keep track of the developments on the CllrTweeps blog or here in my new CllrTweeps category.

A big thanks must go out to James Cousins (twitter.com/jamescousins) who has put in pretty much all the leg work for the launch of the site.  Thanks also goes out to Liz Azyan for helping to identify the councillors and Hywel Vaughan who is working with us to create the branding for version 2.

While we’re busy working on the next version, if you know of a councillor on Twitter please point them in our direction!

This brings up an interesting questions – how do schools inform parents and students that they are going to be closed? Traditionally, schools have informed local radio stations which have spread the news. This however comes with a number of problems – most importantly, not everyone can receive the local radio station. For example, one member of my family goes to Hereford Sixth Form College, which informs BBC Hereford & Worcester, and Wyvern FM of closures. However, here in Abergavenny, we receive neither of these stations.

The college could phone all parents – but with over 1700 students, that would be nearly impossible. Parents ringing the college would freeze up the phone lines. Maybe the schools could use the internet to pass this message? Hereford Sixth Form College does just that – an emergency message has been displayed on the homepage since Monday morning detailing the current status of the college.

What if there was one central resource for information on all schools? One website address for parents to remember - a website which was updated by each school to show their status. Tom Watson, MP for West Bromwich suggested this yesterday morning. He purchased schoolclosures.org.uk and challenged DirectGov (the UK’s government gateway) to produce the site ready for the next day (today).

DirectGov must have pulled out all the stops, because just 28 hours later, schoolclosures.org.uk was released as a beta to show how the system might work. This is fantastic work from a government department - not something you will usually hear from me. Being able to take an idea to a working system in just under 28 hours is no mean feat – but is something the government needs to get used to. Well done to everyone who worked on this!

Of course, no one system is going to solve the problem. But with all systems, schools, and government departments working as one, there is a real chance to make an event like this easier on parents and pupils.

Twitter is going crazy with (i reckon) an average of 700 tweets a minute regarding the problem which appears to be affecting the whole world.

More coverage at TechCrunch and Twitter Search.

Update: All seems to be fine now - problem lasted around 20 minutes

Following his election in November, his team continued their use of aspects of social media to keep people informed during their transition to government. Visitors to their Change.gov site were encouraged to submit their ideas and join in the discussion.

As he was being sworn in at the official ceremony, the new White House website was launched, featuring the new, clean look we have come to expect, simple navigation and the all important blog. This website is perhaps the best website from a government I’ve ever seen. I can only hope that this trend continues not only in the US, but here at home in the UK.

Throughout this week, social media has been making the headlines – and one site in particular has been getting a lot of attention. It is of course, Twitter – the addictive micro-blogging service which allows you to post 140 character updates about what you are doing, and things that interest you. The site has finally hit the mainstream, being discussed on radio, in newspapers and on TV. Various figures show that UK visitors to Twitter have skyrocketed in the last few months.

Not only are we now starting to see a proliferation of celebrities on the service, but also MPs, and members of local government. A fantastic site called Tweetminster has been set up to allow people to locate members of parliament and prospective parliamentary candidates (PPCs) who are using the service.

I think it’s brilliant to see government start to use social media. I feel that it is important for government and the people that are supposed to represent us connect with the country, listen to us, and respond to our ideas. I believe that the use of services like Facebook and Twitter will help reinvigorate politics and get people involved in how their country is run.

I hope that this trend continues, and if it does, 2009 could turn out to be the year government finally ‘gets’ the internet. In the meantime, I’m going to do all I can to help it along.

More recently, the blog network has taken on another new look.  While the latest redesign has kept a number of elements from August’s look, quite a bit has changed, and not all of it for the better.

The first thing you notice when you visit the new site is the revamped ‘network’ bar that links to all the TechCrunch websites.  Although located in almost the same place as last time, the background has been turned black, making it much more prominent.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and might help convince people to visit other parts of the network.  However, I think the black stands out so much that it draws your eye away from the main content.  It unnecessarily overpowers the rest of the website.

In addition to making the network bar more obvious, the large banner advert has been moved into the space next to the site logo.  This has meant that size of the logo has been reduced to make way for the advert.

The website homepage now includes three ‘promo’ items along the top of the main content.  While this makes it easy to jump to what the TechCrunch editors rate as important content, the placement of an advert next to the three boxes first made me think the whole bar was one big advert.  After a few visits, I finally realised that it actually showed content – although nothing I couldn’t get from just reading down the page.

Another change to the homepage has been the reduction in width of the article excerpts and provision of a number of ‘tabbed’ boxes listing active and recent entries.  These boxes used to live beneath the 125×125 pixel advert blocks on the far right hand site.

Overall I think this design is a serious step backwards for the website.  They’ve taken what was a very clean and easy to read design and cluttered it up with adverts.  The more ‘space-efficient’ top bar including advert and logo now has less white space, but is just crowded.  The ‘promo’ bar is badly designed, making it seem like one big advert.  The reduced width of the actual content and increased number of adverts on the right hand side just makes the site seem even more cluttered.  I don’t think they could fit any more stuff in if they tried.

Hopefully next time they do a revamp, they’ll go back to the short-lived clean and consistent design across all their sites.

You can see the new design vs old design from the screenshots below. Although the old screenshot comes from a different site on the TechCrunch network, you can still get a good idea of the changes.

As a web developer, hosting provider and internet user, I do not understand how such a scheme would be possible.  There are a number of issues that need to be considered before anything like this is implemented in this (or any other) country.

Firstly – the majority of websites available on the internet are not hosted on servers based in the UK.  As such, they are not under the jurisdiction of our laws.  Additionally, hosting costs in the UK are significantly higher than other countries such as the United States and Europe.  This poses a huge problem for such a scheme as the majority of websites are likely to ignore the requirement of content ratings and there is nothing our government can do apart from completely block access to unrated sites.

A rating scheme is also clearly open for abuse.  As proved with cinema, video and game rating schemes already in place, a large proportion of people do not pay attention to them.  Parents continue to buy 18 rated games for children of much younger age.  In the case of this scheme, children would probably still be able to view websites not suitable for their age group unless there was some way of verifying their age.

Some sites already implement an ‘age filter’ of sorts.  For example, the Guinness.com website asks for your date of birth before you enter the site.  It doesn’t take much effort to work around this filter.  It also isn’t best practice to provide your date of birth to any website as it could potentially be used for identity theft.  Unless there is a way to safely and accurately identify a user’s age, a rating system can only act as a guide and would still require parents to monitor usage of the internet.

A further concern is how a website will actually be rated.  Technically it is possible to rate the content of a website through the use of Meta tags (and a W3C standard already exists – PICS).  But this plan would rely on a level of trust between website owners and users.  What would stop me from running a “harmful” porn website, and classifying it as “suitable for all ages?”  A safer way to do it would be using third party rating systems, similar to the way secure certificates are provided at the moment.  However this would likely incur a cost to the owner as the third party would need to validate the content of the site.  An additional cost in development is likely to force website owners to look abroad for hosting services that do not require this level of regulation – harming the UK industry and making the rating system useless.

The only ‘safe’ way a rating system could be done is through an independent government funded organisation whose sole job it is to rate websites – similar to the BBFC.  However this opens a whole new can of worms.  Who would regulate the regulators?  How can we ensure that the ratings are fair?  How can we ensure that an anti-government website isn’t deemed “dangerous” and blocked by internet providers?  How will it be paid for (it is bound to be extremely expensive)? An existing scheme like this has already come under heavy fire in recent weeks after the Internet Watch Foundation added a Wikipedia page to its block list, essentially stopping the whole of the UK from editing the site.

In the end, it just appears to be another plan by a government minister who does not know how the Internet works.  For those who have read my blog for a while, I posted about a similar plan in May by the Home Secretary who wants a national database of all emails and phone calls sent in the UK.

Now, I’m all for making the internet safer for children and vulnerable people.  However, systems already exist to do this – there is plenty of “Net nanny” software available to stop people accessing websites with certain keywords or content.  You can even buy hardware solutions which will do it for you.  We do not need the government deciding what is safe for us to view.  This just brings us another step closer to countries like China.

I think it is about time the entire government is sent back to school to learn how the real world works, because they have quite clearly forgotten.

You can get more information at Techcrunch and The Social Programmer.

So, how do you keep your head above the water?  Well, everyone has their own ways as you can see from the discussions over at Freelance Folder.  I have a number of methods I use:

Read blogs
I subscribe to a large number of blogs from other web developers from both the design and development ends of the industry.  A huge amount of useful information comes from people who are facing the same struggle to keep ‘fresh and new’.

Twitter
Twitter is a fantastic resource for developers – how we all coped before it existed I have no idea!  I follow many designers, developers, freelancers and technologists on Twitter.  These people regularly point me in the direction of new and interesting things on the web which help me to produce better sites.

CSS Galleries
I find that looking at CSS galleries such as CSSMania or Best Web Gallery help inspire me to create better designs.  They show off some of the web’s best websites and really help to formulate ideas.  There are plenty of galleries around the web, covering all sorts of niches.

Magazines
A few people say that magazines are a waste of time – by the time they’ve been written, subbed, edited, printed, distributed and read, the industry has passed them by. I don’t agree, the internet moves so fast that it is easy to miss out on important information if you happen to blink (literally).  Magazines help fill this gap.  I have a subscription to .net magazine which is a fantastic resource for designers. (But then again, I would say this – my partner is a magazine journalist… but no really, mags are an invaluable resource).

Conferences
This is probably one of the most expensive parts of keeping up with the industry, and something that until now, I haven’t been able to afford.  There are a huge number of web related conferences throughout the year and across the world, from Future of Web Apps in London, Miami and Dublin, to DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper! in Reading.  Conferences enable you to hear from some of the most influential and knowledgeable people in the industry.

Contribute
Probably the most important thing you can do.  The web is shaped by the people who produce it – whether designers, developers or writers.  If you don’t contribute, you can’t make an impression.  If you follow people on Twitter, respond to them, talk to them.  If you read blogs, comment on them, or better still, write a full response.

So how do I fit all of this in?  It is very difficult – you have to strike the right balance.  Spend too much time keeping up with the web and you don’t get any work done, spend too much time working and you drop behind the curve.
On the train into work in the morning, I read blogs, and last night’s twitter messages.  At work, I have TweetDeck keeping track of twitter for me – letting me know when new messages arrive.  When I have a bit of downtime (such as when I’m waiting for something to load or compile), I look at new blogs that have been posted.  In the evening, I read things in a bit more detail, and at some point I find time to sleep!

As I said, trying to find the right balance is difficult a challenge, but whatever you do, don’t fall behind or you’ll discover it is difficult to get back on track.