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This article is about the British computer programmer and activist. For the British glider pilot, see Frank Irving.

Francis Irving
Francis Irving
BornJuly 1974 (age 50)[1]
Alma materUniversity of Oxford (BA)
Known for
Scientific career
Institutions
Websitewww.flourish.org Edit this at Wikidata

Francis Irving (born 1974)[1] is a British software engineer, freedom of information activist and former CEO of ScraperWiki.[2][3][4][5][6]

Education

Irving studied A-levels in Biology, Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and General Studies at high school and was subsequently educated at the University of Oxford.[2] He received a first class degree in mathematics in 1995 as a student at Lincoln College, Oxford.[2]

Career

Irving developed TortoiseCVS.[7] He co-founded Public Whip with Julian Todd and became a developer of the affiliated TheyWorkForYou website,[8] a project which parses raw Hansard data to track how members vote in the UK Parliament. Initially risking prosecution for re-using the raw data which was under crown copyright, the developers of Public Whip were later successful in getting permission to use it.[9] In 2004, Public Whip was recognised in the New Media awards.[10] In 2008, The Daily Telegraph rated TheyWorkforYou 41st in a list of the 101 most useful websites.[11] Irving together with Matthew Somerville wrote the code for FixMyStreet.[12]

Irving was also a senior developer of PledgeBank.[13] He collaborated again with Julian Todd to create 'The Straight Choice', a website (later renamed Election Leaflets) that archives election leaflets.[14][15]

Irving served as campaign director of the Save Parliament campaign which opposed the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.[16][2]

Irving was one of two people to suggest the winning idea of a site through which Freedom of Information Act requests could be made in a mySociety competition for ideas for public interest websites to build.[17] He was later to become the main developer of the site which was called WhatDoTheyKnow.[18] Francis has won seven New Statesman awards for websites he has worked on.[3]

Iving has collaborated with Ben Goldacre at the Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science on a European Union (EU) clinical trials tracker and software for tracking retraction in academic publishing.[19][20] He has previously worked for NC Graphics and Memrise.[2]

References

  1. ^ a b c Anon (2020). "Francis Irving". gov.uk. London: Companies House. Archived from the original on 30 July 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Irving, Francis (2024). "Francis Irving CV". flourish.org. Archived from the original on 22 February 2024.
  3. ^ a b "Francis Irving". newswired.com.
  4. ^ Rosenbaum, Martin (9 June 2010). "Open Secrets: Victory for whatdotheyknow website". bbc.co.uk. BBC. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  5. ^ "ScraperWiki nets $280,000 from Knight Foundation". 24 June 2011. Archived from the original on 31 August 2011. Retrieved 29 March 2012.
  6. ^ Irving, Francis (5 May 2011). "ScraperWiki: A story about two boys, web scraping and a worm | ScraperWikiScraperWiki". scraperwiki.com. Archived from the original on 23 June 2013. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  7. ^ "Companies". TortoiseCVS. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  8. ^ The Silent State, Heather Brooke p128
  9. ^ Brook, Heather (8 June 2006). "Make it work for us, Ms Tullo". theguardian.com. London: The Guardian.
  10. ^ "New Media Awards 2004". newstatesman.com. Archived from the original on 7 May 2010.
  11. ^ Technology. "The 101 most useful websites". Telegraph.co.uk. Archived from the original on 5 December 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  12. ^ "Frequently Asked Questions". FixMyStreet. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  13. ^ Benjamin, Alison (10 January 2007). "Public inquiry". theguardian.com. London: The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
  14. ^ Moore, Matthew (15 May 2009). "'British pensioners' on BNP election leaflet are actually Italian models". Telegraph.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 May 2009. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  15. ^ "EU Withdrawal Bill – what your MPS said on your behalf – the Straight Choice". August 2018.
  16. ^ "Write to your Lord to Save Parliament | Save Parliament Blog". Bill111.wordpress.com. 31 October 2006. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  17. ^ "About". whatdotheyknow.com. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  18. ^ "mySociety's Freedom of Information site goes live". mysociety.org. 22 February 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  19. ^ Ben Goldacre; Nicholas J DeVito; Carl Heneghan; Francis Irving; Seb Bacon; Jessica Fleminger; Helen Curtis (12 September 2018). "Compliance with requirement to report results on the EU Clinical Trials Register: cohort study and web resource". The BMJ. 362: k3218. doi:10.1136/BMJ.K3218. ISSN 0959-8138. PMC 6134801. PMID 30209058. Wikidata Q57262049.
  20. ^ Anon (2023). "RetractoBot: Because researchers need to know about retracted papers". retracted.net.
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