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Over the past few weeks we’ve seen public debate and campaigning around the government’s proposed cuts to PIP — benefits that are intended to ease the additional costs of living that come with being disabled.
The Bill was voted through, but only once it was agreed that the proposed changes to PIP eligibility would be paused until after a ministerial review involving disabled people has taken place. This concession was the result of MPs threatening to rebel.
With the objections coming from within the Labour party itself, it would be easy to think that the entire discussion was happening between MPs. In fact, when MPs vote with their conscience, their stance has often been partially informed by lobbying from their constituents and from campaign groups with a particular interest in the outcome.
Freedom of Information can be an excellent resource for this sort of lobbying: it provides incontrovertible facts, sometimes from the very authorities being petitioned.
We’ve recently seen how FOI requests on WhatDoTheyKnow have helped create news stories that inform opinions around PIP.
For example, Learning Disability Today published an article in April, casting light on how many current claimants would have lost out if the government had, as they originally planned, removed the daily living component from claimants scoring less than 4 points for at least one activity. They say that their FOI request to the Department of Work and Pensions “revealed much higher numbers than previously suggested”, resulting in “almost nine out of ten current standard daily living awards failing on renewal”.
And Rightsnet has the stats on the number of PIP decisions reversed before going to appeal, alongside the medical conditions where this has happened most and least often — a useful benchmark for those considering an appeal, but such stats are also frequently used to point out the inadequacy of the system.
As the matter is not yet settled, and given the requirement for a ministerial review that involves disabled people, we expect to see many more relevant FOI requests in the near future.
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Image: Roger Blackwell CC by/2.0
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Transparency is always a strong theme at TICTeC, and since so many members of the Access to Information Network were in town for the conference, we thought we’d take the opportunity to meet up.
And so, the day after, several people who run Freedom of Information sites came together in an airy attic room to share knowledge and discuss challenges.
As always when we convene this specialised interest group, participants were delighted to have in-depth discussions to other people who fully ‘get it’ — to whom the challenges of running such sites are not just academic, but form part of their day to day realities.
Sitting around the tables were Stefan and Luisa of Frag den Staat (Germany); Michael from CoST (Uganda); Ana from ForSet (Georgia); Miguel from Plaza Civica (Peru); Liset and Tim from SPOON (Netherlands); Krisztina from Átlátszónet Foundation (Hungary); Martin from Abrimos (Mexico); Rachel from AccessInfo (Europe); Michal, Piotr and Marzena from Citizens’ Network Watchdog (Poland); Laurent from MaDada (France); Maria from Fiquem Sabendo (Brazil); Matt from the Civic Tech Field Guide and Julia, Louise and me representing mySociety.
Positive wins
We began by sharing recent successes. A few of the organisations were successful in overturning governmental attacks on, or restrictions to, FOI rights, while others had used research and activism to undermine negative perceptions around the Right To Know. We heard of successful campaigns and grant bids too — overall, sharing these wins was a great way to kick things off.
Learning new skills
Ana gave a really insightful presentation on how ForSet had worked with ‘influencers’ to reach a new audience. Here, the term ‘influencer’ really just meant content creators with a wide following among the Gen Z audience they were trying to appeal to.
For context, in Georgia young people have been out on the streets en masse, successfully protesting against proposed laws. Even if they weren’t yet old enough to vote, Ana pointed out, they could still influence public discourse and the political agenda.
And now, as that generation reaches voting age, ForSet wanted to use social media platforms to encourage democratic participation.
As with everything the organisation does, the level of preparation and analysis that they brought to the project was outstanding, making sure that they fully understood who Gen Z would pay attention to, and trying out different messages to see what worked. There was so much to learn here about how to break into new audiences and how to ensure that what you were doing had an effect.
A forest of trees
Next, Rachel led us in an exercise to plot the challenges we face running ATI sites onto a tree diagram – with causes at the roots, core issues on the trunk, and consequences in the leafy canopy.
What we discovered was first, that challenges and problems tend to be the same in every context; and second, that causes and effects are so interlinked that it is often difficult to decide which is which. For example, a lack of public understanding around ATI can both cause a low usage, and be the result of inadequate education around the topic. Authorities’ low response rates might be the result of poor governmental oversight, or the cause of public apathy – and so on.
