Launching States of Jersey Petitions through an open source approach with States of Jersey

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Launched public platform for opening engagement between public and States Assembly

  • Five weeks development to live launch
  • System built reusing open source codebase of UK Government and Parliament Petitions platform
  • Accelerated Ruby on Rails development through forking existing code, saving time and cost
  • Launched platform with 164,852 signatures received to date

337

Petitions opened to date

164,852

Signatures to date

Increasing engagement between Jersey Islanders and the States Assembly

In January 2018, Jersey's politicians unanimously agreed on an online facility for petitions, making it easier for Islanders to make their views known to the States Assembly. Through exploration of platforms used by other Parliaments, States Assembly identified requirements matching those of UK Government and Parliament Petitions — an open source petitioning platform, developed and launched through collaboration between Government Digital Service and Unboxed.

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Reusing open source codebase of UK Government and Parliament Petitions

Developing UK Government and Parliament Petitions platform through open source technologies allowed for our team to copy the existing codebase through GitHub, with no licence costs, as a starting point, resulting in an exact replica of features and functionality. Jersey-specific requirements for the platform included amending location-specific postcode functionality and introducing a new colour scheme.

What our client had to say

Dr. Mark Egan | Greffier of the States | States Assembly

“Petitions.gov.je has been created with Unboxed to deliver an online solution for the public to quickly and easily engage with the States Assembly by submitting and/or supporting online petitions, and as a result, engaging more of the public in Jersey’s democracy.”

Increasing engagement between Jersey Islanders and the States Assembly

After five weeks, Jersey Petitions launched into the public domain, opening up a new channel of communication between States Assembly and Jersey’s 100,000 Islanders. Since launching, 337 petitions have been opened by members of the public, receiving a combined 164,852 signatures to date. 58 petitions have passed the 1,000+ signature threshold, resulting in direct responses from Ministers.

Visit States of Jersey Petitions.

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58

Petitions to receive response from Minister to date

5

Weeks of development to live launch

What our client had to say

Dr. Mark Egan | Greffier of the States | States Assembly

“Having welcomed over 35,000 visitors and seen 30 petitions created in just 50 days, since launching, we are already experiencing a great achievement for a new concept on an island of just 100,000 people.”