If you’re trying to get the law changed, it can seem like a monumental task: where on earth do you start? 

One organisation that knows the answer is Access Info Europe: they have a long record of tirelessly working for better rights to information across the continent, and have systematised their approach. This month, their Director Rachel Hanna shared insights with the Access to Information Network, in a legal framework masterclass.

You can watch the video of this session for yourself, or read on for detailed notes.

The benefits of Access to Information

Rachel explained that Access Info are currently running a project to improve the right to information in four countries.

Access to Information (ATI) is a fundamental right, and recognised globally as such — but it doesn’t always work in practice. Countries may have a legal framework, but how it works is often different on paper and in practice. For example, one of the best laws in the world is Afghanistan’s, but it’s worth nothing if it’s not implemented properly. 

When ATI is in place but not functioning as it should, it can be extremely frustrating: it puts people off using it.

Rachel pointed out that the benefits to society of a fully functioning ATI are clear, and to underline this, she cited the important findings of the three finalists of Access Info’s recent Impact awards:

• The Lighthouse Reports uncovered discrimination in algorithms to detect fraud in benefits, based on gender and ethnicity.
• Altreconomia in Italy revealed the use of drugs to keep people calm in repatriation centres. 
• Eleanor Shaikh, who we’ve written about before, used the UK FOI law to help vindicate Sub-Postmasters caught in the post office Horizon scandal.

If ATI is not working does it still have benefits? Access Info carried out a campaign in Malta when a person was told they couldn’t submit an FOI request because they were not residents of Malta. They took the case to court, using pro bono lawyers; the court agreed with them and said that the way the law was being implemented was discriminatory.

They also fought against a law in Montenegro that would have lowered standards.

Groundwork

Rachel described their ATI Network project to equip participants with three strategies:

• Advocacy – the act of persuading or arguing in support of specific clause or policy. The audience here is the general public and policymakers. For example, Access Info published research highlighting gaps and areas of improvement in the implementation of the EU’s ATI.
• Activism – this refers to physically active advocacy: getting out in the street, getting noticed. Here, the audience is public and communities. For example, in India a 40-day sit-in in a small town, demanding the creation of an ATI law, was successful.
• Lobbying – this means persuading decision-makers to take a particular action. The audience is policymakers and lawmakers. For example, in Mexico a multi stakeholder group influenced legislators to pass an ATI Law.

All three tactics can be used in combination. You can work systematically by first building the foundations, then creating visibility and finally converting the mobilisation into law.

They are currently carrying out four national advocacy campaigns with the same initial approach for each country, then tailored activities depending on the specific state of the law, the skills the partner has, and how these can be adapted to the situation in the country. The steps are as follows:

1. First they analyse the national context in which the ATI law is working: what are the strengths and the gaps; is it aligned with international standards? Is it Tromsø convention ratified? If so, has there been a recommendation from the Group of States Against Corruption, GRECO? Are they part of the Open Government Partnership (OGP)? Is there a promise to advance the ATI law under OGP?
   
   All of these factors can be used to hold governments to account. There might also be legislative considerations: for example in Spain, ATI did not fall under the fourth action plan as had been expected, and probably won’t be under the fifth now, either. While the will had been there, but the political context changed, making it very hard to pass laws right now.

As part of this process you should perform some stakeholder mapping: do you have any good allies in the government? Are there civil society organisations, private sector, campaign groups, media that might support the cause? They performed this research and evidence building for each country.

1. They then designed an advocacy plan, deciding what their goals were: would they push for better law, or higher use of the existing law? Better implementation? Making this decision helped them decide what sort of activity would be most effective: advocacy, activism or lobbying.
   You can build a coalition with lawyers, academics, journalists. Craft your message according to who you’re talking to. Always make your message about its recipient: why should they care about it?
2. Finally, you need to anticipate and adapt to challenges. Obstacles might be resistance from stakeholders, your own limited resources or a lack of public interest, to name three. 

National campaigns

Access Info did baseline research on the legal frameworks within each country. They crafted their own methodology that goes a little further than the Tromsø convention itself does, because some areas, like Article 8, don’t go into much detail: this recommends a ‘quick and inexpensive review process’ but doesn’t g into any detail about a body overseeing this and what powers they should have — so Access Info have added what an ideal body would look like and the powers it would have.

