MySociety to build Freedom of Information archive

Posted by Martin Stabe on 28 September 2006 at 16:01
Tags: Freedom of Information, Journalism

MySociety, the group of pubic-interest web developers behind such acclaimed projects as TheyWorkForYou.com, intend to build a Freedom of Information Archive, “a searchable, readable, googlable user-created archive of FOI requests and their responses.”

When it launches next year, this resource will be invaluable for journalists.

The FOIA Archive was proposed by journalist and FOI campaigner Heather Brooke, who writes on her blog, Your Right to Know, that one of the inspirations for it was the National Security Archive, a non-profit organisation based in Washington which is consistently one of the heaviest users of the US Freedom of Information Act.

While this initiative seems absolutly in the spirit of open government, it is not inconceivable that government departments might attempt to obstruct the archiving of their responses to FOI requests by citing Crown Copyright. Hopefully they will recognise this as the legitimate news-dissemination excercise that it is, even if it isn’t being run by a traditional news organisation.

One of the suggestions that was considered but rejected in MySociety’s call for proposals that led up to today’s announcement — perhaps to the relief of regional newspaper editors — was WriteToYourNewspaper.

Tags: Freedom of Information, Journalism