What is basic your idea of your initiative and what are you trying to
accomplish with it? When was the first thought born about the project?
The point of doing dotankoch.sk is to bring politics to common people. We work with the same data as webpage of Slovak parliament does. Additional value which we added is lucidity. We work with the same data but we changed the way how they are presented. We want to make better conditions to regular people to get know about happening in Slovak parliament. The most interesting statistics, ranks etc. are displayed here. Our motivation is knowledge which we want people to have before they vote for party or deputy. Last parliamentary elections in June 2010 was the milestone when we decided to release our project. However, it was released at the end of the 2010, since we have also other work to take care of.
How much time did it take to launch the project before it went live?
What were the first reaction of the people?
It took almost year to make it live. However we are not focused only on this project and it could be done much earlier. It actually took maybe 1 man month to make it work. Well, now, when it is online for arround 3 months, people like it and they want more and more. We have some feedback by people who just like it and wishes good luck, and those who are trying to help by suggesting new (sometimes kind of crazy) ideas.
Did and how the idea change since Day1? What are your users saying
and how are you adapting to their needs?
Our idea persists. We only have to change our domain. The problem is that "do tankoch" is a grammatically incorrect phrase invented by one of our nationalists. Full context of saying that was also politically incorrect and it was fairly discussed and parodied few years ago. Press simply suggested to change it, so did head of our parliament. Satisfying the need of the head of parliament and press would possibly help us since they are now kind of constrained users (they cant use it or reference it officially).
What are your plans for near and further future?
We want to change design with new domain. The new domain is actually inspired by sejmometr.pl we are going to use similar name parlameter.sk. So stay tunned for new design. We also want to add new functionality. We have too much great ideas but this is non-profit project with no financial support. We are researchers at our faculty (fiit.sk) so we have also other interesting projects and problems to deal with.
What is/was your main obstacle while developing and running your project?
There is always some problem or obstacle. Actually we are great team capable of solving them all in corresponding amount of time.
DoTankoch vs official website of Parliament - how much of its data have you copied? 80%, 50%?
Not easy to say. We are able to copy everything they have. We only pick what we need for further analyses.
Lets say, we copied 80% of available and usefull data. This data is main source for DoTankoch.sk. Information which we present is not simply copied. We could claim there is maybe 10% intersection of presented information between parliament webpage and dotankoch.sk(inlcuding e.g. photos of deputies).
When the new version comes out how do you plan to promote it?
It is going to be officially added to the webpage of parliament as an alternative. We also presumed that press is going to use our analyses as source of information.
How do you get money to run the project? If you have nothing now, how do you plan to get it?
We have no profit so far and we are not going to search for investors. But if they find us, we won't defend against investment. This project is a free-time issue for us.
How would you like to affect people with your idea?
We hope they will find out what is happening in parliament. We want them to be more educated before they elect someone. Our intention is to provide better and more clear overview and let electors decide to responsibly vote for their candidates.