After examining all countries that run an Alavateli-based site, they decided to work in four countries, each with different states of legal framework:

The Netherlands adopted a new law in 2022, and not signed or ratified Tromsø. The legislation is strong on paper, but weak in practice. There’s an opportunity in that certain aspects of the law will be under review at certain stages; and they would also like to push them to sign the Tromsø convention.

Access Info partnered with Spoon, and they formed their plan in this context: their goal is to improve implementation and strengthen oversight.

They plan to create guidelines for officials handling requests, alongside with the committee that has oversight over the law. There is a lack of guidance, so Spoon can step in, and Access Info will advise

After five years there will be an evaluation of whether there should be a commissioner, and they will definitely say yes – this is the most popular model for oversight worldwide.

They will also promote the use of Alaveteli at local level, with the aim of influencing those at the national level: they’re not keen because they’re concerned about data protection, especially the issue that the officials’ name are published on the request. So they’re going from the bottom up to show how local government is using it in a way that doesn’t encroach on personal data protection.

You don’t always have to go to the national government:, see where you can have the most impact, which is usually not the ‘top top’ — the middle might be better. By working with the government to create guidelines, making material that will be useful for the five year review, there is a great opportunity for impact.

Moldova has a strong law, but there are concerns: in 2023, an update broadened the scope of exceptions and lengthed the timeframe for responses; and the oversight body is not strong. It has been Tromsø ratified, however.

Specific issues are a low usage of the law, and poor implementation compared to a strong law on paper.

Here, Access Info partnered with Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) who manage the Alaveteli platform for Moldova.

The goal is to bring the law into line with international standards: it’s a new law, but LHR are performing strategic litigation on issues around its implementation. For example, the Evaluation Committee is an independent body which evaluates the integrity of judges and prosecutors: they have ruled that they don’t fall under the ATI law, which is a bad interpretation, so LHR are taking the matter to court.

They’re also litigating against the over-redaction of personal data in court documents.

In Moldova a second goal is to increase use of Alaveteli platform, by highlighting success stories, partnering with journalists to highlight positive outcomes from requests, for example when requests showed that the level of bullying in schools was growing, they were able to get anti-bullying programmes implemented in schools. Other findings have been around gender based violence and malpractice by doctors: basically, “what can’t be measured can’t be improved”.

LHR are providing legal support to requesters whose requests are refused, and fighting against the misinterpretation of the law, in the hope that all these approaches will combat the underuse of ATI in the country.

France has a weak law: they have not signed the Tromsø agreement, and there’s a lack of awareness and implementation from both civil society and journalists.

At this time there is no room for reform of the law, but they will push for signing the Tromsø  convention.

As with Moldova, the main aims are to raise awareness of the law, and increase its use via the Alaveteli platform (Ma Dada). They’ll train French civil society organisations and journalists and create an FOI community to build the foundations for when there’s an opportunity for legal reform. They’ll create a practical guide so that individuals can understand what FOI can do for them.

Greece has a very weak ATI legal regime: there’s no one law that covers everything. Rather, rights are scattered across different laws and it is a very confusing legal framework. When a request has been refused, the appeal needs to be sent to one of a range of different bodies. They are not signed up to the Tromsø agreement.

Here, they have partnered with Vouliwatch at the national level, and are pushing for legal reform, better implementation and public awareness

Their goal is for a new legal framework, and to get Greece Tromsø ratified.

Vouliwatch has already lobbied the parliamentary committee to discuss the amendment of the law. They’re working to build a coalition to push the campaign forward, and have trained civil society organisations and journalists in a workshop. They’ll use this coalition to help them with joint statements, open letters, social media, media articles, et cetera.

General advice

Know your audience It’s about persuasion, advocacy and lobbying. Know who you’re talking to and why they should care. In messaging you can consider three types of argument, using Aristotle’s three types of persuasion:

• Ethos: establish your credibility: why should they listen to you? For example, in the Netherlands, the government weren’t aware of Access InfoEurope, so they worked to create allies in government and got them to introduce them to the person they wanted to talk to.
• Pathos: make your audience care emotionally, for example by storytelling  — showing how ATI can do good in society, and why we need it.
• Logos : make logical arguments supported by facts. “You signed up to Tromsø, but your law is out of line with that”.

