All of us working on Access to Information here at mySociety were extremely saddened to hear of the death of Helen Darbishire on October 18th. Helen was one of the key leaders of the Access to Information space, and her tireless enthusiasm and drive to improve transparency around the world – along with her warm and welcoming personality – will be sorely missed by us all. Please join us in sending best wishes to the Access Info Europe team during this difficult time and supporting Rachel and Carlos in their mission to build on the work Helen started. 

FragDenStaat: have been uncovering hidden tax havens in secret forest locations in the middle of Germany – held by the descendents of the founders of the ottoman empire; the kinds of stories that feel like they’re fiction but are actually fact!

mySociety: are working hard on our new round of AI experiments to detect misuse of WDTK, finishing up and submitting our year 2 report for the ATI network project and planning out the next couple of meetup events. We’ve also been getting campaign groups on board for a FOI support pipeline we’ll be running from January to July 2025 to go through the process of forming a request to analysing data. 

Access Info: have been liaising with MaDada and SPOON to finalise the legal framework projects they’ll be working on over the next 6 – 12 months.

SPOON: experimented for the first time sending in a legal opinion in a court case of  a citizen who had started a legal procedure after his FOI-request for  disclosure of a memo was dismissed. He had won in the first instance, but the municipality hired the most prominent government law firm to appeal the decision. The point of contention was the interpretation of an important provision in our FOI-act that had not previously  come before our highest court. The court allowed us to join in the hearing and answer questions. This way we could make for a level playing field and make sure the court heard all arguments on the side of the citizen. Compared to starting your own case from the beginning, it is more time effective and a real case from a citizen is more sympathetic. And you achieve the status of ‘expert’, which is good for your reputation. Judgement is expected  late November. 

Regarding our Alavetelli platform, we are in the process of coming to an agreement with the Ministry of Interior Affairs on our handling of the privacy of government officials.

Ma Dada: got a new grant to pimp up the website and reach out to civil society organisations and non-profits in France. We got started with work on this. We are also discussing how to approach GDPR in relation to public bodies.

ForSet: ForSet has been focused on upcoming parliamentary elections. Following ideation sessions and working groups from Civic Tech Summit hold in Tbilisi in August, we co-launched two civic tech platforms (https://daitove.learnworlds.com/ for educating and certifying volunteer election observers and https://damkvirvebeli.ge/ for coordinating work of 3000+ observers). Media news aggregation tool https://skhivi.com/ has been launched as well for assisting journalists in covering elections. We have continued Data Communication Fellowship programs, where 5 Georgian journalists produced in-depth data stories regarding the changes in elections system, predictions, and transparency. Although we don’t have an active grant for AskGov.ge, we have seen the increase of FOI requests (42) at the platform, concerning the transparency and open data for election related processes. 

ImamoPravoZnati: Gong has published a set of evidence-based recommendations for improved access to information in Croatia. The publication is available in English.

KiMitTud: have been investigating Hungarian think tank’s investments in the US political system

Vouliwatch/Arthro5A: Vouliwatch published a set of recommendations for the improvement of the access to information legal framework in Greece (in Greek, soon in English). These recommendations have been sent to the Prime Minister, the competent Minister as well as to members of Parliament. The recommendations were accompanied by an open letter signed by 15 CSOs and investigative journalism orgs. We have so far held two meetings with MPs on this issue and hopefully by the end of the month/beginning of next we will be meeting with the Minister. In addition, October marked the beginning of our awareness raising campaign aimed at introducing the wider public, CSOs and journalists to the right to information. For the purpose of this campaign we created social media posters (1+ 2+3) and videos (1+2).

Abrimos Info: We have published a joint positioning with other organisations regarding the reform of the transparency institute (in Spanish)

The proposed constitutional reform seeks to abolish several autonomous and decentralised bodies, including the National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information and Personal Data Protection (INAI). This reform is set for debate by the LXVI Legislature.

The dissolution of INAI poses significant concerns regarding transparency and public access to information. The elimination of INAI could severely restrict citizens’ ability to monitor government activities, impacting civil society and journalists the most. Without INAI, the transparency necessary for democratic oversight and accountability in government operations could be significantly undermined.

