1. Tell us how you’ve used batch requests — get free Pro credit

    For a while now, there’s been a feature on WhatDoTheyKnow that lets you link your Freedom of Information requests to news articles, campaigning pieces or research papers.

    We’ve recently made it easier to link your batch requests to these types of stories in the same way. 

    To celebrate, we’ll be offering free credit for WhatDoTheyKnow Pro subscribers who add links from their batch requests to the stories or papers that the requests have fed into.

    For each qualifying link added during August, we’ll credit your account with a coupon that gives you a 20% discount on one month of WhatDoTheyKnow Pro. 

    Add several links, and you’ll get several coupons — so you could be enjoying that 20% discount for many months to come.

    It’s easy to add them – go to the batch request via the dashboard and you’ll find the section in the right hand column. Just click on ‘Let us know’:

    …and paste the URL in:

    In the News on WhatDoTheyKnow

    If there’s more than one story, you can click ‘New citation’ to add another one.

    You’ll then see all the links to sources where the requests have been cited:

    They’ll also be shown on the pages for individual requests in the batch:

    If you’re a journalist, campaigner or researcher, we hope this is a useful way to give your stories some more readership (not to mention a nice inbound link from a high-ranked site for your search engine ratings).

    More broadly, when you use this feature you’ll be helping us to understand what sort of impact the site is having, too. We’re always keen to spot news stories based on WhatDoTheyKnow requests, but papers don’t always cite a source or link back to the site, meaning that our monitoring is often dependent on a manual search where stories look like they might have originated with one of our users.

    The way we’ve set this feature up, WhatDoTheyKnow users can add a citation to any of their own requests — but if you spot a news story that’s linked to a request that isn’t yours, please do contact the WhatDotheyKnow team.

    They’ll assess it and input it if they find it to be valid. Our aim here is, of course, to prevent spammers from adding irrelevant links to the site.

    Users of WhatDoTheyKnow Pro, on the other hand, have the ability to add citations to any request.

    For a link to qualify for the discount, it needs to be a link to a specific story, report, paper or dataset where the information released in the FOI request has been used (ie not just a link to your organisation’s homepage, or a general overview of a campaign – though we’re always delighted to hear about these cases, too!). 

    We’ll cap the number of months on which you can claim a discount at 24, but we really do appreciate these links so please do add them even if it’s above the cap. We’ll apply coupons to any qualifying links at the end of the month.

    Image: Etienne Girardet

     

  2. WhatDoTheyKnow is a tool for accessing information

    WhatDoTheyKnow provides an easy way for anyone to exercise their rights under the FOI Act. 

    While requests are made by individuals, the information that is received through the site is automatically published, making it openly available to all and enhancing opportunities for the information released to inform public debate. 

    WhatDoTheyKnow may be viewed as a service, like a library, which provides access to information to anyone that walks through the doors, and does not hold an opinion about the information it holds. In this way, it reflects the ‘applicant blind’ principle that is woven into the FOI Act: this states that a person’s identity has no bearing on their right to information.

    And, as with a library, different users may walk away with the knowledge they acquire, and apply it in many and various ways. They may form new views based on the factual information they have accessed. These views may lead them to believe that there is an injustice or abuse in the world that should be campaigned against. Another user may look at the same information and come to quite different conclusions.

    WhatDoTheyKnow is not a campaigning platform

    While the information received via FOI requests may inspire and inform campaigns — and often does, as evidenced by our many case studies — WhatDoTheyKnow is not, in itself, a platform for campaigning. 

    Our on-site guidance and user interface actively discourage users from including anything more than a clear, concise request for information in their use of the site. Where our attention is drawn to content that exceeds this remit, we remove it. One of the reasons for this is that we want WhatDoTheyKnow to help people of all kinds to make good requests that are likely to get information released — keeping requests concise, precise, polite and to the point all help to make it easy for authorities to respond positively to a request. 

    We are more than happy when requests are linked to from websites or news stories — indeed, via our ‘citations’ tool, users can link back — links back to the information supplied by public authorities can increase the credibility of evidence-based journalism and campaigning. 

    mySociety services as infrastructure

    At mySociety, we run a number of different tools and websites. At first glance, they might appear to be quite disparate; but they all spring from a single principle: they are tools that empower people to be active within civic life.

