Sejmometr.pl – questions on…questions!
Daniel Macyszyn from Sejmometr.pl looks for solution on problems with written questions. As planned earlier he has implemented the above mentioned functionality:
“There is a new position in a Sejmometr main menu called “Interpelacje” (this is an official term for written questions in the Polish law system). Users can now browse questions and answers (if any are available at a given time). It is worth of mention that the number of all written question is huge: almost 20 000 (180MB of plain text data).”
The current solution however takes a month to publish the information simply due to the fact that the full text of each written question becomes available to the public about a month after the first mentioning of it on the website of Sejm. Daniel is struggling with a bit risky solution, and probably needs your feedback on this one:
“There is a special procedure in the Polish law system described in our “freedom of public information act”. Each citizen can make a request for a public data to any public institution and the institution has to answer in a maximum time of 2 weeks. So we could do the following:
Whenever Sejm publishes info about new written question (without text), I could immediately send them a request for showing its text content (I could even automate the process of sending these requests). This way, they would be obligated (by a law) to publish questions’ texts in a maximum time of 2 weeks from publishing an info.
There is only one risky part in this solution: in a result of receiving mentioned requests, Sejm Chancellery could decide to stop publishing these incomplete information about written questions and publish them in a full form (with a text) but with much bigger delay then they are doing it now.
I’m not sure what do do in this case:
- leave everything as it is and accept about one-month delay in written questions,
- launch a mechanism for automated sending requests which would reduce a delay to 2 weeks (with a risk, that Sejm will change their practices and a delay will stay on its current level)…”
Is it worth risking loosing access to the information even if the delay is at stake? The cause of this particular problem is theoretically outside of Daniel’s hands, so is there another solution to this particular challenge? What do you think?
> Is it worth risking loosing access to the information even if the delay is at stake?
How likely is this going to happen? (i.e. to loose access). From my point of view, it is worth first building publishing infrastructure, and then improve that on top of that
I asked the expert from the Polish Non-Governmental Centre on Access to Information and he tells to consider rather the second option. And if they would delay the delivery of the new written question, apply again for access to all written questions, so they will have 14 days to reply.
Non-Governmental Centre on Access to Information can help – if Daniel has any troubles: http://www.informacjapubliczna.org.pl/poradnictwo,12,dz.html
I would say try sending the requests in groups (e.g. once or twice per week)?
Also draw some media/NGO attention and you can surely go with option 2.
At least Sejm will leave a month delay and ignore your requests. At most they may rethink their policies and reduce the average delay themselves.
Good luck! 🙂
Thank you for all your responses!