Batch and back-ups
In the afternoon, the topics were decided upon by consensus: we had a useful conversation about the issues around batch requesting (sending the same request to multiple authorities), which sites offer in a variety of different ways ranging from it being open to most users, to being available only to staff (and some don’t offer it at all).
Secondly, we discussed ‘backing up’ – both backups to ensure our own site archives were safe from loss, and means by which to scrape massive public archives when it becomes clear that they might be taken down by the authorities running them. This is not an imaginary scenario, as members were able to testify, and of course as we have seen recently in the States.
Finally, people voted on which topics they are keen to see covered in future webinars of the ATI Network, with youth and AI decision-making being most popular – so watch this space for those webinars to happen.
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If you’re someone who’s concerned about the climate but not really sure what to do about it, this webinar is definitely a good place to start.
Our event this week brought together investigative journalist Lucas Amin of Democracy for Sale; Anne Friel, Head of Just Societies at Client Earth; and Joschi Wolf of the German transparency project Frag Den Staat – all sharing their knowledge around Freedom of Information as an invaluable tool for tackling the climate crisis.
It was very encouraging to hear practical tips and thoughts that made FOI-based activism seem within reach, even to the beginner. And all from your own desk!
Watch the webinar on YouTube. We’ve also compiled the responses to the questions from the audience that there wasn’t time to answer during the session: you can see those here.
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Image: Matteo Miliddi
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Here is our monthly round-up of news from the transparency organisations in the ATI Network. This month, we have updates from Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Croatia, Hungary, Greece, South Africa and Latin America. What a global hum of transparency activity!
Access Info Europe have brought a joint legal challenge against the European Commission’s new internal access to documents rules, arguing that they violate the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), and Regulation 1049/2001. More here.
SPOON in the Netherlands have gained two new members of staff, saying, “These new shining stars are not full-time, but definitely promising. We’re really happy with this addition and feel like we’ve gained a superpower!”
Additionally, they completed a major piece of research this month, investigating eight recurring assumptions in the debate around FOI in the Netherlands. It was the first time someone took the time to actually look at the facts. “And what did we find? None of them are true.”
The results of this research were presented just two days later in a parliamentary debate about the Woo, the Dutch FOIA. Hopefully, this will help counter the looming restrictions on the right to transparency in the Netherlands.
SPOON also advised three journalists on how to hold to account the Minister of Agriculture, who unceremoniously intervened by phone during a court hearing. This case, including the intervention, is now with the judge.
Finally, they helped a local media outlet in Amsterdam with their objection to a FOI decision, with the result that instead of nothing being released, nearly everything became public. Great result!
Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska (SOWP) continued their intensive activities promoting transparency and protecting civic activism.
Together with Article 19, the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, and the Polish Federation of NGOs, SOWP launched the anti-slapp.pl platform, which gathers comprehensive information about Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs).
This website offers access to legal analyses, reform recommendations, educational resources, and media coverage, thereby supporting journalists and activists in countering these threats.
SOWP also became heavily involved in the debate concerning the central register of public sector contracts. Their research across hundreds of local governments revealed that the Ministry of Finance’s proposed changes, raising the contract publication threshold from PLN 500 to PLN 10,000, would result in over 70% of contracts being undisclosed, undermining the effectiveness of the register.
They also re-ran their course “Hope(lessness) of Small and Large Municipalities,” enrolling 60 participants from across Poland, including councilors, local activists, village leaders, and public officials from 12 voivodeships. Over three months, participants will gain practical knowledge on civic oversight tools and local government operations.
Finally, SOWP also released two valuable podcast episodes this month: one addressing SLAPPs and another dedicated to successful actions aimed at protecting forests and local natural environments.
