Making this rituals of power more understandable for citizens, quantifying them and exposing lazyness and contradictions of politicians are some of the objectives of Parlio. They focus their activity on the Basque Parliament, the legislative body of the Basque Country autonomous community of Spain. In their own words:

We take the data from the Basque Parliament’s official site and we bring it to the people in a much more user friendly way, so we can really know what the politicians are doing… and what they are not.

However, as usual in public service websites in Spain, where there is no access to information law (the largest EU country without that law, according to Access-Info), the data in the Basque Parliament official website is not provided in a standard format and is not easily re-usable by third parties. Parlio, then, has also the secondary function of translating that data to structured formats, where mashups and other web 2.0 magic trickery takes place. The ruby module that scraps the content out of the Basque Parliament website is avaliable here with a MIT license, so you can, too gather the data for your own purposes. It seems that the whole Parlio website, also in Ruby, will be open sourced at some point. The whole Parlio website has been also open sourced (updated 7.12.09).

In fact, Parlio is funded by Pro Bono Publico, a spanish open association that promotes the use of free and open standards, data and technological platforms in the public institutions. They are looking for designers and developers with any level of expertise to help them shape other projects around public institutions and transparency.

This project was submitted through the front page form by Ana Malagon, one of the developers of Parlio.

You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don’t know where the fuck it’s gonna take you.
Detective Lester Freamon.

The European Union is one of the most cryptic and opaque political insitutions, much more than some of the governments and states that is comprised of. That opacity includes the European Union budget, its subsidies, and how and to whom this money is distributed, which is very hard for citizens to understand.

Some journalists, transparency NGOs and analysts have started Follow The Money, to shed some light in the way money is spent and given by european institutions. This site builds upon the work of farmsubsidy.org, which used laws of access to information and new transparency rules on financial regulation in the EU to report on who was getting the farm subsidies money.

FollowTheMoney.eu aims to make it easier for European citizens to understand the EU budget: how it gets decided, where the money comes from and how it is spent. FollowTheMoney.eu comes from journalists, researchers and activists who want to make the European Union work in a more transparent and accountable way.

The team has released a companion to farmsubsidy.org, called fishsubsidy.org. This time, obviously, the focus is on money granted to fishing industries.

You can find issues where some action is needed, as well as events to attend and participate in the front page of Follow The Money. If you are really into transparency and budgetting and want to get involved with this project, you can find more about becoming part of the team in the about page.

This project was found via Furilo.

Guerrilla Gardening is a loose network of local groups that want to regain control of the public space, and more precisely, of the green spots in our cities, from the institutions. The act of citizens looking after their own green spaces fosters consciousness of public spaces, improves their involvement in city matters, and of course, makes better looking gardens. And maybe some vegetables and fruits for tasty victories over concrete and ugliness.

In the Guerrilla Gardening website you can find a community posting board with local groups in your country, with sub-boards for states and cities. If your country or city is not listed, you can send an email to open up a new board and start organizing a local Guerrilla Gardening group.

The Guerrilla Gardening groups are totally independent from each other, there is no central organization nor do you need to affilliate or even sign up to the website. You can just set up your own website to organize your community, as this group in Madrid has done (weird copyright legal notice and all).

We are a grassroots, web-based community dedicated to chronicling and resisting corporate attacks on democracy, worker’s and human rights, fair trade, business ethics and the environment. Our shared goal of a more informed and conscious consumer is being accomplished via this website: a vast database of easily searchable corporate and political info designed to aid responsible citizens, progressive thinkers and activists.

Ethical Consumerism is an important movement toward corporate reform, through which individuals recognize their own role in systems of oppression, and take personal steps toward resistance and positive change.

They site rates the performance of a company in five different areas or issues: workers’ rights, human rights, environment, political influence and business ethics.  Knowmore was conceived and founded by independent hip hop artists B. Dolan and Sage Francis.

Find how you can participate in this project.

We are farmer scientists – working to develop a world class research center for decentralization technologies using open source permaculture and technology to work together for providing basic needs and self replicating the entire operation at the cost of scrap metal. We seek societal transformation through interconnected self-sufficient villages and homes. This is a stepping stone to transcending survival and evolving to freedom.

For three years they have been taking their theory into practice in the Factor e Farm, in the fields of Missouri.

Take a look at their blog and their wiki for more info, and find out how you can support them.

For this very same reason, cartography has also been used as an activist tool, way before Google Maps was invented, but the recent trend in mapping and data visualization has meant an increment in the use of cartography as a mean to represent reality from a radical stance.

Surveillance camera maps and other countless mashups of economic and geographic data are now joined by Sourcemap. The project taps into the local consumption angle and sustainability that we have covered here before, and wants to show in a map the supply chain for a given product, calculating the carbon footprint of producing and delivering that product.

Sourcemap is a platform that enables users to contribute to and share ideas about sustainability. Whether you are inviting people to an event, buying ingredients for a recipe, or designing a product, your choices have a significant impact. Some decisions have impacts that stretch across the world, whereas others are entirely regional. Understanding the reach of our actions and facilitating positive change is fundamental to improving economic, social, and environmental conditions.

Sourcemap, sponsored by the MIT Medialab is looking for volunteers.

This site is building an overview of European initiatives and activities around Open Government Data. While working on Open Gov Data it became clear to us that there are lots of European initiatives, data sets and examples that are hard to find outside their own language area. Therefore this site aims to be a collection of pointers.

On a country by country basis we will collect and share pointers to three types of content:

• Data sets, pointers with short descriptions of what’s available;
• Initiatives, pointers to policy initiatives, competitions, barcamps. Also as examples of what you can do in your own country;
• Mashups, example applications based on open government data.

See how you can help.

These issues span over many subjects and areas, which are reflected in a breadth of competences and opinions. There are no leaders, nor members. We Rebuild is simply an international chaotic event, and our actions can not be predicted in detail.

Who are we? There really is no “we”, because we are also you. When acting as We Rebuild, we put all personal or political views aside, focusing on our target – rebuilding the world and saving the internets.

See a FAQ here.

Local Food Systems is one of this networks, located mainly in the american states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan. They state:

1. We have the people, land and climate needed to produce fresh, affordable, and healthy food.
2. Our growing community of producers and consumers can create strong local food systems, reduce use of fossil fuels, and create businesses and jobs.
3. Vibrant local and regional agriculture generates wealth in communities, establishes healthy environments for families, and enhances quality of life for all.

It has only presence in some parts of Spain, mainly Catalonia, where it was born, Aragon, Andalucia and Madrid, with plans to expand soon to other areas as Galicia.