OpenUp ZA: are getting ready to deliver us a workshop next week on Impact measurement and working on a mentorship programme with European organisations working in the Anti-Corruption space.

Welcome to autumn, and as we have breezed past Right To Know day let’s take a look at what the Access to Information network have been up to this month.

FragDenStaat: released their most recent “redaction art” for Right to Know day on September 28th 2024, this piece comes from Saxony – an area which only ratified their access to information law in 2023, the last of the federal states to do so. 

mySociety: has been experimenting with AI in our Projects data analysis service, with mixed results, and kicking off our new round of support for marginalised groups in the UK. We’re also busy designing some exciting learning opportunities coming in October and November 2024!

Access Info: have a winner for their inaugural Impact Award! Lighthouse Reports won with their brilliant Suspicion Machines investigation and their leadership of the collaboration around this work. The other finalists were really strong contenders and worth checking out too!

SPOON: announced their collaboration with Access Info and their intent to work on important topics such as introducing Information Commissioners to the Netherlands system. 

Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska: On September 28-29, the 3rd Openness Fans’ Convention took place. 110 people from all over Poland took part in the two-day meeting. There were meetings with journalists, talks about technology, legal advice and a presentation of monitoring results conducted by graduates of the Watchdog School. On the evening of September 28, we also raised a toast to openness and FOI.

Ma Dada: Ma Dada held its General Assembly and welcomed new board members from a variety of backgrounds. We also ran training sessions for journalists and kept digging through data for our observatory.

ForSet: had a fantastic Datafest, and are now taking a well deserved breather to take stock and share insights.

Transparencia: After the belgian elections in june, we made lobbying towards the new regional government for stronger FOI regulation in walloon region

ImamoPravoZnati: Gong held its second annual School for Democracy for young politicians and activists. The programme covered a range of civic literacy topics, including new forms of democratic participation and digital tools which can be used for conducting public oversight (such as IPZ).

KiMitTud: have been investigating topics such as Lithium mining in Serbia and oversights in safety zones near factories in Göd. They’re also looking for developer support for 10 hours per month – so if you’re a Ruby whizz and want to support another partner in the network drop us a line!

Vouliwatch/Arthro5A: In view of the government’s initiative to update article 5 of the Code of Administrative Procedure (regarding the right to access to public documents), Vouliwatch submitted a set of proposals during the public consultation process. The proposals submitted aimed at aligning the provisions of the article in question with the standards set by the Tromso Convention. In addition, Vouliwatch proceeded to contact MPs to inform them about its submission and ask for their support during the debate in parliament.

PPDC: We held the Freedom of Information (FOI) Ranking 2024, where we celebrated the strides made in promoting transparency and accountability in governance. This annual event showcases the achievements of public institutions in upholding the principles of openness and citizen participation.

Abrimos Info: has published “Millions of requests: the evolution of the massive use of access to information and the role of INAI”, a data analysis of the impact that the creation of the National Institute of Transparency, Access to Information and Protection of Personal Data (INAI) and the entire National Transparency System had on the right of access to information in Mexico. This op-ed is especially relevant given the possibility of reform or disappearance of these institutions. Read here (spanish)

CITAD: CITAD held its fifth Annual Kano Social Influencers Summit (KANSIS24) with the theme ‘Artificial Intelligence in Election and Governance’ which was attended by over 1000 people.

Other news: 

We’ve created a directory of the partners in this Community of Practice in the Civic Tech Field Guide. You can view it here. 

If you’d like to add your organisation or project, add a free contact form to your listing, or make any changes, please write to matt@civictech.guide.

Photo by Alexandre Chambon on Unsplash

Here at WhatDoTheyKnow, mySociety’s service which publishes Freedom of Information requests and responses online, we care a lot about how transparent public authorities are. That being so, it’s only right that we try to be transparent, too. Of course, we already strive to be as transparent as we can, but we’ve recently increased how much information we provide about requests that we’ve had to stop publishing.

