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…this is mySociety’s 20th anniversary Impact Report!
This has been a very special year – mySociety’s 20th anniversary.So we haven’t just put together our usual review of the past twelve months: this Impact Report is a special edition, covering our entire history since 2003.
We look back at our beginnings as a small group of determined coders, and trace our history through the changes our services have made, here in the UK and across the world.
Discover daring acts of (data) piracy, and learn which vandalised phone box sparked the idea for FixMyStreet. Find out how our “cheap and cheerful open web technology” has been instrumental in helping citizens tackle vital issues, from the climate emergency to human trafficking.
It’s quite the read. Sit back, grab a mince pie if you have one to hand…and enjoy! Access the Anniversary Impact report here (web), or enjoy the print-faithful PDF version, or plain text and epub formats.
And if you’re interested in our activity on the SocietyWorks side, don’t miss their own, just as engrossing, annual report: you can read that here.
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Yes, once again the year is drawing to a close, and it’s time to look back on everything we’ve achieved over the past 12 months, in the 2022 annual review.
Our work this year has had impacts in all kinds of places, from kids’ school dinners to a prison newspaper; from access to information across Europe, to research that helped shape thinking around FOI and data that extended our knowledge of climate action at the local level. Our TICTeC Labs programme created solutions that feed back into the civic tech sector; and SocietyWorks was busy innovating through the year too, making sure that your council’s services work more smoothly.
That’s just a taste of what you’ll find in the annual review, but you can read it all for yourself here; or, if you prefer dip into the WhatDoTheyKnow transparency report or SocietyWorks’ own review here.
All the best of the season to our friends and followers — and we’ll see you in the New Year!
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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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Our Annual Review is now ready for your perusal!
As usual, it’s been a joy to compile all the progress we’ve made during the past 12 months, and to sprinkle them through with some thoughts and memories from mySociety staff. We hope some of that joy comes to you, too.
This year, for the first time, SocietyWorks has its own standalone Review, and we’ve also spun off a Transparency report for WhatDoTheyKnow. The latter is something we hope to build upon for the future, as you’ll see.
As we head into the festive season, we wish you a very happy holiday and all the best for the new year. Now grab a mince pie, stick on that Santa hat, and settle in for a read!
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In 2021 WhatDoTheyKnow users made 100,092 Freedom of Information requests.
Those requests, and the responses they received, are public on the website for anyone to see. But what’s not quite so visible is the work the WhatDoTheyKnow team do behind the scenes — answering users’ questions, removing inappropriate content and keeping everything ticking over.
Some of the team’s 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.
For this reason, the 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.
This year, for the first time, we’re extending our efforts towards transparency even further, with this report in which we’ll summarise the information removal requests and actions taken during the last twelve months.
To allow for a full 12 months of data, the date range used throughout this report is 1 November 2020 to 31 October 2021
Headline facts and figures
- 20,714,033 visitors to WhatDoTheyKnow.com this year
- 22,847 new WhatDoTheyKnow user accounts this year, taking the total to 222,694
- 7,971 total number of email threads in the support inbox in 2021
- 822 requests hidden from WhatDoTheyKnow in 2021
…in the context of 100,092 requests made in the year, and a total of 772,971 requests now published on the site - 196 Total number of published requests where we redacted some material in 2021
…usually due to the inappropriate inclusion of personal information, or defamation. - 126 The number of users who created accounts this year banned
…that’s just 0.06% of new users. - WhatDoTheyKnow is a project of mySociety run by a small team of staff and dedicated volunteers.
And in more detail…
Requests flagged for our attention
The table below shows the reasons that requests were reported 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 request Total number Contains personal information 143 Not a valid request 108 Vexatious 94 Request for personal information 85 Contains defamatory material 51 Other 287 Total 768 Material removed from the site
The following tables show where members of the support team have acted to remove or hide requests from WhatDoTheyKnow in the last year, and the reason why.
There is a range of options available to moderators, from ‘hidden’ (the most extreme) to ‘discoverable with link’. This is in addition to the censor rules that are used to hide certain information within a request or response.
Request visibility Total number Visible only to the request maker 805 Discoverable only to those who have the link to the request 11 Hidden 8 Reason for removing from public view Total number Not a valid FOI request 701 Vexatious use of FOI 29 Other (reason not programmatically recorded*) 124 *Current processes do not create an easily retrievable list of reasons beyond the two above, but we are hoping to improve our systems so future transparency reports can include a more detailed breakdown.
