WhatDoTheyKnow is a site by

mySociety mySociety is a UK-based registered charity, previously named UK Citizens Online Democracy. It began as a UK-focused organisation with the aim of making online democracy tools for UK citizens. However, those tools were open source, so that th ...

designed to help people in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

make Freedom of Information requests. It publishes both the requests and the authorities’ responses online, with the aim of making information available to all, and of removing the need for multiple people to make the same requests. The site acts as a permanent public database archive of FOI requests made through it. Around 15% to 20% of requests to UK Central Government are made through WhatDoTheyKnow.com. Over 45,000 public bodies have been added to the site, mainly by volunteers. More than 800,000 requests have been made using the site and more than 4.5 million people visited it in 2014 WhatDoTheyKnow has been described by

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

as "an idiot's guide to making a freedom of information request." The

Information Commissioner's Office The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is a non-departmental public body which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. It is the independent regu ...

has stated that it believes "the most up-to-date informal list of all public authorities is held on the website". Information released through the site has given rise to serious and less serious news stories. The site is used by a number of MPs. The site was originally available only in English but a partially translated Welsh version was added in 2013.

Finances

In 2011, the site cost around £12,000 a year to run.WriteToThem research report, year=2011
Tobias Escher The server costs are partly sponsored by Bytemark Hosting.

History

WhatDoTheyKnow started life as the winning idea for mySociety competition in 2006 for ideas for public interest websites to build. Both Phil Rodgers and

Francis Irving Francis Irving (born 1974) is a British software engineer, freedom of information activist and former CEO of ScraperWiki. Education Irving studied A-levels in Biology, Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and General Studies at high sc ...

entered the idea of a site to make it easy to make Freedom of Information requests. Francis Irving later became the main developer of the site, which was launched in 2008. The site was nominated for a number of awards: *

Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...

best green websites - ranked number 2 * New Media Awards - Democracy in Action Finalists 2008 * New Media Awards - Innovation Winner 2008 WhatDoTheyKnow volunteer Alex Skene gave evidence to Justice Committee related to Post-Legislative Scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 on 21 February 2012. As with other mySociety citizen-to-government software, mySociety sells WhatDoTheyKnow as a service for councils. In April 2012,

Brighton and Hove Brighton and Hove ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority area, ceremonially in East Sussex, England. There are multiple villages alongside the seaside resorts of Brighton and Hove in the district. It is administe ...

councillor Jason Kitkat announced: “We he councilare working with mySociety to adapt their WhatDoTheyKnow system to support a better workflow for freedom of information requests and proactive publishing of everything we release." WhatDoTheyKnow was developed as

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

software. It now runs on the

Alaveteli Alaveteli is free and open source software by mySociety to help citizens write freedom of Information requests and automatically publish any responses. Alaveteli is described as "a project to create a free, standard, internationalised platform ...

platform, which is itself an adaptation of the original code written to power WhatDoTheyKnow. Alaveteli was developed to make easier the process of setting up a site like WhatDoTheyKnow in other countries.

References

{{reflist, 3 MySociety Internet properties established in 2008 Freedom of information in the United Kingdom British political websites