    TheyWorkForYou makes it easier to stay informed about our democracy, while WriteToThem gives a channel for communication with your elected representatives. FixMyStreet removes the barriers from reporting street issues to the authorities responsible for fixing them. Our tools around Climate provide the data and information people need to understand actions being taken by their local governments.

     And then there’s WhatDoTheyKnow, which simplifies the process of exercising the rights to information conferred by the FOI Act.

    When you see all these sites together, it’s easy to see that mySociety services provide a layer of democratic infrastructure, supporting everyone’s right to our foundational principles of democracy, community, and transparency.

    Our tools are for everyone

    That our tools are for everyone is an important point. We want our services to be open to, and used by, as broad a range of people as possible. 

    We don’t just provide a service to those who share our view of the world. Whilst we very much support campaigners making use of their rights under FOI through our service, as per our current policies, WhatDoTheyKnow is not a platform for promoting those campaigns or a particular point of view. The site is, like the FOI Act, open to everyone (so long as they abide by our house rules).

    Image: Philip Strong

  3. Notes from the Access to Information Network

    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!

  4. Access to Information community of practice: an in-person gathering

    mySociety is currently helping to support knowledge-sharing between organisations and individuals who run Access to Information projects around the world, in a community of practice.

    Several such folk were in London for our TICTeC conference last month, providing a perfect opportunity to come together in person and share insights.

    Representatives of Access to Information sites from around the world

    Matt Stempeck of the Civic Tech Field Guide has written the discussions up in full (he also deftly explains the slight difference, terminology-wise, between Freedom of Information and Access to Information) and you can read his account here.

    Meanwhile, here are the top-line topics that were under discussion:

    • Logistics How do you facilitate a community of very busy people, spread across multiple countries and speaking different languages — and how do you ensure that interventions are timely and productive? The group discussed which types on online communication and touchpoints work best for them; how to ensure topics are relevant to their immediate needs; and on which platforms it’s possible to talk about challenges just as freely as successes.
    • Measuring impact Are there consistent metrics we could be collecting across all ATI projects to demonstrate and compare impact? What are the individual issues experienced by each project that impede the collection of such metrics?
    • Governments What are the issues that groups face within different countries, with differing levels of governmental tolerance towards ATI?
    • Engagement How do projects educate the public about their rights to information, and encourage more of them to use these rights?
    • Journalism How can ATI projects work with newsrooms or individual journalists to discover stories and, incidentally, also help spread awareness of ATI? In which ways does the ATI process not fit well with journalists’ needs?
    • Funding One area where the network can offer useful peer support is in swapping notes over where they source funding, and other potential channels of income. Some funders were also present, and so were able to give their valuable perspectives too.

    If any of these topics spark your interest, hop over to Matt’s account for the full details.

    mySociety is supporting the international Access to Information community of practice alongside the Civic Tech Field Guide, Access Info Europe and Open Knowledge Germany.

    Banner image: James Cameron

  5. New in Alaveteli: request categories

    Alaveteli is our platform that anyone can use to run a Freedom of Information site in their own country or jurisdiction.

    As the number of requests grows on an Alaveteli site, it can become increasingly difficult to find released information that you’re interested in.

    You can search, but the more general the term, the more likely that you’ll pull in results where the term is mentioned incidentally rather than being directly related to the information released. Or you can browse by authority, but that’s more fiddly when you want the same information from a range of authorities.

    There’s also the issue that people new to FOI might not have a clear idea of what to ask about. Freedom of Information is great because you can ask for anything, but as a newcomer that can feel overwhelming. You need some direction to know where to start.

    Request categories allow us to curate related requests to bridge the gaps mentioned above.

    Here’s an example of a category on WhatDoTheyKnow that compiles successful Freedom of Information releases related to the British Post Office scandal.

    British Post Office scandal on WhatDoTheyKnow

    Categories can be created in the admin interface via the Requests > Categories menu item.

    Request categories work in a similar way to the current public body categories – in fact, as part of this development we’ve revamped the underlying code so that it applies to both!

    At their core, they’re composed of three things – the title, body (where we can add explanatory content), and requests grouped by a tag.

     

    Notes can be added to call out key information, and categories can be added to headings to create a layer of hierarchy. As part of this development, we’ve also improved notes so that they can be more easily styled with some preset colours, and added rich text editing to improve the formatting of longer notes.

     

    We’ve started building up some interesting categories of requests on WhatDoTheyKnow, but we’d love to hear which ones you’d like to see.