Make your arguments valuable to the person you’re speaking to Public officials care about the levels of public trust in government, for example, so that’s a good angle to come in on.

Policy briefs Keep them short. Use short paragraphs of less than 20 words per sentence, and four sentences per paragraph for maximum impact.  

Make your brief persuasive and valuable to the reader: locate problems in their communities and offer the solutions.

Common errors are to include too little evidence or research; and to use too much jargon – keep it simple.

Be adaptable to change Impact can come in different shapes and forms — you might not have realised that what you’re seeing is impact, but for example, journalists getting access to new stories counts as impact.

Be prepared Create networks that will be ready when there are legislative opportunities.

And finally: don’t give up.

Q&A

There were then questions from the audience.

Q: “Building a coalition” sounds great, but difficult. What is the least it can mean? 

Rachel: Being reactive to a specific situation. For example, when the authorities were closing access to beneficial ownership registers, we could use that moment when there was outrage. We could gather different people and organisations who cared about the same issue — even though they were all coming from different angles.

It’s very valuable to bring people in who have completely different angles: they help you to see, and prepare for, what the opposition would say. So for example we have some strong data protection advocates in our ranks, who might argue against disclosure on those grounds. Having this sort of discussion with your allies helps you to get the arguments clear in your head before taking the campaign public.

Q: Could you go into more detail on who was running the campaign and who you communicated to when using public outreach, classic media, social media? Who was in the team for each country and what roles did you have?

Rachel: Vouliwatch are really good at public outreach: so they already knew who to reach out to. On the other hand, in Moldova they haven’t done something like that before, so we are helping them. Basically it depends on the national context.

Q: What heuristics are you using to know where you are? For example, if your aim is to ‘build credibility’, how do you know when you’ve ticked that box and are in a position to take the next step?

Rachel: It’s very difficult. In some places we already have credibility with the national institutions, so for example in Greece Vouliwatch have already had conversations, and feedback says they’ve been taken on board. That sort of thing helps you see that you’re making progress.

Q: Are there things we can do internationally to help national level organisations? Our connections are all in the UK, and they each have their own goals, constraints and focuses.

Rachel: it can be helpful to bring in the  international angle: for example the Council of Europe has an oversight group that looks at the laws of all countries that have ratified Tromsø. Even the fact that they exist at all sends a strong message.

It can be disheartening waiting for the moment to act. Your followers will get fatigued, so be strategic about when and how to use your voice. Channel your energies into activities that could have the most impact.

Q: Is there a regular schedule for updating the country’s policy ratings (the global RTI rankings) or does it depend on when you get the funding to do so?

Rachel: Yes, it is funding-dependent!

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Image: Tromsø by Harry Jaschhof

mySociety services help people be active citizens, whether by speaking truth to power, communicating directly with politicians, or demanding change on your doorstep —  and that’s true for the area of climate activism as much as it is for any other burning issue.

By listing some of the ways you’ve been using our services to help the climate, we hope to inspire others to do the same, and to consider new ways in which you might be able to use them to push the climate agenda even further.

—

At the beginning of 2020, mySociety made a commitment to the planet, adding Climate to our existing workstreams of Transparency, Democracy and Community.

There are many experienced and knowledgeable organisations already working to fight the climate crisis. Accordingly, much of our work in this area has involved teaming up with these existing institutions, to offer the skills we do have and which they are often lacking: data wrangling, service design, site development, research and so on.

But there’s another way in which we can be useful, with no extra development or resource required from us: thanks to our established suite of services, we can help individual citizens to take action. mySociety’s UK websites are already set up to help people find out facts, ask politicians questions, check how MPs are voting, and demand better for their local communities — all useful tools when you want to tackle climate change.

We’ve had a look at the ways in which you’ve been using our websites in service of the climate, and we’ve found a huge variety of examples. Take a look through, and you might be inspired. And, if you’ve taken another type of climate action through our websites, do let us know so that we can add it to our list!

