Tony Parkin witnesses a flash of innovation stirring the dust as hackers invade Westminster
There were fireworks as parliamentary data was ripped apart by hackers and students on November 5, part of a groundbreaking strategy, funded jointly by the Houses of Parliament's Online Services and Rewired State. to reveal some of the inner workings of both Houses of Parliament.
But rather than being thrown into the Tower of London, the perpetrators were off for tea in Parliament a couple of weeks later to show off the results of their efforts to help both MPs and the general public. The hack included members of Young Rewired State, the network of 14 to 18-year-olds, who also snagged several of the event's awards.
Hired premises at the Guardian offices hosted 50 of the country’s best developers, selected by Rewired State (RS), for the #RSParly "hack day". It was all part of the first ever Parliament Week, aimed at increasing the transparency of the workings of both of the Houses of Parliament. Parliament shared previously unreleased datasets for this coding competition, organised jointly by the Houses of Parliament's Online Services and the Rewired State network, which is made up of experienced developers, software designers and engineers.
The developers invited to participate included 15 Young Rewired State (YRS) coders, aged 14-18 years, who worked alongside their older colleagues from the 'parent' network (see "Parliament plotters with a mission to rewire MPs"). All the coders worked over 24 hours to eventually create prototypes for 22 programs, websites, apps, games, and internet tools designed to make the UK Parliament easier to understand for both those that work there, and for the general public.
The weekend had started with a tour of Parliament on the morning, followed by an opening address from Lord Knight, who was able to incorporate three of his major interests: education, technology, and Arsenal. Speaking passionately about the educative value of opening up Parliament to wider scrutiny through the use of new technologies, as well as the need to educate more coders in the UK, he was also able to answer a series of probing questions about the workings of Parliament before dashing off to a nearby Arsenal match, leaving the gathered developers to plan their 24 hours of coding activity.
The teams worked through the night – with supplies of free pizza
Shared ideas and code were the initial activities among clusters of developers until, after a flurry of ad hoc discussions, they resolved into project teams and settled down to serious coding. The teams worked through the night, while around them staff from the Houses of Parliament, Rewired State and The Guardian made sure all their needs were met, and that they were fuelled whenever necessary by a steady diet of 'hack-your-own' sandwiches and pizza. Of course there had to be free pizza.
Emma Mulqueeny, director of RS and YRS explained; “In the past we have worked on open Government data at our hack days but Parliament data has, until now, been guarded. The result of hacking this data is that information is easier to consume as it goes through Parliament so even those without a deep understanding of Parliament and government data can better engage with the process.”
Asked why Parliament decided to open up data to Rewired State, Tracy Green, head of online services in Parliament, explained: “There’s a strong commitment in Parliament to make as much data as possible available in an accessible format. This not only helps us to improve the information we have on our own website so that we can better communicate the work of Parliament, but allows others to do that on our behalf, making Parliament more open and transparent.”
There was a wonderful community spirit apparent throughout the event. Theoretically it may have been 'competitive', but what was most striking was the sharing and cross-team camaraderie that was evident, along with an atmosphere of real excitement and fun. These are not attributes that the unknowing would necessarily associate with either Parliamentary data or programming, which goes to show how little understood both of these areas can be.
All coding stopped 24 hours after it had officially begun, at 2.30pm on the Sunday afternoon. The teams had a 'show and tell', demonstrating their results to judges and an invited audience. Then the teams milled around chatting, bemoaning the lack of decent APIs [application programming interfaces] and limitations of the data that had made the coding more challenging, while the judges mulled over the results of their efforts. The event clearly attracted buy-in at senior levels of Parliament, which was demonstrated both by the presence of Lord Knight and by the significance of the jury members. Judging the prototypes were Kerry McCarthy MP, Tracy Green, Bryn Morgan, director of research services, House of Commons Library, and Stephen McGuinness, second clerk, House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.
Tracy Green explained how they finally settled on the winners: “The standard of prototypes for the Rewired State Parliament hack day was incredibly high, which made choosing one as Best in Class very difficult, so in the end we picked two; Politics I Care About and Little Ben. We are very keen to look at how we might be able to take both of these forward with the developers and will be talking to them about that in the very near future.”
Best in show joint winners:
Little Ben: a mobile application designed to keep both MPs and the everyday man informed about the bills going through Parliament (@oderau, @marvinbarretto, @robgyoung)
Politics I care about: a service that links your interests to what’s happening in Parliament (YRSers Tim Brooke and Comrades)
Better understanding of the work of members:
Oh Lordy! (Oli Wood)
Better understanding of the work of Parliament:
Parliament.info (YRSer Tom Shadwell)
To help members do their job better:
Blogs for MPs (YRSer David Kendall)
Most likely to get you beheaded:
Tweeting in Parliament (Gareth Lloyd and Colin Howe)
In addition to awarding the main prizes, each member of the judging panel was given a chance to make a special mention of a project that had really appealed to them.
Special mentions:
Who's Lobbying? (Rob McKinnon)
Groups memberships (Chris McGrath)
Parliamentary (Greg Miell, Allan Callaghan, Greg Mackelden, Shish Girling, parliamentarymydear.co.uk/).
Visual statistics (Elena Croitoru – screenshots)
Everyone was particularly impressed by the YRS competitors, who although they may be too young to vote, still produced entries that included three winning prototypes: Best in Show; Better understanding the work of Parliament; Better understanding the work of Members. You can read more about the thoughts and background to the Young Rewired State crew's efforts at "Parliament plotters with a mission to rewire MPs" .
The Parliamentary team loved the hack weekend so much that they were keen to replay the prototypes to some of their colleagues in Parliament. Tracy Green invited the prize winners to Parliament for tea in late November, to rerun the 'show and tell' and to explore ways of taking some of these hacks forward.
More information
#RSParly Hack Parliament
Parliament Week
Young Rewired State
Rewired State
Emma Mulqueeny on Hack Days
ePetition ‘Teaching our kids to code’
See also "Parliament plotters with a mission to rewire MPs"
All photo credits to Sharon O'Dea, Houses of Parliament
Tony Parkin, former head of ICT development at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (The Schools Network) and now an independent consultant, describes himself as a 'disruptive nostalgist'. He can be contacted at
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or on Twitter via @tonyparkin
