An interesting set of sites in the UK, volunteer-run, to keep track of Parliament. TheyWorkForYou lets you check who your MP is, based on postcode: voting record, topics they're interested in, and "performance" like participation in debates, recent appearances, responsiveness to email, and expenses.

The sister site WriteTotThem lets you write to an MP, and also keeps track of response rates. The other sister site, HearFromYourMP, lets you sign up for news from your MP, and does that a bit more pro-actively: when 25 people sign up, your MP will receive an email to tell her/him that 25 people want to hear, then again for 50, etc. The league of responsiveness shows the results. Even better: when your MP answers, the answer is put up on the website, so all who signed up can immediately start discussing it. Now we're talking :-)

Take a look for instance at David Howarth's message about his position against nuclear power. He already knew that 188 people signed up to receive this message, and he got some positive responses, not a second of his own list building involved. David Lepper, on the other hand, has a list of even 190 people who would like to hear from him, and all he can say is "come to my website and sign up there". Hey David, they like to hear from their MP, and that just happens to be you now, but maybe not forever? You got into Parliament thanks to 5,030 voters, can you ignore 190 people who made the effort to sign up to hear from you?

(The folks at mySociety.org, also behind Pledgebank, are involved)