Handlingar, in Sweden, continue to apply for project funding and also looking into applying to be a part of incubators and accelerators. They want to focus efforts on getting Alaveteli much more well documented and easy to run and maintain and especially for the Pro features that can fund the public benefit free version of Alaveteli platforms. They’re looking to collaborate with all platforms and organisations in the FOIA networks! Get in touch at handlingar@okfn.se! 🙂
ImamoPravoZnati attended GONG’s annual Open Data Day conference on March 6 and 7. The event gathered institutional stakeholders, civil society organisations and data enthusiasts in a series of discussions and workshops, including one on digital tools for active citizens, where they presented their Alaveteli site Imamopravoznati.org.
KiMitTud, the Hungarian Alaveteli site, report: “In 2022, following an announcement, that the state had purchased N.S. Média és Vagyonkezelő Kft., the company that publishes the leading Hungarian sport newspaper (Nemzeti Sport), and designated a state-owned company as the entity responsible for exercising state ownership rights, Átlátszó submitted a Freedom of Information request for the contract related to the purchase of the Prime Minister’s favourite newspaper’s publishing company, but to no avail.
“They refused to release the document, claiming it was a trade secret.
“Since no such exemption applies to public funds and publicly relevant data, we took the matter to court. After more than two years of legal battles, we received the 33-page contract. The document revealed that the state had paid 3,479,756,000 forints in public funds for the publisher of Nemzeti Sport.” Read all about it here.
They continue, “Another court win from February, and quite an important one, as the court ruled in favour of the public in our case against a state railway company that hid its contract. The state railway’s maintenance subsidiary tried to withhold a 900 million HUF contract on the grounds that it “contains personal data that is subject to limited disclosure for GDPR purposes, as well as business secrets”. The court ruled, however, that as the company was managing public property and was therefore obliged to hand over the document to Átlátszó.” Read this story here.
Vouliwatch/Arthro5A The Greek organisation submitted two FOI requests this month. The first requested the publication of the members of the Ministerial Cabinet’s 2024 gift registry of (last May, following a successful appeal, VouliWatch had managed to get them to publish the registry for 2023).
The second requested information related to political parties and candidates’ finances from the Parliament’s audit committee, that is update on loans of each political party, election expenses of candidates and political parties, etc. The information in question, according to the law, should have been made public proactively.
Abrimos Info report that Mexico’s National Institute of Transparency for Access to Information and Personal Data Protection, INAI, is finally set to disappear this month, as secondary laws have already been approved.
Abrimos Info has secured a small rapid response grant to make a quick backup of parts of the national transparency platform, and continue to check on whether the data remains consistent after the switch.
They will be participating in the International Journalism Festival in Perugia in April, and participated in the OpenDataDay in México City. You can see a report on this here.
OpenUp ZA South African organisation OpenUp participated in the Africa & Middle East Open Government Partnership Regional Summit. “It was a lovely reconnection between our team and the stalwarts of the African FOI community in organisational partners like the Africa Freedom Of Information Centre, Uganda and the Media Rights Agenda, Nigeria”, they say.
mySociety: And finally, here at mySociety we have been working hard preparing for our TICTeC conference, after the whirlwind of the USA funding freezes – don’t forget to get your tickets!
We’ve also been drafting guidance around exceptions to the FOI act to support users from marginalised groups, and providing advice and support to two cohorts of people who are getting ready to submit their first requests.
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Image: Filip Mishevski
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These are notes from a recent ‘fireside chat’ held by the ATI Network. For the sake of frank conversation and knowledge exchange, the session was not recorded, but you can read on for the main points.
Laurent and Xavier from the French Alaveteli site MaDada were talking about their learning process from working with Access Info on legal reform of FOI laws in France, as detailed in this post. This is part of the ATI Network project we’re working on across Europe to strengthen ties and skills between European Access to Information platforms.
The work began almost three years ago, when Rachel Hanna, Director of Access Info, and Helen Darbishire, the former Director, mapped all the FOI laws across Europe and organised them with high level recommendations and categorisation against an “ideal” law. From there, Access Info identified four different countries to work in depth with over the lifetime of the project to try and influence changes to laws or steps forward in campaigning.
France, with MaDada as its subject, was one of the countries identified, and there were a number of reasons for this which Laurent explained when we met: “The French context is difficult. The law is old, they tried to do some updating between 2016- 2018 with the internet in mind, but other than that it’s not changed since 1978.” However, one thing that has gained consensus from all politicians and lawmakers is that there is “constitutional value” to FOI in France, which is positive.