It’s really rare that we stop publishing the entirety of a request, but since starting to produce annual transparency reports, we’ve noticed that in those exceptional cases, we weren’t always able to be clear about why we had to do it. Our records were kept in our support mail system, and couldn’t be published on WhatDoTheyKnow due to some technical limitations.

Since October 2022, if you visit a link to a request that has been removed, where the information exists, you’ll now see a brief message explaining why the request isn’t available. We were already doing something similar for instances where we’ve had to hide individual messages or attachments. While the information necessary to display these more detailed reasons isn’t always available, especially for older requests, we hope that this small improvement is yet another beneficial improvement to how we run the site.

Alaveteli, the software platform that powers WhatDoTheyKnow and many other Freedom of Information services globally, doesn’t just let us choose between something being visible or not;we can choose between several levels of visibility. These range from completely publicly visible, to visible only to those with a direct link, to visible only to the user who originally made the request, to visible only to the WhatDoTheyKnow administration team, which we only use in some of the most serious cases.

This feature allows us to minimise the potential negative impact of publication, while retaining as many of the benefits as possible, with varying levels depending on the results of our carefully considered, case-by-case assessments.

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Image: Mehdi MeSSrro (Unsplash License)

WhatDoTheyKnow is a project of mySociety, run by a small team of staff and dedicated volunteers.

In 2022 WhatDoTheyKnow users made 109,653 Freedom of Information requests via WhatDoTheyKnow.

Those requests, and the responses they received, are public on the website for anyone to see.  

What’s not quite so visible is the work that the WhatDoTheyKnow team, which is largely made up of volunteers, do behind the scenes.  

Some of their most difficult calls arise around the removal of information. WhatDoTheyKnow’s guiding principle is that it is a permanent, public, archive of Freedom of Information requests and responses, open to all.

The team works incredibly hard to maintain the archive in the face of challenges, including the reduction of legal risks; dealing fairly and transparently when people ask for information to be removed from the site; answering users’ questions; supporting citizens to use their rights to FOI; dealing with misuse of the service which breaches our house rules inappropriate content and keeping everything ticking over.

Our default position is not to remove substantive public information requests and responses; however, we act quickly if problematic content is reported to us. And, to help everyone understand exactly what has been removed and why, where possible we record these details on the request page.

To allow for a full 12 months of data, the date range used throughout this report is 1 November 2021 to 31 October 2022.

Headline facts and figures

• 16,354,872 visits to WhatDoTheyKnow.com this year.
• 16,217 new WhatDoTheyKnow user accounts created this year, taking the total number of accounts to 239,540. This represents an increase of 7.6% in the total number of site users since last year.
• 8,912 total number of email threads in the support inbox in 2022… that’s an increase of 11.2%, making it all the more crucial that we continue to recruit volunteers to help spread the load.
• 1,381 requests hidden from WhatDoTheyKnow in 2022
  …in the context of 109,653 requests made in the year, and a total of 867,303 requests currently published on the site.
• 171 published requests where we redacted some material in 2022
  …usually due to the inappropriate inclusion of personal information, or defamation.

And in more detail

Requests made on WhatDoTheyKnow flagged for our attention

The table below shows the reasons that requests were reported by our users via the site for admin attention this year. 

Note that we also receive many reports directly by email, so while not comprehensive, this is indicative.

Reason for attention report	Total number
Vexatious	117
Not a valid request	109
Contains personal information	89
Request for personal information	85
Contains defamatory material	33
Other	642
Total*	1,075

*The number of requests flagged for attention this year is up 40% on last year. This is largely related to a single campaign of misuse.

Material removed from the site

The following tables show where members of the admin team have acted to remove or hide requests from WhatDoTheyKnow in the last year, and the reason why.

At WhatDoTheyKnow  we have a policy of removing as little material as possible, while seeking to run the site responsibly and take different viewpoints into account. Removing substantive FOI requests and responses is a last resort and something we do very rarely. However, we act quickly to remove problematic material.

