Presentation on more of the technical side of OpenAustralia.org given at the Sydney Linux Users Group on 24th April 2009

1. Hacking
OpenAustralia.org
Matthew Landauer
@matthewlandauer
matthew@openaustralia.org

2. What is OpenAustralia?
OpenAustralia.org is a non-partisan website
run by a group of volunteers which aims to
make it easy for people to keep tabs on their
representatives in Parliament.

3. Currently focusing on
the Federal Hansard

4. Why the Hansard
matters

5. The official website -
what it looks like

6. http://www.aph.gov.au/

8. Remix

9. OpenAustralia.org

10. What's the point?

11. Many reasons.

12. Here's just one:

13. quot;...a global network of
volunteers who
develop the Ubuntu
Linux system...quot;

14. Google

19. Approach to building
the site
Do the quickest thing
Focus on getting something up and running
Rewrite in more modern technologies later

22. Bits of technology
Stop me and ask questions

23. Operating System
FreeBSD - using donated VPS service from
Octopus Computing (http://octopus.com.au)

24. Software Version
Control
git
github.com - http://github.com/mlandauer
gitweb
gitosis
git-cvs

25. Deployment / Server
Configuration
Capistrano
Chef (like Puppet)

26. Parser / Scraper
Ruby
Mechanize
Hpricot

28. Web application
Languages
• PHP
• A little Perl / Python (for database
loading and maintenance scripts)

29. Web application
Apache
Xapian
• Doesn't require a daemon
• Requires manual reindexing

30. Bug database
Jira - thank you Atlassian

31. blog.openaustralia.org
Wordpress

32. Database
MySQL
phpmyadmin

33. Future

34. Very close to
establishing
OpenAustralia
Foundation

35. Some ideas for the
future
The Public Whip
Transcription of the Register of Interests
Contacting politicians
Committees
Written Answers

36. Some ideas for the
future
Bills
States & Territories
Video
More historical Hansard
Lobbying register
Party donation records

37. Work in progress

39. Get involved

40. Follow @openaustralia on
twitter

41. Go to
software.openaustralia.org

42. An announcement

43. In June

44. First OpenAustralia
Hackfest!

45. Hack on the parser and
the web app
Build something new
using the data / API

46. Hackfest!
Saturday June 6
Google Sydney
Stay tuned to @openaustralia, Google group
openaustralia-dev or the SLUG announce list
for more details

47. Photo Credits
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sylvar/
348629926/

48. Questions