Laurent explained how Access Info dissected the law and broke it down into really distinct parts, separating which worked and which didn’t: “It was an interesting thing to see it dissected from the outside and get that perspective.”
They already knew that the law wasn’t a strong one, but viewing it through the eyes of people who work on improving these things really brought home how much work there is to do. For example, France did not sign the Tromso convention, despite being one of the key negotiators of the convention!
The law itself was revealed to be quite partial — there are a large amount of exclusions which are absolute, and no balance of interest is considered for release of information (like the public interest tests we have in the UK, etc). This is backwards compared to most of Europe. They do have an oversight body called the CADA, but apparently that body is weak both in resource and power.
Then, when it comes to implementation, this is even weaker than the law itself. And to compound this, barely anyone knows about the existence of the law either.
So, looking at Access Info’s three tenets of advocacy, lobbying and activism, MaDada set about defining what would be possible for them to work on.
Quickly, they realised that lobbying would be challenging. Right now France is in some political turmoil due to the dissolution of the parliament and subsequent failure of governments — they’re expecting another vote later this year, and this instability really puts a blocker in the way of discussing legal reform with politicians and getting legal change pushed through.
For the activism side of things, you need the movement behind you, and if not many people are aware of the law it’s hard to get together to campaign for this.
So advocacy was the route MaDada chose: promoting the law and increasing access. They had a slight chicken and egg issue with it. They desperately needed to find allies, but to find them, they needed to talk about FOI, and sell the law, which is tough when the implementation is so broken. They started down the training route and completed training with journalists which was positive, but also brought the realisation that this is a long-term endeavour.
They also tried publishing a report — which was met with silence. It’s disappointing but for the team it also felt expected, so they’re looking at the easy low hanging fruit for their next steps.
They came into this process with quite high expectations. They wanted to change something, propose new legislation or make a visible immediate difference, but actually going through the process they have realised that this is a long journey and they’ve taken the first step in a series of continuous action. Now their goal is to look back years from now and say “in 2025 we said this, and look at us now”. The first battle was won in 1789, with the drafting of the constitution, and it’s taken 200 years for it to become law, so MaDada have got to take a long view and set milestones which they can achieve and look back at and say how they’ve got there.
What are the key takeaways from working with Access Info?
A long view is needed, the law will never be “perfect” and will never get there immediately but small milestones and steps are the way to go. Also, you can really break this down and organise it like an engineering problem.
The transnational view was so helpful: they hadn’t realised how much it would be, but it’s good to have the feeling of “we’re in this together”. Finally, they made a list of what documents you can actually request in France and even they were surprised by how many it was!
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Image: Mathias Reding
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February has been a whirlwind but we’re back deep in TICTeC organisation and looking forward to the sunny summer sun in Belgium in June. Let’s see what the network have been up to this month!
FragDenStaat: are promoting the use of FOI to counter the activities and disinformation spread by the far right movement in Germany
mySociety: have been presenting their work at various UK conferences, working on funding bids, writing documentation to support people who receive exemptions around commercial interest protection and helping organisations working with marginalised groups in the UK.
Access Info Europe: and MaDada (OKF France) in France created recommendations on how to improve the national access to documents law to align it with international standards (see here). Open Knowledge France sent the recommendations to the French government calling for the signature and ratification of the Tromsø Convention, a step strongly recommended by GRECO in its Fifth Evaluation Report on France (see here);
SPOON: Old EU ruling, new possibilities!
The highest court on public law in the Netherlands used on an ‘old’ European Court of Justice Fish Legal ruling from 2013 – about an information request from a British NGO to several water companies – to rule that certain kind of environmental information can be requested from (semi) private enterprises on which the state has ‘decisive influence’. This applies to environmental information that is related to ‘public responsibilities or functions concerning the environment’ or ‘public services related to the environment’ where this decisive influence exists in a way that the enterprise cannot carry out its environmental tasks ‘in a genuinely autonomous manner’.