Request visibility	Total number
Discoverable only to those who have the link to the request	2
Visible only to the request maker	1,282
Hidden from all site visitors	97

 

Reason for removing from public view	Total number**
Not a valid FOI request	1,117
Vexatious use of FOI	43
Other (reason not programmatically recorded*)	221

* Current processes do not create an easily retrievable list of reasons beyond the two above, however due to site improvements made in autumn of this year we expect to be able to provide more detailed information on this in the future.

** The number of requests hidden or removed from the site this year is up by 68% on last year. As above, this increase is largely related to a single campaign of misuse. 

Censor rules (targeted redactions to hide the problematic part/s of a request)	Total number
Number of censor rules applied	746
Number of requests with censor rules applied	171
Number of requests with censor rules applied which are still publicly visible, but with problematic material hidden	165

* Censor rules are used for many purposes, including redacting problematic content and removing personal data which should not be present

Cases relating to GDPR rights 

These are typically cases relating to requests to remove data published on the site as per the rights afforded under GDPR, the UK’s General Data Protection Regulations.

Right type	Total number of cases*
GDPR Right to Erasure	214
Data breaches by third parties	79
GDPR Right to Rectification	15
GDPR Right of Access	21
Data breach – internal**	6
GDPR Right to Object	<5
Total	340

* Not all issues raised resulted in material being removed from the site.

* “Data Breach – internal” refers to cases where WhatDoTheyKnow has identified that a data breach may have been caused due to our own staff actions. We take our obligations seriously, and use such instances as a learning opportunity, so these are recorded by us even if very minor, and often when they’re nothing more than a near miss.

High risk concerns escalated for review 

Our policies ensure that certain issues can be escalated for review by the wider team and, where more complex, by a review panel that includes mySociety’s Chief Executive. Escalation is typically prompted by threats of legal action, complaints, notifications of serious data breaches, potential defamation concerns, safeguarding, complex GDPR cases, or cases that raise significant policy questions.

Case type*	Total number
Defamation	49
Data breach	40
GDPR Right to Erasure	33
Complaints	19
Safeguarding / Public harm	13
Takedown	13
GDPR Right of Access	9
Police user data requests	7
Site misuse	7
Data breach – internal	5
Other	39

* Email threads may be either automatically categorised by the system, or manually categorised by the WhatDoTheyKnow admin team on the basis of the information given by the person reporting them. Some cases can relate to two types: for example a GDPR Right to Erasure request may also be a complaint. For the purposes of this table, such instances have been included in the counts for both concerns.

Users

User accounts	Total
WhatDoTheyKnow users with activated accounts	239,540
New user accounts activated in 2022	16,217

 

Reason for banning users in 2022	Total
Spam	2,160
Other site misuse	300
Total number of users banned in 2022	2,460

 

Anonymisation*	Total
Accounts anonymised in 2022	139

* Accounts are anonymised at the user’s request, generally to comply with GDPR Right to Erasure requests.

Users are banned and their accounts may be closed due to site misuse and breach of the House Rules. Anonymised and banned users are no longer able to make requests or use their accounts.

User data requests

The table below shows the number of requests that we received from third parties for the personal data that we hold on our users in 2022. Details of which types of data we hold can be found in our privacy policy. As stated in our privacy policy, we do not provide this information to anyone else unless we are obliged to by law, or the user asks us to.

Type of request	Total
Police/law enforcement requests for user data	7
Other requests for user data	6

 

Material released	Total
Number of requests, where court orders were produced and we provided the material as required	2

 

Thank you for reading

We produce this report as we demand transparency from public authorities and it’s only right that we also practise it ourselves. 

Additionally, we hope that the report goes some way to showing the type of work the team do behind the scenes, and that running a well-used site like WhatDoTheyKnow is not without challenges.

If there are specific statistics that you’d like to see in subsequent Transparency reports, or you’d like to know more about any of those above, do drop the team a line. 

If you’d like to help WhatDoTheyKnow keep up their good work, please consider volunteering or making a donation. Any help small or large is greatly appreciated.

