Resources for Alaveteli site owners

Get to know your new site, and what your users can do with it

So, you’re running an Alaveteli site. What do you need to know? Probably not much about the FOI law in your country — the chances are that you are a bit of an expert on that. But running an information service online? Well, that brings its own challenges.

We at mySociety have run our own Alaveteli site, WhatDoTheyKnow.com, since 2008, and our friendly network contains many more people like you who run FOI sites around the world, all ready to give you the benefit of their experience.

We’ve made a start by collecting together some training materials. Some we made ourselves, some come from members of that global community. You can take whatever you need, and feel free to adapt them for your users as well.

How you can help

• Once you know the ropes yourself, perhaps you’ll contribute some more materials for others to learn from.
• Or look at the existing materials below — could you provide subtitles or a transcript in your language?

Videos

In English

• Freedom of Information rights around the world
• Motivations for setting up an Alaveteli Freedom of Information website
• Advice for those setting up an Alaveteli Freedom of Information site
• How to make an FOI request
• Responding to and managing an FOI request using Alaveteli
• Making a batch request
• Viewing and managing responses to batch requests
• Challenges of running Freedom of Information request sites
• Workshop: How to use FOI to find information
• Workshop: How campaigns can make change with FOI
• Transforming an industry through FOI - Stefan Wehrmeyer
• Right to Know across Europe - A TICTeC ‘Show and Tell’. Watch six presentations in one video, or choose from the individual presentations below:
  • The FOI Clearing House: an investigation into FOI at the heart of government Jenna Corderoy of openDemocracy in the UK
  • Lost in Europe: deploying the Alaveteli network on a cross-border investigation Liset Hamming of VVOJ in the Netherlands
  • Watch this space (and pay for it): the misuse of public resources in an election campaign Dražen Hoffmann of GONG in Croatia
  • Running an Access to Information platform in France: obstacles and success stories Samuel Goëta of MaDada in France
  • A change in the law for school starters in Scotland — through FOI Patricia Anderson of Give Them Time in Scotland
  • Regulating Access to Information Alex Parsons of mySociety in the UK

In French

• How to use MaDada, the French FOI site (in French)

Slides

• A course: Digital FOI: How to make, manage and escalate Freedom of Information requests using Alaveteli Pro sites (in English)

Podcasts

• MaDada on Cause Commune: L’accès aux documents administratifs (in French)
  • Transcribed here (in French)