This could mean that, for example, water quality measurements conducted by or on behalf of water companies can be requested. Also companies such as KLM, Schiphol, Gasunie, the Port of Rotterdam, and Urenco where this kind of decisive influence exists. If the Port of Rotterdam or Schiphol checks whether ships or airplanes comply with energy efficiency and emission regulations, are they performing an environmental task? The ruling by the Council of State does not provide clear guidance on this question, but it is certainly worth a try.
Save our right to ask for government information
On Thursday, February 13, Tim, on behalf of SPOON and investigative journalists, was asked to participate in a roundtable discussion in the House of Representatives to inform Members of Parliament about the practice of the Dutch Open Government Act. Along with other representatives from journalism he advocated for preventing any restriction on our right to ask for government information, which is what government authorities otherwise might propose as a solution to the poor implementation of the law.
Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska: After nearly two years of legal battles (which, in our circumstances, is relatively fast), we have managed to compile information from all Regional Directorates of State Forests regarding their expenditures on promotion and media advertisements in 2022. After four years, two court rulings in our favor, and a change of government along the way, the Ministry of National Defense has finally responded to our request regarding the author of a certain opinion posted by the ministry’s official profile on a popular social media platform—unfortunately, the ministry does not know.
We continue our advocacy efforts to repeal Article 212 of the Penal Code, which, due to the disproportionate severity of its penalties, significantly restricts freedom of speech in Poland.
We have sent information requests to all 135 public universities in Poland regarding the holding of multiple positions by university authorities (potential conflicts of interest), purchases and vehicle usage policies, salaries of university authorities, legal proceedings, and procedures for handling complaints (such as those related to mobbing, discrimination, etc.).
Other requests aim to determine how the Ministry of Justice is implementing the European Commission’s recommendations on combating SLAPPs and what exactly is happening within the Polish Hunting Association following recent revelations of serious irregularities.
Additionally, requests have been submitted for information on recent government meetings with representatives of various international corporations (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, TikTok, Huawei, Uber) and their outcomes (e.g., the content of signed agreements).
Ma Dada: Our focus has been on looking for funding, as we are reaching the end of our current grant. We are trying to build bridges across borders, mostly in the EU for now, as we think it’s our best chance at doing more than just surviving.
Handlingar: We are looking into using the technical setup from Madada.fr with Ansible technology. We want to gather the Alaveteli network to develop the Alaveteli platform and make it be possible to run without simple flaws or downtime – and without dependence on MySociety or any specific supplier or developer. We believe the time has come for Alaveteli to become a well-organized open source project, including having better documentation, regular release cycles, and a 5 minute process to setup a fully functioning Alaveteli platform in a new country or jurisdiction. All according to best practices within open source software development such as the OpenSource.guide from GitHub. We want to do great work together with MySociety, the Alaveteli network and FOIA community to get funding for development in order to make the Alaveteli software simpler to run, safer to run, easier to maintain and easier to customize. All without issues and dependence on MySociety. We want to reduce the burden on us, our network friends and on MySociety and increase all our chances for collaboration and success with Alaveteli – and of course the Right to Know.
ImamoPravoZnati: Gong is continuing its national “FOI tour”, providing training on strategic usage of FOI for civil society organisations. In February, a workshop was held in Split, with preparations underway for Pula and Karlovac.
Abrimos Info: As the INAI is sunsetting we are doing an automated distributed backup of a few of the data files that we can access via a collaborative effort across the Mexican civil society. We are asking for a rapid response fund for this work. The secondary laws creating the new “Transparencia para el Pueblo” institution have been submitted and are on the fast track to be approved. We have promoted a press release demanding changes. A second release today: https://x.com/article19mxca/status/1896363257008652507
We will be presenting on Pidala.info at Open Data Day in Mexico on March 1st. And of course we will be participating and talking about these efforts at TICTeC 2025.
OpenUp ZA: OpenUp has been collaborating with the KiMitTud team to co-develop impact measures and reports for the Hungarian FOI platform ahead of the TicTec festival in June!