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Image: Meriç Dağlı

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Code for Croatia are one of many groups around the world who have used our software Alaveteli to set up a Freedom of Information site — ImamoPravoZnati (“We have the right to know”) was launched in 2015 and has processed more than 4,000 requests.

Many organisations might count that a success and leave it there, but Code for Croatia are clearly a little more ambitious. We’ve been interested to hear about their two latest projects.

A platform for consumer complaints

The Alaveteli code was written to send FOI requests to public authorities. But in essence, it’s little more than a system for sending emails to a predetermined list of recipients, and publishing the whole thread of correspondence online.

Change that list of recipients, and you can create a whole new type of site. Reklamacije (“Complaints”) puts the process of making consumer complaints online. It’s early days as yet — the site’s still in the beta phase, during which testers are putting it through its paces. There have been messages about bank closures, insurance policies… and even the inconsistent quality of the quesadillas at a Mexican food chain.

As we’ve often mentioned here on this blog, our FixMyStreet codebase has been put to many different purposes that require map-based reporting, but as far as we’re aware this is the first non-FOI use of Alaveteli so we’ll be watching with interest. Perhaps it might give you ideas about setting up a similar service elsewhere?

Probing travel expenses

Code for Croatia have also launched a campaign asking users to request details of ministers’ travel expenses.

If that sounds familiar, you’ll be remembering that back in January, AccessInfo did much the same with EU Commissioners and their expenses on the European Union FOI site AskTheEU. We can tentatively say that they were successful, too: it’s been announced that the EU expenses will be proactively published every two months. AskTheEU say they welcome the move ‘cautiously’, so let’s see how it all pans out.

The key to both these campaigns is pre-filled requests that make it really simple for supporters to make a request to a specific politician, while ensuring that the requests aren’t duplicated.

That’s something that Gemma explained how to do in this blog post — it’s a massive benefit of the friendly global Alaveteli community that we can all share insights like this, and especially that other groups can try out initiatives that have proved successful.

 

Access to information is a particularly powerful tool in countries like Colombia, where corruption is high and vital peace treaties are underway.

To make accessing information easier for citizens and public authorities alike, a group of journalists in Bogotá including DataSketch, have recently set up the Freedom of Information request platform QueremosDatos (the name of which translates as “We want data/information”).

The platform uses our Alaveteli software, and we thoroughly enjoyed working with the Colombian team to set the site up with them.

We asked María Isabel Magaña, who is coordinating the QueremosDatos project, about the site and its impacts so far:

Why did you decide to set up QueremosDatos?

I first learned about Alaveteli in Spain while I was doing my Masters in Investigative Journalism. There I was introduced to the platform TuDerechoASaber.es and to the power that FOIA and transparency had. I just knew Colombia needed something like that, especially since the Congress had just approved the first law regarding this matter.

What made you choose to use Alaveteli software for your platform?

What I love about Alaveteli is how easy it is to use for both users and admins. Designing the platform and making it useful for any type of person was the most attractive feature Alaveteli had. But also, because of the people behind it. Gemma, Gareth, and so many more people were ready to help me achieve this goal despite the different time zones and how much time it took to get it up and running.

What impact do you hope the site has?

It has been almost six months since we launched the site. The impact has been great! We have helped people make 274 requests to more than 6,000 authorities. The Government has been interested in the project and has helped us get in touch with different authorities to help them learn about FOIA and the Colombian law and how to work with people through the platform. Users love it, especially journalists.

Which responses on the site have you been most excited about seeing?

My favourite response so far has been one regarding victims of the Colombian conflict. It was very exciting to get the information because of what it meant for the person who was requesting it, and because of the historical context my country is going through. I also enjoyed seeing the transformation the police had when giving their answers: at first they always sent a response asking the user to call them. After a few explanations, they’re now sending complete answers to the requests via the site.

Do you know of examples where information obtained through the site has been used?

Yes! Journalists have used it mostly in ongoing investigations regarding medicines, drug trafficking, and abortion. Students have used it for journalism classes and homework too.

What are your future plans for QueremosDatos?

We are confirming an alliance with the government to promote the site in public offices and to teach public servants about what the Right to Know is, and their responsibilities with it. This pedagogy will be replicated in universities to teach different users about their power to request information.