Censor rules (programmatically hiding the problematic part/s of a request) Total number Number of censor rules applied 881 Number of requests with censor rules applied 196 Number of requests with censor rules applied which are still publicly visible, but with problematic material hidden 188 Data protection issues raised to the WhatDoTheyKnow user support inbox
The following data shows the number of email threads* received into the WhatDoTheyKnow user support inbox regarding the most common types of concern around information published on the site. Not all issues raised resulted in material being removed from the site.
GDPR = UK General Data Protection Regulations
DPA: Data Protection ActLabel Total number of threads GDPR Right to Erasure 317 Defamation 130 Data breach 96 GDPR & DPA concerns (type not specified) 42 GDPR Right to Rectification 33 GDPR Right of Access 21 Harassment 17 GDPR Right to Object 12 Data breach – internal** 2 Impersonation 1 Total 674 * Email threads may be either automatically categorised by the system, or manually categorised by the WhatDoTheyKnow support team on the basis of the information given by the person reporting them.
** “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 reported even if very minor, and often when they’re nothing more than a near miss — which both of these cases were.
High risk concerns raised 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 and the Chair of the Trustees. Escalation is typically prompted by threats of legal action, complaints, notifications of serious data breaches, complex GDPR cases, or cases that raise significant policy questions.
Case type* Total number Defamation 66 GDPR Right to Erasure 42 Data breach 40 Complaints 33 GDPR & DPA concerns 11 GDPR Right of Access 6 Harassment 5 Takedown 2 GDPR Right to Object 2 GDPR Right to Rectification 1 Other 78 Total 286 * Email threads may be either automatically categorised by the system, or manually categorised by the WhatDoTheyKnow support team on the basis of the information given by the person reporting them.
Users
User accounts Total WhatDoTheyKnow users with activated accounts 222,694 New user accounts activated in 2021 22,847 Reason for banning users in 2021 Total Spam 3,936 Other site misuse 166 Total number of users banned in 2021 4,102 Anonymisation* Total Accounts anonymised in 2021 170 * Where accounts have been anonymised this is 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.
Thank you for reading
This is the first time we’ve compiled a Transparency Report like this for WhatDoTheyKnow, but it’s something we’ve been wanting to do for some time. We demand transparency from public authorities and it’s only right that we also practice 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 moderating a well-used site like WhatDoTheyKnow is not without challenges.
In future years, we hope to build on this initial report, ideally automating many of the stats so that they can be seen on a live dashboard. For now, we thought it was worthwhile making a manually-compiled proof of concept.
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. They’ll get back to you as soon as the urgent moderation work is done!
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See mySociety’s 2021 annual review
Image: Create & Bloom
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Each December we gather together everything we’ve done through the year, and bundle it all up in our annual report.
And at the end of every annual report we add a small section forecasting what we’ll be up to in the year ahead — it’s always pretty gratifying to be able to look back at the previous year’s report and think, ‘Yup, that happened’.
Not this year, though. Skilled clairvoyants might have been able to foresee some of the parliamentary happenings, or that political events would result in an explosion of use in our Democracy services, or the growing need for enhanced Transparency from our public authorities — but no-one could blame us for happily planning an international conference to take place in March, completely unaware that travel would be off the cards for some time to come.
In many ways, mySociety’s work-from-home set-up (which we’ve had since our very beginnings) served us very well in being able to provide uninterrupted services to our users and clients alike. In other ways, we suffered like everyone else from a lack of face to face contact — remote we may be, but we do like our occasional meet-ups!
Well, anyway: you can see all the highs and lows for yourself in the annual report. We hope you enjoy reliving the year with us… and, yes, call us foolish, but we have indeed included that little forecasting section at the end. What could possibly go wrong?
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The words ‘annual report’ might bring to mind a dull brochure dotted with graphs, pie charts and photos of directors in suits.
That’s not quite how we do things at mySociety though. Our annual report takes just five minutes to read, with plenty of nice pictures and not a suit in sight.
Got a moment? Take a look now.
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Annual reports: they’re dry, boring and full of corporate buzzwords, right?That’s not really the mySociety way, though.
All the same, we wanted to share some facts and figures about everything we got up to last year. It’s in the nature of our work that people tend to know about one part of it—say, our international work, or the sites we run here in the UK—but nothing else.
Well, to give you a more rounded picture, here is the mySociety annual report, featuring, among other things, the pop group One Direction, some vikings, and the TV presenter Phillip Schofield.
Welcome to mySociety in 2014… and if you enjoy it, please do share it around!