Changes in your neighbourhood

On FixMyStreet, we’ve seen people pointing out eco-unfriendly practices to the council, and asking for new amenities that would help locals to pursue a greener lifestyle.

Trees filter air pollution, absorb carbon and provide shade, so it’s possible to argue that every tree is a benefit to the community. As Friends of the Earth advise, that’s all the rationale you need to lodge a request for a Tree Preservation Order, which means that an existing tree cannot be removed without reason. 

Or perhaps there simply aren’t enough trees where you live? Then you can write to your council and request that new ones are planted.

We know that climate change is driving bees away, so those who ask their councils to leave roadside verges unmown and allow wildflowers to grow are also doing their bit to help offset the damage. 

Campaigning

Meanwhile, WriteToThem can be used by any campaign which wants its supporters to email their politicians, and there are many with an environmental or climate agenda who have done just that. 

Hyperlocal groups are campaigning against the loss of green spaces; the Possible organisation regularly rallies its supporters for innovative climate issues such as ground source heat from parks and better spaces for walking or cycling. 

Badverts wants to stop the advertising industry from pushing high-carbon products, and Power For People is pushing for non-profit clean energy companies.

And it’s not just campaigns that use WriteToThem, of course — tens of thousands of you use the site every month to tell your politicians what is important to you, how you’d like them to vote, or to alert them to wrongs that need to be set right. 

Emails sent through WritetoThem are private between you and your representative, though, so unless you tell us about it, we can’t know what you’re writing about. All the same, we can say with absolute certainty that many of you are expressing your concerns about the climate — it’s such an important topic that you must be. 

Requesting information

Many councils declared a climate emergency in 2019 — but what does that mean in real terms, and what comes next? If your council hasn’t published its Climate Action Plan, and you want to ascertain whether they actually have one (or are perhaps working on it) then a Freedom of Information request might yield answers, and plenty of people have used WhatDoTheyKnow for just this purpose.

Or, if the plans are already written and available to the public, there’s still lots more that might need disclosing: are they being adhered to and working as intended? And are the budgets accurate and adequate? How is money actually being spent? 

This request enquired whether the commitment to the climate went as far as divestment from fossil fuels, and this one dug into whether a council was using renewable energy sources.

FOI can be used in a huge variety of ways: for example, to collect disparate data from multiple authorities to make up a coherent dataset showing a nationwide picture — like this one, on behalf of Amnesty International, finding out how local authorities were reacting to childrens’ climate strikes.

Thanks to our Alaveteli software, organisations all over the world are running sites like WhatDoTheyKnow that allow their citizens to ask for information. In Hungary, the KiMitTud site uncovered a river pollution scandal; and on AskTheEU the VW emissions misconduct was hinted at long before the story hit the public consciousness.

Holding politicians accountable

FOI requests can take a while to be processed by authorities, so while you’re waiting you might like to do something a bit more immediate and look up your MP’s voting record on TheyWorkForYou. 

Each MP’s voting record includes a section on the environment, containing all parliamentary votes since 2010 that we’ve identified as relevant. The data — on policies from selling state-owned forests to higher taxes on air fares — comes from the Public Whip website, where votes are analysed and categorised. 

In the interests of stressing the importance of the climate emergency, we’re keen to give this Environment section more prominence and detail, but of course we can only include the votes that have been held, and even then only the votes that were recorded in Parliament — not those that were just ‘nodded through’ (see more about this here). However, we’ll be keeping a keen eye open for the key climate-related votes of the future.

Data

The open data accessible through our sites can often be useful for researchers: one example of this is the TheyWorkForYou API, which allows for the analysis of everything said in Parliament, among other uses. 

As examples of what can be done, Carbon Brief analysed Hansard to see which politicians mention climate change the most; and the Guardian, using TheyWorkForYou, gave a more rounded score to each MP which also took into consideration their votes and interests.

So – that’s quite a long list, and just goes to show the breadth and diversity of the possibilities afforded by our various online services.

If you’ve been feeling helpless about the climate crisis, perhaps this will give you a little hope, and inspire you to take a few small online steps yourself, in service of the planet and our future. Please do let us know how you get on.