Research: Assessing the Impact of Alaveteli

Image by  Véronique Debord-LazaroToday, we’re sharing research conducted on the impact of online Freedom of Information technology, including our own platform Alaveteli.

Researchers Savita Bailur and Tom Longley spent three months gathering first-person experiences, analysing data and assessing existing literature to answer this question:

In what circumstances, if any, can the Freedom of Information tools mySociety builds be shown to have measurable impacts on the ability of citizens to exert power over underperforming institutions?

You can read their findings here:

1. Literature review [PDF]

2. Main report, based on qualitative research into FOI sites around the world [PDF]

3. Critical success factors and recommendations [PDF]

The methodology

The research was conducted in three parts: first, Tom and Savita reviewed existing literature on the impact of FOI, particularly FOI online, to form a baseline of existing knowledge in the area.

They went on to interview people who run, or ran, FOI sites in 27 different countries. They used the resulting transcripts for qualitative research, pulling out common themes to help them draw conclusions.

Finally,  they were able to use these insights to create a list of critical success factors for those implementing FOI (especially Alaveteli) websites.

The motivation

Why did we conduct this research, and why now?

Alaveteli has had a period of intense growth over the last three years – but it would be irresponsible of us to continue its promotion without assessing its true worth and impact.

This is best learned from the people who are at the coalface – the implementers (as Tom and Savita mention in the final research, a fuller study would have allowed them to include government workers and the sites’ end users, too, but that’s perhaps something for the future).

Alaveteli was created with the best intentions – to allow anyone, anywhere to put questions to the people and institutions in power – but it is important to assess whether those intentions have been realised.

We need to ensure that we have spent our efforts and our funders’ money responsibly, and that we are not wasting resources by making poor decisions.

mySociety’s Head of Research, Dr Rebecca Rumbul, says, “This report confirms that the basic model does work, with the UK site WhatDoTheyKnow.com operating as a well-used civic resource with thousands of users per month.

“Whilst the research shows that our partners implementing Alaveteli in their own countries are demonstrably up to the technical challenge of running these sites, it identifies the importance of governmental relations and receiving the right support in the early stages of implementation.

“We now hope to build on this research to better understand how to maximise the use and effectiveness of our platforms around the world in empowering citizens to engage with governments and decision-makers.”

The research was made possible by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

As the literature review confirms, this type of study has never been done before – and with practitioners speaking to the researchers from within many different cultural backgrounds and political regimes (they interviewed implementers of 20 Alaveteli instances, from Australia to Uruguay), we are in a unique position to take a global view on the subject. For a fully-rounded picture, the study also spoke to implementers of seven sites running non-Alaveteli FOI software.

Of the experience, Savita and Tom say “We were so impressed by the dedication and determination of all the implementers in wanting to raise awareness of FOI and seeing Alaveteli as the platform to do this (even taking into account constructive criticism). The research experience was also great.”

The end result? Take a look for yourself – if you have the slightest interest in online democratic technologies or government-to-citizen information sharing on an international basis, it’s compelling reading.

What we’ll take away

There are learnings for us here, although it was great to hear such consistent praise for the Alaveteli platform and the community that has been created around it.

mySociety’s Director Tom Steinberg said, “We will certainly be looking carefully at the recommendations that have come from this report.

“This will include decisions about how to share best practice across the Alaveteli community, and not just in the technical areas.

“We’ll also be looking hard at the issue of how to ensure consistency in the analytics that are collected by different sites. And we very much hope to return to the subject in a couple of years’ time, when today’s new sites have become established, in order to conduct a follow-up piece of research.”

 

Image credit: Véronique Debord-Lazaro (CC)

2 Comments

  1. Great to see this research has been commissioned, but why is it only available in PDF? What’s wrong with an HTML publication?

    • The team that produced this PDF-only report has already been ground into chum and fed to Tim Berners-Lee’s pack of feral Irish wolfhounds.