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Many thanks to María for answering our questions. It’s been great to see the impact the site has already had on authorities and citizens alike, especially the change in behaviour by certain public authorities.

We’re really looking forward to following the project’s continuing work, and wish the team the utmost success in their quest to make Colombia a much more transparent society!

We recently explained how to use pre-written Freedom of Information requests for a campaign. We’re glad to see this being used by AskTheEU, the Alaveteli site for Europe.

Today, AskTheEU launches a campaign to request the travel expenses of EU Commissioners — and they are calling on the public to help submit a total of 168 requests.

No matter what your feeling are towards the EU (let’s not even go there), we hope that everyone is in favour of transparency. AskTheEU’s campaign follows the discovery from a request that Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spent €63,000 on an air taxi to Turkey for the G20 summit. Naturally, they were keen to know whether this level of spending is replicated across the organisation.

After a two-year battle, AskTheEU’s parent organisation Access Info has established that the European Commission will provide information on Commissioner’s travel expenses, but only in two-month bundles.

They’ve already made a start: after submitting legal appeals and new requests, Access Info won access to a handful of documents about the travel expenses of five Commissioners: these can be seen here.

But there’s plenty more to discover, and that’s where the general public comes in. Thanks to the pre-written requests function, all the hard work is already done: it’s just a matter of picking one or two time periods and submitting the already-composed request.

Anyone can participate by going to the campaign website from today. All requests and responses will be made public on AsktheEU.

 

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Image © European Union 2014 – European Parliament (CC by-nc-nd/2.0).

In the last few weeks, we’ve started conducting background research interviews for our new project, Alaveteli Professional. Alaveteli Professional will be a companion service to Alaveteli, our Freedom of Information platform – initially it will be aimed specifically at journalists, but it should be of interest to anyone who uses Freedom of Information in their work.

Why are we doing this project?

Alaveteli Professional is an unusual project for mySociety. Our mission is to create digital tools that empower citizens in their interactions with the state, and people in power. Usually that means that we create tools which we intend to be used by as broad a range of people as possible – we think a lot about how to design and build for people in their role as citizens, which is a role we all experience. But with Alaveteli Professional, we’re focusing on journalists, a specific professional group. Why is that?

Citizen empowerment doesn’t always happen by direct interaction with institutions. Feeling empowered and capable of affecting what happens in your community requires knowing what’s going on in your community. Although models of journalism are changing, whether you’re getting your news from The Times, or from Buzzfeed, whether it’s funded by a paywall or by crowdsourcing, it’s hard to imagine a future in which ordinary people can be well-informed, without specialists doggedly asking questions of power, putting information from different sources together, and helping make sense of what’s going on.

Alaveteli-powered sites like WhatDoTheyKnow have been successful in giving ordinary people a simple way to ask questions of government and to share the responses with everyone automatically online. But we know that the way the sites work doesn’t always match the needs of someone who’s working on assembling a bigger story that they may want to break elsewhere. We’d love to see the work put into Alaveteli so far also go to serve the goal of informing people through high quality public interest stories in media platforms with a long reach.

That’s why we were delighted to get funding for the project from the Google Digital News Initiative, which aims ‘to support high quality journalism and encourage a more sustainable news ecosystem through technology and innovation’.

What we’re doing

The initial research for the project has been an interesting and exciting process, and not just because it has meant actually ‘leaving for work’ in the morning, rather than spending the day entirely in the virtual world of remote working. For me, one of the real joys of working on digital tools is the opportunity to spend some time in different domains of life and think about how they work.

We’ve been talking to media professionals who use Freedom of Information requests in their jobs, trying to understand what parts of the process are painful or unnecessarily time consuming. We’re also talking to FOI officers, and other people who’ve thought deeply about journalistic use of FOI, in an effort to understand the ecosystem of people and motivations – and answer questions of who is doing what and why. It’s been a real pleasure to explore these questions with people who’ve been incredibly generous with their time and ideas.

