Wow! Thanks to your combined contributions and support, we raised over $4750 for free, open source, citizen engagement tools for Montreal and Toronto through Indiegogo. Although we did not reach our goal on Indiegogo, once we include the support from earlier contributions and our Google Montreal sponsorship, we have over $19,000 for the development of these reusable civic engagement tools. We have a busy summer ahead of us building MaMairie.ca and MyCityHall.ca, and we are excited to share our progress with you.
Through this campaign, we’ve gained the support of many influential political leaders and community groups. In addition to your contribution, we have the encouragement of the following leaders and groups:
Toronto: Councillor Shelley Carroll, Councillor Josh Colle, Councillor Mike Layton, Councillor Joe Mihevc, Councillor Adam Vaughan, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives CivicAction, MaRS Data Catalyst, Scarborough Action Network, Toronto Public Space Initiative
Montreal: Councillor Richard Bergeron, Councillor Laurent Blanchard, Councillor Benoît Dorais, Councillor Véronique Fournier, Councillor Marc-André Gadoury, Councillor Louise Harel, Councillor Elsie Lefebvre, Councillor Réal Ménard, Councillor Alex Norris, Councillor Marie Potvin, Councilor Monica Ricourt, Councillor Huguette Roy, Councillor Richard Ryan, L’Institut du Nouveau Monde
Encouragement from these groups will be extremely helpful to ensure that citizens like you will actually receive responses from elected officials when these tools launch.
As you know, the starting place for the MaMairie.ca/MyCityHall.ca project is our collaboration with Participatory Politics (PPF) on OpenGovernment.org. This summer, PPF will deploy the next version of OpenGovernment.org to the local level in three American cities. Through this experience, we will learn valuable lessons that will help ensure the success Open North’s own open government tools in Montreal and Toronto. We will then turn our attention to delivering MaMairie.ca before the Montreal municipal election in November, with MyCityHall.ca Toronto to follow.
We will continue to update you on our progress throughout the summer. Again, we want to thank you for your generous contributions to our work. With your help, we can open city hall’s processes, close the gap between representatives and citizens, and make democracy better!