Once again, the TICTeC Communities of Practice have given us all the opportunity to learn from those at the frontline of civic tech: this week’s session, Beyond websites: how pro-democracy projects reach their audiences saw practitioners from Georgia, Nigeria and Uganda explaining the ways in which you can engage with audiences beyond a website.

You can watch the session here.

Ana Arevadze from ForSet explained the care and attention that the organisation put into making sure that an election education campaign, delivered by influencers, was a learning experience for all involved. This was a presentation that a small group of people had been fortunate to experience at the ATI Day in Mechelen, but is now available for all to watch. 

Ufuoma Oghuwu from Enough is Enough Nigeria outlined how the Shine Your Eye website provides citizens with information about their elected officials — something that’s often missing after the canvassing and electoral cycle has passed — and then described how that information has a life beyond the website, thanks to chatbots, WhatsApp and social media.

Last but not least, Joseph Tahinduka of ParliamentWatch Uganda shared the fantastic efforts they go to to make parliamentary activity accessible to the social media generation, who so greatly prefer short videos to trawling through lengthy reports. Is it time for all of us to start getting onto TikTok? You’ll have to watch to find out!

Sit back and enjoy the video: there was so much to learn from our speakers, and we’re glad to be able to share their insights with our networks. 

Summer is finally upon us, and though things are slowing slightly in the heat there’s been lots of amazing work happening on Access to Information across Europe this month!

NB: Our TICTeC community of practice is Global and we’d love to hear updates from our global members too in the future!

Without further ado:

FragDenStaat: are working on a long running investigation into a funding scandal at the Ministry of Education looking at the withdrawal of funds from critical scientists. More on that here

mySociety: are working on a new release of Alaveteli to bring some of our new features into your platforms. We’re also getting WDTK Projects as a self serve option into the Alaveteli Codebase, investigating AI for assessing batches and talking about our marginalised communities work at the Women’s Aid 50th Anniversary Conference. We’ve also finally released our Resource Hub, can you spot the pre-September event doc? Hint hint

Access Info: are working on legal reform projects with Moldova and Greece, as well as supporting Serbia with some legal challenges and convening a group of CSOs and activists around the 1049 Article.

SPOON: just got a win from the court in Amsterdam (more here) on rejections based on draft documents! There’s been some support from a minister who suggests the house waits to see what happens with FOI before talking about Abuse of the law and dealing with the complexities of things passing through the house when trying to ask for information about bill proceedings.

Transparency International Slovenia: have been Releasing their global integrity report with Ernst Young and going into conversation with Ernst and Young about what this means for Slovenian businesses.

Transparencia: is using FOI campaign to change 7 Belgian FOI regulations. Our actual campaign is on the federal Belgian law. We have collaborated with mainstream media to support that goal Transparence : ces documents que l’on ne veut pas (facilement) rendre publics – Le Soir and we presented to the press an FOI-investigation on fraud in covid-government contracts Des espions dans le Covid #1 : Vaccins périmés, manipulations et vidéos, le scandale belge qui éclabousse la France et l’Europe (blast-info.fr)

ImamoPravoZnati: are sailing along smoothly this month; Users are sending their questions, receiving answers and they calculated they receive around 6% of all the FOIs sent in the Republic of Croatia to public authorities!

KiMitTud: Atlatzso (KMT’s parent company) have been using FOI to investigate fraudulent calls for vote recounts and uncovered that almost half the calls (114) for a recount in one constituency were made by the candidate themselves, not the vote counters.

Arthro5A: Vouliwatch (Arthro5a’s parent organisation) ran their first workshop around Access to Information to encourage journalists and CSOs to make requests and use their right to information. It was well attended and 18 CSOs signed up to the campaign afterwards. The event was supported by Access Info and Open Knowledge Germany.

If you’re in our Network and Community of Practice and have something to share for August monthnotes – drop Jen a line!