CITAD: In our efforts to promote protection of digital rights in Nigeria, we are holding a two-day training for judges and lawyers on prosecuting and adjudicating on human rights abuses. The training will be held from 10-11 in Abuja and then 17-18 in Lagos. This would be followed by a series of advocacy meetings with members of the National Assembly whose objective is to entrenched respect and protection for digital rights in the country. .
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2025 definitely felt like it’s had quite the entrance and things have been full and exciting here at mySociety’s transparency team! So let’s take a look at how 2025 started for the ATI Network
mySociety: have been working hard putting together a schedule for TICTeC, there’s going to be an ATI day on June 12th which we hope you’ll all attend, and there’s set to be an amazing group of ATI focused sessions which we’re excited about! We’re also kicking off our FOI support process for organisations working with marginalised communities and hope to share more about that soon.
Access Info Europe: sent the Moldovan recommendations to the Council of Europe Access to Information Group, a monitoring body established by the Tromsø Convention (see here). They’ve also been pushing forward working with MaDada in France and SPOON in Netherlands getting their legal reform work rolling.
SPOON: Started 2025 with our focus for the new year: hitting the streets. One of the ways we will do this, is by launching a Woo-forum and proactively answer all questions we receive via that forum. This also means changing our workflow(s) from a ‘we know what you need’ to a ‘tell us what you need’ approach. And teaming up with other organisations and professionals on facilitating the needs that come forward from these questions, kicking off with mySociety participating in their Impact Measurement Mentorship program!
Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska: In December and January, we focused on several key initiatives, including expanding free legal support for SLAPP cases and seeking funding for this program. We worked to promote transparency in salaries, improve the process for selecting the new Head of the National Electoral Office, and streamline the management of asset declarations. Efforts were also made to enhance anti-SLAPP regulations and advocate for Poland’s membership in the Open Government Partnership. Additionally, we hosted a webinar on transparency with experts, published a new edition of the Transparency Report and other summaries, and released a podcast on Public Information Bulletins.
Ma Dada: Ma Dada has been working together with Access Info on legal reform proposals for France, the result of which was just published. We have also been busy looking for funding, and training some more journalists to use the platform. Also, we officially left X/twitter because it is so far from our values that it didn’t make sense to stay there and try to fight an algorithm that is programmed to destroy everything we work for. You can do it too, and https://helloquittex.com will help you bring your community over to bluesky/mastodon in a few clicks.
Transparencia: are exhausted by a SLAPP procedure ((Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) A Maire from Brussels spent 48 000 € of public money in lawyers fees to defeat us in a second trial and ask for a non-disclosure clause of this huge public amount. This expensive lawyer has been contracted without public procurement. The blackmail (in case of disclosure of this amount) is to send bailiffs to our house.
Vouliwatch/Arthro5A: Had a meeting with the General Secretary of the Ministry of Interior and presented/discussed in detail our policy recommendations for the improvement of the access to information legal framework.
VreauInfo: and Access Info Europe have been working hard on recommendations for the FOI law in Moldova. Lawyers for Human Rights widely distributed the recommendations to the public and public bodies in Moldova and they were picked up by an Anti Corruption journalist who wrote a piece on their work.
Abrimos Info: After the constitutional reform in México, the National Transparency Platform is transitioning from the autonomous body to the executive branch. Together with 200 orgs we published a text demanding data integrity during the transition. In x and linkedin. There is an official release by the executive branch mentioning cryptography for data integrity, likely because of our push.
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Photo: Vika Strawberrika -
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RSS FeedIn our second video interviewing subjects of the book Our City: Community Activism in Bristol, we talk to journalist Joe Banks, who was able to find a real anomaly in the council’s approach to developing the oldest part of the city.
He did this both by looking at information other people had requested, and putting in his own Freedom of Information requests, on mySociety’s WhatDoTheyKnow website.
Details of the book can be found on the Tangent Books website.
You can read lots more about Joe’s investigation into St Mary Le Port, and other local topics, on his website.
If you value the work we do at mySociety, please donate.