    If you’re interested in how the development unfolded you can take a look at the related work on GitHub.

    Banner image: Garmin B

     

  6. New in Alaveteli: importing & presenting blog posts

    Alaveteli is our platform that anyone can use to run a Freedom of Information site in their own country or jurisdiction.

    We’ve added new functionality that allows Alaveteli sites to highlight blog posts on the homepage, so they’re more visible. In this way, Alaveteli sites can not only help users with the ‘how’ of making an FOI request, but also show, in a very tangible way, the ‘why’  — especially if the posts are highlighting impactful uses of the site.

    Previously, Alaveteli had a basic way to pull in an RSS feed of blog posts. These were only available on the blog page (/blog), which often does a disservice to all the great work that gets written about.

    We wanted to better signpost the blog from other pages in Alaveteli to celebrate great FOI use, and help users understand how a seemingly simple FOI can go on to have an outsized impact.

    When the site runner configures a blog feed, posts are pulled into Alaveteli and cached in the database. This makes them available on the homepage. Here’s what that looks like on WhatDoTheyKnow:

    Latest News and Campaigns screenshot

    They’re also visible in the admin interface via the Tools > Blog Posts menu item.

    Blog posts lists on Alaveteli

    At present only the title, URL and publication date are cached in Alaveteli. These records are intended to be “pointers” to the canonical URL of the article hosted on the external blog service.

    In the admin interface, blog posts can be tagged to indicate their subject matter.

    As FOI requests and authorities can also be tagged, this allows the blog posts to be highlighted in the sidebar of appropriate pages where there’s a matching tag. So, if someone’s browsing requests or visiting an authority that deals with the climate emergency, for example, they’ll be shown relevant blog posts – hopefully making them more visible to people who have already displayed that they have an interest in the topic, and giving those people a bit more contextual knowledge.

    List of FOI request climate action plans on Alaveteli

    Climate Action plans on Alaveteli's front end

    Authority - Geraldine Quango

    Showing where the related blog posts are on Alaveteli

    In future we’d like to make these posts more visible, by importing header images and a short summary, and give the ability to display some posts when there isn’t a direct tag match.

    You can read about the initial design and subsequent conversation and pull requests starting at mysociety/alaveteli#6589.

    Banner image: Patrick Perkins

  7. How a payslip taught France about their Transparency rights

    Have you ever wondered what the Prime Minister’s payslip looks like? We’re not talking about how much he’s paid — that’s a matter of record — but the actual paper document.

    Over in France,  Xavier Berne from the Alaveteli-based site Ma Dada has just created a bit of a stir by receiving Emmanuel Macron’s fiche de paie in response to an FOI request. This response set off extensive coverage in the French national media on how citizens can use their right to transparency.

    Payslip of President Macron

    Ma Dada were kind enough to talk us through what happened, and how it’s resulted in a better understanding of FOI across France. Developer Laurent Savaete sent us the picture you see at the top of this post, of the front cover of the national paper Libération, which he describes as France’s rough equivalent to The Guardian.

    “Transparency was the front page story”, Laurent says, “which is highly unusual. The next four pages covered transparency, how everyone can use it, and profiles of four power users.” National TV also picked the topic up.

    Just like here in the UK, Macron’s actual salary was already known. The scoop was in receiving the facsimile of the paper document, which came about because Laurent’s colleague Xavier sometimes sends out interesting FOI requests, “for educational purposes, to show that it is possible”.

    Quite by accident, this one actually turned out to be a perfect piece of FOI promotion: because the content of the payslip was nothing new in itself, the media focused on the means by which it was obtained.

    How it happened

    WhatDoTheyKnow dreams of such amazing coverage, and we’re sure that Alaveteli projects around the world feel the same! So, how did it come about, and can other FOI projects replicate these conditions in their own countries?

    Well, we can try, but Laurent reckons that it was broadly down to the planets aligning. As he explains it, “A journalist had been in touch around that time about something else; Xavier happened to mention he’d received the payslip, and she was interested in writing a story. 

    “She is not a long time FOI user herself. To be honest, it was lucky timing — Xavier had just received the response, and the news cycle needed something to break up their coverage of Gaza and Ukraine.”

    If there’s a lesson to come out of this, we think it might be: keep requesting interesting stuff, and keep talking to journalists.