The process of making a Freedom of Information request can sometimes seem quite similar to an adversarial legal system – with the requester pitted against an institution that’s reluctant to release information, and FOI law defining the obligations, exemptions, and public interest tests that set the landscape in which the two sides are in conflict. But as with any other domain, the more you dig into it, the more interesting complexity you find in both sides, and in the interaction between the two.

There are freelance journalists working against the clock to turn around a story they can sell, but also data journalism groups in larger institutions making frequent requests as part of ‘business as usual’, and pushing out stories to their regional colleagues. As you would expect, there’s competition between journalists and media institutions, but also surprising opportunities for collaboration and shared resources. There’s a significant amount of collaboration between requesters and authorities – in some cases producing nuanced national public-interest data sets that neither could generate alone. There’s a lot of diversity in the authorities that are subject to Freedom of Information law – from tiny schools and parish councils to huge central government departments, police and health authorities. There’s also still variation in how different authorities store similar data and how they respond to FOI requests.

What’s next?

At this point, we’re trying to get the best sense we can of both the details and the big picture. We’re also starting to ask where we could reduce friction, encourage responsible practices, save time in such a way that it benefits the system as a whole, and increase the chance of ordinary people becoming better informed about what is being done with their money and in their name by institutions. It’s an exciting part of the project, as we start to discard some of the preconceptions we had about what might be useful, and get more confident in the value of others. I’m looking forward to starting to put those ideas into practice in the form of simple prototypes that we can put back in front of people.

Image: Dean Hochman (CC by 2.0)

Researching in an unstable environment

It’s been nearly two years since the InfoLib Liberia project with iLab Liberia started. In that time the project has faced many hurdles, some predicted, and some completely unforeseen.

The iLab team have seen their country devastated by Ebola, only 11 years after the end of their second civil war, bringing tragedy and instability along with it. As you can probably imagine, the impact of curfews, fear and death in communities has made it difficult for people to continue with their daily lives. The social impact of such a disease is wide-reaching. Distrust, marginalisation and exclusion can be directed at those who show symptoms, or even who suffered and survived.

These are challenges that our local partners have had to contend with every day, both when holding training sessions and more crucially when researching the impact of the project on people’s lives.

However, by far the largest hurdle for this particular project has been a mixture of low internet penetration and lack of government will to release information. The team on the ground have been working tirelessly to create an ecosystem of requesting and training Public Information Officers (PIOs) to reply – even providing them with tablets to scan documents without needing electricity, let alone a computer. But if those officers have no access to the information that has been requested, their jobs become virtually impossible.

The project is now drawing to a close and we’re undertaking our final research survey. It seemed like a good time to take a look at what we’ve learnt about the impact of our joint Freedom of Information project in Liberia.

Results

When designing the project we decided that impact could best be measured in terms of whether or not the project increased confidence in government transparency.

We carried out surveys in January 2016 and April 2016, to provide a baseline picture and then an assessment of impact at midline. The final survey is being conducted in August 2016 just as the project ends.

The first survey – the baseline – was carried out mainly in the rural areas. iLab Liberia teamed up with LFIC to survey 152 participants who had been involved in the FOI workshops that LFIC had held in the counties.

We had to attempt the second survey twice, as it turned out to be more challenging than we’d expected. We needed the participants from the first questionnaire to answer the same questions we’d asked them initially, in order to measure change — but it proved hard to locate all of them.

There were many factors which caused this, but the main one was economic drivers, forcing people to move to where the opportunities are. It’s a problem many researchers must run into working in the field.

Carter, the project lead at iLab Liberia told us:

“There are several reasons why this happens […]. People migrate a lot between markets, farms. Several persons who participated in the baseline could not be reached as they [had] travelled to other cities/counties. [Or] the job that allowed them to reside in that city/county is no longer available so they might have left seeking after another job.”

Our second attempt was more successful. We managed to contact a large percentage of the original participants in the survey: 112 of the 152.

We’ve found out some interesting things from doing this research. We saw that 74% of people who use the internet daily say it’s their main source of information, though it is still only a small percentage of the population who have access to the internet.

