cynaxis is an informal Cyprus-based initiative with a focus on improving civic access to publicly- and privately-held information. We hold that every person should have unencumbered and equal access to the information that shapes their life and their community. We act by amassing data and building civic applications, and by carrying out research in this area.
cynaxis has its roots in the parliament monitor openpatata. openpatata sprang in August 2014 of a desire to shed light on the business of the Cypriot parliament—what is very much inaccessible to the uninitiated—and preceded neavouli, a crowdsourced candidate database, and continuing inquiry into open data in Cyprus.
The original Cypriot parliament monitor
openpata is a Cypriot parliament monitor conceived in the summer of 2014 and mothballed in 2015. The website remains accessible.
Research project taking off from discourse analysis around open data in Cyprus
The work was initially presented as part of NeMe.org's nEUROsis (Limassol, November 2016). It uses local case studies to critically examine the notion of the state as a hoarder of information that is impeding economic development.
Platform for crowdsourcing election candidate data
neavouli was created in the run-up to the 2016 legislative election. It contains volunteer-contributed information on all candidates in the election. Data is available for download in the CSV format and through a JSON API.
Machine-readable parliament data
The data are harvested from plenary transcript PDFs and the official parliament website and are made available as a data package in the Popolo standard. They include plenary sittings, questions and MPs.
MP questions web interface
erotiseis presents questions Members of Parliament posed to the executive in a searchable format and links to answers.
Collaborators on cynaxis are Chrystalleni, Dimitris and Neofytos.
Our first port of call is the #opendatacyprus room on Matrix. You can also reach out to us directly at hello@cynaxis.org. We are always looking for more people to collaborate with: to share and develop ideas and pave the way forward for cynaxis.