    A spike in new users 

    Because Ma Dada knew the coverage was coming, they had time to put some safeguards in place to make sure the site could handle extra traffic. “We cranked the server up to the max to make sure everything kept running  — which worked across the swell in interest, but we wouldn’t be able to afford keeping it at that level longer term”.

    The peak in visitors may have retreated now, but there’s been an undoubted uptick in usage. “We’ve been seeing a surge in registration for both standard and Pro accounts, and a definite increase on requests being made on Ma Dada for the last two weeks. 

    “We had around 40,000 visitors on the day of story; and 15-20,000 the day after.”

    Reaching the people

    How do you know your media coverage has touched the nation? Well, Laurent was given a nice clear illustration: “The day after the paper came out, I was chatting with the owner of a bookshop in the south of France, and he asked what I do in life, so I said: ‘I work on a project in public transparency’, to which he replied, ‘Oh, they just talked about that on the radio this morning!’. 

    “That radio segment was discussing our publication and mentioned Ma Dada. It was super cool to bump into someone who’d actually heard of us outside of our own dedicated circles.”

    Very cool indeed! And now? Ma Dada are already thinking how they can replicate this great success. “We’re thinking about other documents we might request to get the same amount of publicity again in the future.”

    Best of luck, Ma Dada! Your next story should be received by a more informed general public, thanks to that alignment of the planets.

  8. Parents for Inclusive Education are on a mission — with the help of FOI

    How do you bring about systemic change within structures that are embedded into the national culture? That’s a big question, but it’s one that users of our Freedom of Information site WhatDoTheyKnow are often tussling with.

    One place to start is with data that helps you map the current state of affairs, and FOI can be the perfect medium for getting hold of that. When we spoke to Jack Russell from Parents for Inclusive Education (PfIE), a grassroots organisation of primary school parents in Northern Ireland, he explained the value of data very well: “it means you can start a conversation”.

    So, what are PfIE trying to achieve?

    “We came together because we want to see a more inclusive primary education for every child” – and they’re starting with religious education.

    “We realised that, for many parents, there was a lack of clarity around how RE is delivered in Northern Ireland, and what rights parents have in this area.”

    PfIE wanted to gather data on who comes into schools to deliver RE lessons, collective worship and assemblies. Their aim was to achieve an accurate, representative picture of practices across Northern Ireland, as opposed to their baseline assumptions which, as they admit, had up until then been based on anecdotal evidence.

    From small beginnings

    And so began a large-scale FOI project — although initially the team had much more modest plans: 

    “At first, we were only going to contact our own schools to ask them who was given access and how this was communicated. 

    “But then we realised that other parents might want to be informed about these practices at their schools — and they were entitled to answers too. So we decided to send a Freedom of Information request to every publicly funded primary school in Northern Ireland, apart from special schools: that was 772 in total.”

    The organisation had some tech expertise amongst its members, and, as they explained, at first it seemed that WhatDoTheyKnow wouldn’t quite be suitable for their needs:

    “One of our team — Laura — had successfully used WhatDoTheyKnow in the past to query hospitals about their waitlist times for outpatient appointments, so she suggested using it. But after some initial research, we decided not to, as we’d wanted to include attachments and links in our requests. 

    “I’d written a script to batch send them all, but it turned out that these were heavily spam filtered by the schools’ email server, so we fell back on WhatDoTheyKnow.

    “I’m really glad we did, as the fact that all correspondence will be public is a huge plus for us.”

    Managing batch FOI requests

    So, how did PfIE manage their 772 FOI requests? They signed up for our WhatDoTheyKnow Pro service, which is designed specifically to help keep track of large batches like this, and also allows users to keep their requests and responses private until they’re ready to release their findings.

    “We focused our questions around two areas: first, access: which churches and religious organisations were being given access to schools, and how that access was managed via processes and/or controls; and secondly communication: whether and how parents were made aware of religious visitors; and were informed about the options to withdraw their children from religious practices.

    “We asked 14 questions in total, some of which were yes/no or multiple choice, others which required free-form answers.”

    FOI allows the request-maker to specify the format they’d like to receive their responses in, which can save a lot of data-cleansing further down the line. As Jack acknowledges,”we received submissions back from schools in varied formats, including Word and PDF attachments, and also as plain or rich text email replies.”