So the next biggest source of information? Radio! 85% of people with with no access to the internet give radio as their main source of information. Thinking of the migration of workers between cities and counties – you suddenly appreciate why Radio is such an important medium for getting hold of information. Thankfully, as you’ll remember from our original blog post, we’re covering both of these media in the InfoLib project.

In the months since we began studying the impact of this project we also learned that fear of making a request has dropped by 5% in the individuals surveyed . The amount of people who reported that they didn’t know how to ask for information dropped from 24% to 21%. This is pretty great news to us as it shows that our training and our encouragement is working – albeit slowly.

Finally we saw the percentage of people who believe government would be more transparent if citizens could see the information they hold rise by 3% to 93% of the surveyed respondents. Even if this figure hadn’t risen, this demonstrates a clear existing demand from the citizens of Liberia for the Government to release more information about its activities which is great news overall!

Challenges

No project is without its challenges, and as you’ve seen above one of the big ones is ensuring that the same people respond from survey to survey. Not being able to pin down precisely the same set of people means that we can’t say with 100% certainty that we have a true measure in the difference in attitude.

As a result of the economic and social drivers mentioned above, the workforce in Liberia is very transient. This makes disseminating information through radio and internet mediums even more important. This research has shown that these are the primary sources of news and official information for the majority of Liberians, and continuing to improve knowledge about, and access to, information via these sources will empower the population further.

Finally, it can be challenging to demonstrate impact in projects like these, simply because research is not the main focus for our local partners. We partner with local groups because they are passionate, capable, and able to engage and mobilise citizens around a certain issue. We cannot expect small grassroots groups to have the resources or experience to conduct academic surveying, sampling or interviewing that could detect and definitively isolate the short term impact of a small project. This piece of research has provided some encouraging interim results, but most of all, it has provided valuable lessons to us at mySociety in trying to conduct this kind of impact research remotely and in partnership.

While we wait for the outcome of the final survey we can feel cautiously hopeful that this project has caused a small change in the way access to information operates in Liberia. infoLib will continue to run after the project officially ends, and mySociety will continue to support the work that iLab does in this area . However it may take longer than we had expected or hoped, to see the governmental shift towards releasing information.

On January 8th Liberia launched their new Freedom of Information platform, infoLib, based on our Alaveteli software — not just by pressing a button to put the site live, but with a public event that reached many sectors of society.

The launch was a great success: it was attended by representatives from groups including university students, government ministries and NGOs, each of which will be able to use the site for their own needs.

The platform, jointly build by iLab Liberia and mySociety, is Liberia’s first step in streamlining the process of making a freedom of information request.

The Liberian Government and many of the country’s NGOs are excited about infoLib’s ability to monitor when requests come in and to ensure that they are replied to on time.

Attendees expressed happiness with the platform and excitement about what it means for Liberia. Many have said they’re more optimistic that requests will be answered, now that there is a clear, transparent way to scrutinise the government.

The event featured a Q&A session about compliance and functionality: the many questions from the audience were answered by the newly trained Public Information Officers as well as the team from iLab.

So what’s next?

Focus is on driving usage; iLab will be accompanying the Liberia Freedom of Information Coalition on their nationwide tour talking about FOI.

In our last post, we talked about how the site is attempting to reach the country’s offline population as well as those who have internet access. On tour, the team will take requests from users, either on paper or directly onto the site if there’s an internet connection.

Growing usage of the site will be a slow process. While there’s enthusiasm for the project, it’s all very new and people want to see proof that it works — so we have a lot of hard work ahead of us in the coming months.

In addition to this, iLab are going to be running FOI surgeries on community radio stations in the counties and Monrovia. People will have the opportunity to phone in and make an FOI request, and the answers to previous FOI requests will be shared.

Finally we’ll be working on training up the last PIOs and building their skills to give them the best chance to answer requests promptly, online, and with the relevant information.

Everything’s going to plan so far, and there are many aspects of this launch that people launching Alaveteli sites in the future can learn from. Thanks for sharing your progress, iLab, and best of luck as you go into the next phase of your journey.