Mzalendo: An Eye on the Kenyan Parliament
The Kenyan Parliament is pretty non-transparent. It's dificult for even the dedicated to discover what the Parliament is working on, what bills are under discussion, and what the performances of individual MPs are. Two young Kenyans, Ory Okolloh of Kenyan Pundit and "M" of Thinker's Room, felt that a volunteer project that kept citizenry up-to-date on the activities of Kenyan parliament would be useful; even more useful was a forum that encouraged citizen participation, shifting the position of Kenyan voters from passive recipients of Parliamentary decree to active watchdogs of government activity. Ory and M have launched Mzalendo, site which will attempt to track Parliamentary happenings, bills, MPs, districts, and so forth. It will also provide a space for citizens to pose questions to the government, and will help to direct them to the correct MP.
One of the many things I love about this project is the technology -- Ory and M are using WordPress to run their site. WordPress is open source, easy-to-use blogging software. They've gotten someone to help them configure it, but for the most part, it's pretty straightfoward what they've done. I think it's fantastic that we've reached a point where technology is a very small hurdle to an individual citizen's effort to push transparency in government (or other areas). I'd be interested to hear more about the customizations they've done; it would be great if they wrote a bit more about that on the Mzalendo site or their own blogs so that others working on grass-roots anti-corruption projects might use it in their own efforts.