    It was all useful, though. “The data we collected provides us with an objective, fully representative sample — we had a 99% reply rate — to gain an accurate understanding of RE practices in Northern Ireland primary schools. 

    “We understand this response level to be unprecedented, according to academics we’ve spoken to who have conducted similar research. Our project is primarily focused on making data transparently available to parents, so from this perspective the 99% number is hugely encouraging. It also means that any aggregate conclusions we draw are as close to being unbiased as possible — we actually have a response rate that is higher than the NI Census 2021 (97%) which people were legally required to complete.”

    Tenacious in the face of challenges

    Getting to this gratifying result wasn’t all plain sailing, though. Jack explained the issues they encountered along the way:

    “Some schools initially mistrusted the FOI request email that came through WhatDoTheyKnow, and didn’t know whether they had to reply. However, a couple of weeks after we sent the request out, the Northern Irish Education Authority issued guidance instructing schools to reply, providing an information document and template response.”

    In any large batch of FOI requests there will be a variety of levels of response, and PfIE came across this too. 

    “There were non-responses, partial responses and responses with an incorrect understanding of the question. Our first technique to remedy these was by following up via WhatDoTheyKnow, which provided alerts and tools which made this very easy to do — another reason I’m very glad we went with the platform!”

    Fortunately, the FOI Act has a provision for dealing with non-responders: referring them to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

    “For persistent non-repliers, we contacted the ICO, who very diligently helped us further encourage schools to respond.

    “But several of the schools that responded late, following an ICO decision notice, sent their responses to our own email account, meaning that the responses didn’t appear on WhatDoTheyKnow. The team at WhatDoTheyKnow were very helpful in adding these: I sent through several batches of .eml files and they made sure they appeared within the conversation.”

    On a mission

    So how will PfIE be sharing their findings? They are launching a report today, On A Mission, with an event at Stormont. They’ve also created an online map to help people explore the data.

    But they’re not stopping there: “After releasing the findings of our report, we plan to create resources and a set of best practices for schools to achieve a more inclusive RE experience for all students. We also plan to engage and empower parents, hopefully promoting a sense of transparency and open dialogue between the school and parental community.

    “Beyond this, we have several other plans to empower parents, increase transparency and improve the education system in Northern Ireland”.

    And that’s how you start to make change

    PfIE have used the mechanism available to them to produce exactly the outcome they were after.

    “The tools provided by mySociety, together with help from the ICO in chasing up the late responders, and the cooperation of the NI Education Authority in doing the same have been invaluable in achieving this level of response,” says Jack.

    “We would definitely recommend WhatDoTheyKnow. The tools have been really useful in managing a large scale request, and the fact that all correspondence will be publicly searchable and visible is invaluable: it adds a great deal of credibility to our research by effectively underwriting our findings with an auditable trail of evidence. 

    “And on top of this, the team have been super-helpful and a pleasure to work with! “

    We’re glad to have been of service. Thanks very much to Jack for talking us through the project. If you’d like to know more, visit the PfIE website, where you can also sign up to their newsletter to be kept informed.

     

    Image: Priscilla Du Preez

  9. Statement on the proposed ICO fine to PSNI

    The ICO have today announced that they intend to fine the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) for their accidental release of staff’s personal information in August 2023. This data was released in response to a Freedom of Information request made using WhatDoTheyKnow.

    mySociety is a charity; we run WhatDoTheyKnow as a vital tool to help anyone exercise their right to information held by public authorities. We understand the repercussions of a breach like this, which serves to demonstrate that public authorities must be good at dealing with personal information. We welcome the ICO’s emphasis on the importance of robust release processes to ensuring that information that is important to the public interest can be released safely. 

    We take the responsibilities that come with operating a large platform extremely seriously, especially around the personal data breaches that can occur when authorities’ release processes fail. Following this breach, we’ve undertaken a significant programme of technical and process work to play our part in reducing the risks of this kind of incident.

    We’ve developed a new piece of code which analyses spreadsheets as they come in as responses to FOI requests on WhatDoTheyKnow, and holds them for review if they are detected to contain hidden data. The deployment of this code has proven successful and we will be continuing to improve it. In its first three months, this spreadsheet analyser has screened 3,064 files and prevented the release of 21 spreadsheets that have been confirmed to contain data breaches, and 53 which were likely to contain data breaches (around 2% of the files screened in total).