Transcript
0:05 Myf: I’m Myfanwy Nixon, communications manager at mySociety. We’ve been talking to some of the people featured in this book: Our City, community activism in Bristol, edited by Suzanne Audrey. (more…)
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RSS FeedWe Love Stoke Lodge is a campaign group in Bristol, and the subject of one of the chapters of the book Our City, edited by Suzanne Audrey. Many of the campaigns featured in the book used WhatDoTheyKnow and FOI to uncover vital information to support their campaigns. Hear Helen Powell describe the group’s experiences of campaigning to save a beloved piece of land for public use, and what they discovered thanks to FOI.
If you value the work we do at mySociety, please donate.
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As this will be the last monthnotes of 2024 (because on New Years Eve we’ll be looking back at the past year and toasting to the wonderful strides we’ve all made in our work in 2024) we here at mySociety’s transparency team wanted to wish you all a happy holidays and a fantastic new year celebration. Let’s take a look at what November brought us!
FragDenStaat: won the right for digital media to be considered media in the courts! This is a huge step forward for a slightly archaic system that previously had only considered printed media to be “the press”
mySociety: are pushing forward with our support to marginalized communities and are starting some cohorts of groups using our projects service in early January. We’re also excited to be mentoring SPOON on their impact measurement work !
Access Info: are working in depth with MaDada and SPOON on their legal reform Projects, and helping NI work on their OGP action plan. We also just delivered a Legal Framework Reform Masterclass for the ATI network and are looking forward to sharing more about our work in this area in 2025.
SPOON: are preparing for next year! We defined our focus for 2025: leaving the building. Going out into the woods getting to know our users, what they need and how we can help. One of the ways we will do this, is by launching a Woo-forum in January and proactively answer all questions we receive via that forum. This also means changing our workflow(s) from a ‘we know what you need’ to a ‘tell us what you need, we don’t know’ approach. Introducing ‘intakes’ and looking for other organisations and professionals to work together on facilitating the needs that come forwards from thos intakes.
Also we are happy to announce to be one of the few lucky ones to team up with mySociety on their Impact Measurement Mentorship starting in 2025!
Sieć Obywatelska Watchdog Polska: sent approximately 2,500 public information requests to schools, courts, and county offices. We organized local meetings about transparency. Together with other organizations, we advocated for anti-SLAPP legal reforms in Poland and took a stance on amendments to the law on assemblies.
Ma Dada: have been working on a call for individual donations from our community, and a grant proposal for tech work together with mySociety (around GDPR/search). Work is ongoing on our FOI observatory. We also had a brief internal conversation around a law proposal to bring back a 50€ stamp fee on court appeals (which would include FOI court appeals).
ImamoPravoZnati: Gong has been educating journalism students about FOI and demonstrating the uses of the IPZ platform.
KiMitTud: started a campaign with hashtag #kozadatbesztof (articles and social media postst) covering the most interesting freedom of information request of each month in 2024. We published two short animations: what does public data means and how to make a FOI-request (full article covering the topic in Hungarian here).
Some legal challenges for FOI in Hungary: the government has stuffed new legislation into a bill that removes the Ministry of Agriculture’s obligation to publish contracts with the National Land Center.
One of our latest successful complaint to the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information: a state-owned company has finally sent the impact study for the port of Trieste – the only problem: most of the document’s contect is covered with black marks.Vouliwatch/Arthro5A: sadly didn’t win their funding pitch to google to look at the use of AI in parliaments, but they’ll still be exploring this topic in the future.
AccessInfo Hong Kong: will be relaunching our website with a new portal and name in Jan 2025! We also have published a manual on how to use the Code on Access to Information in Hong Kong in English and Chinese. https://civicsight.org/access/accessinfo/
Abrimos Info: are continuing the fight for the access to information right on multiple fronts. The reforms are on the verge of being approved without significant modifications or meaningful debate. We have signed this joint statement with more than 200 CSOs. https://articulo19.org/mexico-dejara-de-ser-un-referente-en-el-mundo-en-materia-transparencia-para-convertirse-en-uno-de-opacidad/
OpenUp ZA: are working with KiMitTud on the impact measuring mentorship
Other news:
In the Civic Tech Field Guide, we’ve aggregated network-wide Access to Info impact measurement metrics Thanks to everyone who shared their stats.
Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash
