Mam Prawo Wiedzieć

My name is Anna Czyżewska and I work for Stowarzyszenie 61, which manages the platform MamPrawoWiedziec.pl. This website was created to give Poles user-friendly access to information about their representatives. The name of the association, 61, refers to the 61st article of our Constitution, stating that each citizen has the right to access information about the activities of public services as well as people working for those services. Polish citizens have access to the website of our parliament and government, but those websites are not always intuitive or easy to use. So we decided to do something different. We post biographies of our parliament members, information about their voting sessions, information about work of the Seym Committee (Committee of the Chamber of Deputies), information about our members in the EU parliament. Since 2007, we have also posted information about candidates to elections. We post information provided by the candidates themselves in response to our requests.

The association was established in 2005 as a result of discussions about the state of access to public information and to the work of Seym. More than 10 people from various Warsaw-based NGOs decided to establish an association aiming to work on the Mam Prawo Wiedzieć website.

In the long run, we want to focus the attention of Polish citizens on two apexes. First, thinking about whom they are voting for, why, and what motivates them to make those choices. We would like to make them think about their reasons for choosing particular candidates. We want them to stop voting for a party, group or specific person in relation to another one, and start to think wisely whom they are voting for. Currently we are preparing for local elections, and we want people to start making choices based not on their favorite party, but on candidates who see their local village or town through the same eyes as their supporters. We want the voters to make a conscious choice.

Second, we would like to raise the interest of supporters in the actual work of their representatives. Not only on famous, more visible issues widely discussed in Poland nowadays, like in vitro fertilization or abortion, but on things they do on a daily basis: what is their work, what do they do, what do they plan to do and what is the input supporters can have on their representatives. We would like to change the image of the authorities’ top-to-down approach to choosing people whom we, voters, give the privilege to represent us.

So we are talking about two aspects here: being interested in who is going to represent us, and being actively interested in what the representatives are actually doing and who they are.

We are fully aware of the fact that not everyone will go to our website, that we will not reach everyone and that we will not convince everyone. But this summer we took MamPrawoWiedziec.pl to Slot Art Festival, in Lubiąż, to promote the idea of aware citizenship and our service too. Once we started to talk to people we heard them saying: “Yes, we heard of you, we know you, we have seen your website.” This was a terribly nice feeling. I felt that what we do is already bringing effects, is already making a difference. At the same time we talked to people who were saying they do not go to vote because Polish political life is too political, that politicians do not represent us. That was the point when we thought, “You know, what we do is exactly what you need!” And by showing them the website we could convince them to a certain extent too.

Let me use the example of candidates to the EU Parliament. It was a voluntary project in which the candidates — providing they wanted to — could disclose information about themselves. 1,300 candidates took part in elections. We managed to get in touch with 800 of them, because it is usually us trying to get in touch with them on the phone or by email, to follow up by email with the questionnaire they are to fill out and which automatically is filled up on our site. Out of 800 candidates who received it, 200 filled it out for us. So we had 25% interest there. About 20 of them actually got elected.

We work together with Masz głos, mass wybór (“You Have a Vote, You Have a Choice”), whose aim is to help in local elections. This year, due to the local elections, first of all we gave them access to our system and design, so they can embed the banner linking to our sub-site hosting information about the candidates of that particular area with filled out questionnaires, so they can promote the project among the citizens and representatives of that area. In terms of methodology, we provide them with the questionnaire, which then they can use during the pre-election debates. And of course we stay in touch in case they have any questions or need support.

We also work with Moja Polis, managed by the Klon-Jawor Association — it’s a database of information about all councils in Poland, containing statistical information like levels of unemployment, access to education or health care, and hospitals. We also cooperate with the Centre for Citizenship Education, who manage Młodzi Głosują (“Teenagers Vote”) with the Association of Leaders of Local Civic Groups, educating Poles on access to public information.

Outside of Poland, we work with the British mySociety. Tony Bowden visited us last year and hosted a seminar for us and few other organizations on using various IT tools to increase transparency. I think he is our most inspiring partner from outside Poland.