    In an ideal world, such measures would not be necessary; we continue to work with authorities making such releases to help them understand the reasons for data breaches, the potential severity of their impact, and how to avoid them.

    This blog post was updated at 10:04 on 23 May to correct the figures around the number of spreadsheets screened.

     —

    Image: Pietro Jeng

  10. Access to Information network: data visualisation Show and Tell

    Organisations all around the world run Freedom of Information sites based on our Alaveteli platform. There are also sites running on other codebases. Either way, we’re all working to the same goals, and we believe that each site can learn from the others: for that reason, we’ve set up the Access To Information (ATI) network, a place for people who run FOI sites to meet, chat and share experiences.

    Within this framework, there’s the chance for practitioners to pair up and exchange specific skills under a mentorship arrangement — and last week, we heard from GONG in Croatia who have been learning from Georgia’s ForSet.

    ForSet began life as a data visualisation organisation, and these beginnings have allowed them to communicate data from their FOI site as compelling, visual stories: skills that GONG were keen to get to grips with. Sara, project co-ordinator at GONG, told us about working with Jubo from ForSet on data visualisations — and how her learnings will change the organisation’s work going forward.

    Sara explained that they agreed two main goals for this project: firstly, to improve GONG’s data visualisation skills; and secondly, to use data visualisation to promote their FOI site Imamo pravo znati (IPZ) to journalists and general users. They were successful on both counts, not only did Sara learn how to use new methods and tools; but their outputs also brought approximately 50 new users to IPZ, and two additional Pro users (Pro usage is free on the site, but numbers had been stagnant of late, so this was notable).

    So, how did they go about it? The mentorship comprised four stages: data collection, analysis, storytelling and visualisation, with the last being very interconnected.

    1. Data collection

    This stage began with both sides brainstorming potential topics for FOI requests that would be good candidates for data visualisation. An initial set of 12 topics was whittled down to five: local referendums in Croatia; special advisors (Spads) in the Croatian government; local participatory budgeting projects; local support for youth civic education; and local financing of civil society organisations. 

    GONG then sent 575 requests to local and county authorities, from which they received 525 responses — a pretty good response rate, and higher that expected. They didn’t hit many problems, although several authorities asked for the requester’s ID details, and there was one ministry that cited GDPR as a reason for refusing information on Spads. This case has now been referred to Croatia’s Information Commissioner. 

    2. Data analysis

    Jubo and Sara organised the responses they received into spreadsheets: they were looking for an angle or a story among the data, and tidying it up in this way was helpful for making comparisons. Could they find a story in there that aligned with GONG’s mission or advocacy?

    By organising the data in this way, the pair could easily see which data wasn’t really strong enough to take any further, and which lent itself to storytelling and visualisation. At this stage they rejected some of the angles they’d begun with, narrowing their projects down to local referendums, Spads, and lowering the voting age to 16 for the EU elections (this last project is pending; they’ll be launching a campaign in late Spring).

    3. Storytelling and visualisation

    Two pieces of software were used for the visualisations: Canva and Flourish. Sara was already familiar with Canva, as she uses it to create social media graphics; but Flourish was new to her, and she says she is very happy to have these new skills under her belt.

    Flourish allows you to create many different types of visualisations: you upload your data and it is fairly intuitive to create maps, charts, etc. Once these were in hand, they added a call to action for each story, encouraging people to use their FOI site and especially Pro.

    The visualisations

    Local referendums

    For the story on local referendums, GONG had requested from each local authority the number that had taken place; the topics under discussion; their outcomes; and the number of referendums that were suspended due to not being valid for whatever reason.

    They received more responses than expected, and this was also the first time nationwide data had been collected on the subject.

    Map showing where Croatian referendums were successful or otherwise in reaching quorate

    The first angle that GONG wanted to support with their data and visualisations was ‘Croatia needs a referendum law that recognises the importance of local democracy’. 

    The data showed that out of 47 local referendums that had been held, just 25 met the minimum turnout for the decision to be valid. Jubo and Sara mapped these, and paired their visualisations with the argument that a lower bar for turnout would encourage better participation in local democracy – demonstrated with human figures.

    Turnout quorum for a local referendum
    A local press outlet picked the story up, using the data to make their own story: they were the area that had had the highest number of referendums, so that was their focus. 

