TheyWorkForYou news
January 2005

17 January 2005

New! Ministerial Statements now included

The TheyWorkForYou.com volunteers are busily crunching their way through the more esoteric corners of Hansard. By way of example, we've just incorporated Written Ministerial Statements into the site.

Nope, most of us had never heard of them either, but apparently:

Written Ministerial Statements were introducted in late 2002 to stop the practice of having "planted" or "inspired" questions designed to elicit Government statements.

They are just that - statements on a particular topic by a Government Minister.

Well, there you go. You live and learn.

Next up: Select Committees, which promise to be an order of magnitude more challenging. We'll keep you posted.

PS We're always on the lookout for new volunteers - contact us if you are keen to help in almost any capacity.

Posted at 17:44:47 | Link to this

25 January 2005

Search by Date

Thanks to the sterling efforts of a fine new volunteer (thanks David!), you can now sort any search results either by listing the most relevant results first, or most recent results first.

This is good news for those wanting to keep up to date with issues as they pop up in the Commons.

Next step on search is probably an RSS version of keyword searches. We're still very keen to improve overall relevancy of results - anyone out there fancy lending us a Google Appliance to play with?

As ever, contact us if you've got any suggestions how we might improve the site, or if you fancy volunteering.

Posted at 00:16:09 | Link to this

25 January 2005

New Release of TheyWorkForYou.com Source Code

Update: New URL for the code.

We've released version 8 of the TheyWorkForYou.com source code which is available for download under an Open Source licence.

The update contains new code for:

- Westminster Hall Debates - Written ministerial statements - Better search code

Feel free to download it and have a play.

Whilst you're at it, don't forget we also publish a full XML version of the Hansard data.

Posted at 00:15:19 | Link to this