FOIFA is the work-in-progress name for the mySociety Freedom of Information Filer and Archive project. FOIFA will be a website that will allow users to both submit Freedom of Information requests to public bodies with extreme ease, as well as publishing the data that the government responds with for public interest. It will not be a TheyWorkForYou style exercise in scraping existing data sources, which are in too many formats and too many locations.
FOIFA is the winning project from the 2006 ![[WWW]](/wiki/mstheme/img/moin-www.png){kind=small}
mySociety Call for Proposals.
Background
The first idea that mySociety should build a project to archive and share the responses to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act was raised in 2005 by FOI expert Heather Brooke.
In 2006 two separate people, Phil Rodgers plus mySociety coder FrancisIrving, submitted the idea independently to the mySociety call for proposals.
Somewhere along the line in a conversation between ChrisLightfoot and TomSteinberg it was suggested that the idea would be more powerful if requests and responses were published automatically.
This idea was attractive to the mySociety core team because it followed similar lines to experience with other websites. In particular it mirrored the motivation structure of WriteToThem. Users find and use WriteToThem to contact politicians for their own reasons, but the side-effect of their self-interest is to produce public information on the reponsiveness rates of MPs. The mySociety core team agreed that building a system that made the self-interested task of filing FOI requests easy, whilst simultaneously generating the public benefit of an archive of materials was a winning idea.
The Spec - definite functions
The ability to easily write and file a request to any central government department.
Definition of the systems boundaries of "any central government department" is needed. Is this limited to just the main Departments of State excluding their other tentacles such as Executive Agencies, Arms' Length Bodies , Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Organisations, Non Departmental Public Bodies etc. ? e.g. the Home Office, but not the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, or the Prison Service or the Youth Justice Board etc ?
Spy Blog In order to establish which departments take the bulk of requests, and therefore which should be included first, study this
http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/reference/foi-independent-review.pdf (thanks Steve)
The automatic publication of requests by users on the site, categorized by department.
At what point in the FOIA submission process do you make a requester aware of previous similar FOIA requests e.g. "you are now the 97th person requesting the legal basis for the war on Iraq" etc. ? It is no good telling them after they have hit the submit button
Spy Blog You should only be allowed to make a new request after searching the FOIA answers/requests database on the site. -- George
The automatic publication of any emailed reply from a department.
Policy on identifying individual Civil Servants names, email addresses and phone extensions in online published replies - default to job title and main Departmental contact details only ?
Spy Blog On each FOIA request make it clear to the civil servants what will be done with the reply, and gently remind them that if they dont want to give out their direct contact details, they should give their depts instead. -- George
The ability to handle Microsoft Word .doc and Adobe .pdf files email attachments and convert these to text HTML or RSS or XML
Spy Blog The ability to handle print or copy and paste locked .pdf files.
Spy Blog Policy on stripping out internal meta data from such attached documents when published online, which can sometimes be the most informative bit of the FOIA request reply.
Spy Blog - Crown Copyright issues for disclosed material Spy Blog
The ability to search and browse these replies.
A privacy policy! -- etienne
Policy on website and mailserver logfile data retention, especially regarding such anonymous requests.
Spy Blog
E-mail alerts and RSS/Atom feeds for full-text search results. -- etienne
A simple guide to how FOI requests work (including a guide to how long each stage of the process should take, an explanation of what the different replies means, etc.) -- etienne
The Spec - functions up for debate
A "Do not publish this request until a certain time" function, to allow jounalists to use the system whilst still generating value for other users.
A special user interface or even API for public bodies to upload data that has not been requested via the site.
The ability to submit anonymous requests to protect individuals from potentially vindictive behaviour by people in public bodies. (Although someone like Tom would have to be the official question-asking person, because FOI requires you to give a name for every FOI request. -- etienne) At a quick glance I can't see anything in the act to stop a legal person, such as UKCOD the charity which runs mySociety, making a request, as opposed to a real person. But I could be wrong. Section 84 says an applicant is "the person who made the request". FrancisIrving
What to do about repeated Anonymous FOIA requests given the "vexatious requests" Exemption under the FOIA.
Spy Blog We would need an official complaints process and perhaps a link at the bottom of each request email, which the email recipient could use to report the email to human eyes, if it is suspected to be abusing the anonymous system. -- George
There may be a limit on the funding cap per organsiation. UKCOD would hit that pretty quickly (see also my surrogacy comments below) Gavin J
Tags and e-mail alerts on these tags (e.g., tag an article as "ID Cards", "Nuclear Power", and so on) [AdamMcGreggor] Also have RSS/Atom feeds for these tags -- etienne We should definitely have email alerts, and we should allow free form comments and description which get included in search. But I don't think using the word "tag" in the user interface will be of assistance to most users. FrancisIrving
A league table of each government department's performance stats (at each stage of the process). -- etienne
A simple way for people to "appeal" to the Information Commissioner if they think that their FOI request has taken too long/failed to answer the question/been unfairly denied/etc. -- etienne
Before the Information Commissioner will accept any appeal, you have to show that you have exhausted both any "public interest test" which some, but not all of the
statutory Exemptions to the FOIA require and also the Departmental Internal Review process. Since these are allowed to take much longer than the 20 working days between submission of the initial FOIA request, and the theoretical receipt of a "substantive reply" (the Information Commissioner "suggests" up to 6 weeks for the "public interest test"), there could well be scope for Automatic Progress Chasing Reminder Emails, re-using the existing mySociety nagware software. Spy Blog
Reasons for refusal/conditions of release. -- richard
A cost / time estimating tool to guesstimate the amount of work (hourly costs / man hours) to suggest that an FOIA request be submitted as two or more separate FOIA requests, so as not to be rejected on the grounds of cost. Central government departments currently have a £600 limit for each "free" FOIA request and the other govermental organisations have a £450 limit.
e.g. (not a central government example) a request to the Metropolitan Police which has a rather generous "time allowed budget" of about 18 man hours per FOIA request. However a simple request, such as how many people were arrested under a particular law during a particular time period in London, gets you fobbed off with the fact that there are 32 Boroughs in London, each with their own Operational Command unit, and there are half a dozen other special Operational Command Units as well, so, even if it takes only half an hour to ask each OCU an "easy" question and for them to reply, then the 18 man hour limit is likely to be exceeded, so the whole FOIA request will be rejected. However, simply submitting the same request to 32 OCUs at the same time, will be treated as a "vexatious request"
Spy Blog
A "Request Queue": FOI submissions are placed here for a window of time allowing cooling off (do I want to reconsider my FOI request?), commenting by other system users, peer review, suggestions for improvement, pledges of positive support etc. Might be a way to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of requests. It might also be a way for people to submit comments on their experience of similar FOI request, building up a more substantive knowledge-base on a particular topic or department. -- Tom Longley
An automated attempt to OCR everything submitted as an image, just to give the search engine something to cling on to, even if it is full of errors. Tom S
"Surrogacy service" : With the proposed changes in the FOI rule to allow the requestee to tot up all requests over several months with regard to the funding limit the limit has effectively been moved from per request to per person Thus heavy requestors (e.g. media) may find it beneficial to use a "surrogate" requestor with an unused quota. Volunteers would be needed and would probably need to rubber stamp the request but if the system was automated the response would come directly back to the original requestor. Gavin J
Funding
mySociety has recieved £24,500 from the JRSST (blog post) which is enough to meet the estimated cost for a first working version.