    Special Advisors

    The FOI requests returned the names of Special Advisors, the areas they were in charge of, and the fees they were receiving. As Sara explained, in Croatia Spads are not straightforwardly employees of the government, but they have a lot of influence, and in some cases receive huge fees.

    It became clear that there are two different types of advisors, under two laws; while each type has different functions, both are called Spads. First, there are external advisors who may or may not receive compensation; and secondly there is another class of Spads who are employed internally. Neither is subject to Croatia’s legislation on conflict of interest.

    Number of SPADS in each Croatian ministry

    A pie chart was put to service to clearly show how much compensation Spads had received. This varied widely from Spad to Spad, but the criteria dictating who received how much is still unclear: it appears to be at the discretion of the individual minister.

    Pie chart showing SPAD payment in Croatia

    In collecting this data, GONG unexpectedly unearthed a scandal, as they revealed one Spad who was abusing public funds. He was fired, along with the minister concerned; this resulted in nationwide coverage for the data; albeit again with the media’s own preferred focus.

    Lowering the voting age

    Sara says that it was a lot of work to find data to support the argument for lowering the voting age to 16 in Croatia. They wanted to show that, while young people see voting as the most efficient political action, it is denied to a large portion of them.

    Proving the absence of something is always tricky, and in this case they were uncovering that there isn’t any research to show that 16 year olds lack the cognitive abilities to vote responsibly. So they focused on other angles: in some EU countries, 16 year olds can vote, and they demonstrated that those countries are doing well in democratic processes: they score highly in the democracy index and have good voter turnout.

    Data visualisations around the voting age in Croatia

    Like many countries, Croatia’s population is ageing, so the young are in danger of being totally ignored. GONG plan to share their findings on social media in a simplified form with graphics cards, and a call to action to show support for the campaign.

    Questions and answers

    Once Sara had finished her presentation, members of the audience were invited to ask questions.

    Q: How did GONG and ForSet work together?

    A: At the beginning, they had lots of online video calls, and later on when the data had come in, they communicated a lot via comments on the spreadsheets.

    Q: It feels like each of these the topics would be applicable almost everywhere: perhaps it will spark other people’s interest to do something similar for their own country. Any advice if so?

    A: The questions asked in the first two sets of FOI requests were straightforward, which led to straightforward answers. The third topic was less so; Sara and Jubo had to go through lots of reports, and often the data from one source contradicted another. Also, an uncontentious topic is likely to result in more responses: something like referendums is politically neutral, unlike spads where the authorities may have reasons not disclose information.

    Q: When you put the requests together, were you already thinking about the format it would be best to receive the data in?

    A: In that respect, the best question is one with a yes/no answer. The reason for excluding many of the initial topics at a later stage was that the answers varied so widely that it was hard to pull out statistics or a simple throughline: you’d be comparing apples with pears. So, for example, when asking how much of a local authority’s budget is reserved for supporting civic education, and how civic education is delivered, the responses could range from “We are in favour of civic education, but leave it to schools”, to “We provide money for civic education and produce our own textbooks”. Meanwhile, some authorities wrote two pages of waffle in the free text box. 

    Q: Did you narrow down the topics before or after you had submitted the FOI requests?

    A: Both. There were 12 topics at the start; they decided which of them were best suited to FOI, then sent requests for five of them. One the answers had been received, they narrowed it down to three.

    Q: Could one make data visualisation about the other two? It’s hard to find ways to show that there’s no information. Saying that 80% of authorities don’t reply is not a very exciting way of showing things.

    A: While it might not fit in with the initial aim of the project, this sort of thing can be a great way to show how well or badly FOI is working in your country. Journalists often can’t get the information they need, so build stories around the fact that there’s no data about such an important issue.

    Q: We’ve seen how much GONG has benefitted from this mentorship. What, if anything, did ForSet get from this?

    A: Sara was so quick and flexible, she was great to work with. ForSet also learned from the project: for example, that it is better when requesting a large amount of data, that is sorted by the public institution, so it’s easier to work with. You can request it sorted in the way that you need for your story, which might be different from how it is in public.

    Also, Canva is such a great tool for visualisations. They’ve now merged with Flourish, so the have advanced data visualisation features. You just have to make sure you choose the right format: the type of charts or graphs that will show your findings the most clearly. 

    Finally, ForSet didn’t know about the topics that Sara suggested, so there was plenty to learn there, plus it was great to see the ways GONG employ to publish their stories on both social media and mainstream media.