{"id":15598,"date":"2015-04-13T15:47:10","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T13:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.access-info.org\/?p=15598"},"modified":"2020-02-14T14:05:31","modified_gmt":"2020-02-14T13:05:31","slug":"chiedi-italys-new-foia-machine-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/2015-04-13\/chiedi-italys-new-foia-machine-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Chiedi: Italy\u2019s New FOIA Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Madrid, 13 April 2015<\/em> – Access Info Europe welcomes the launch of the Italian version of the Alaveteli request platform, called \u201cChiedi\u201d meaning simply \u201cAsk!\u201d.<\/p>\n

The following article was originally published in the European Journalism Observatory’s website<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

An online platform\u00a0that\u00a0enables\u00a0citizens and journalists\u00a0to send automated freedom of information requests to public bodies in Italy has been launched by Italian\u00a0non-governmental organisation,\u00a0Diritto di Sapere<\/a> (Right to Know).<\/p>\n

The platform, Chiedi<\/a> (Ask), aims at making access to Italy\u2019s\u00a0public records and data easier, and at strengthening transparency and accountability in the country.<\/p>\n

Chiedi\u00a0is a \u201cFreedom of Information Act (FOIA)\u00a0machine\u201d: a tool which simplifies the bureaucracy surrounding\u00a0access to information legislation. \u201cWe want to offer a service to citizens wishing to send a FOIA request to an Italian institution,\u201d said Guido Romeo, Diritto di Sapere\u2019s President and Wired<\/em> Italy<\/em>\u2019s data editor.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually, the first problem is to find the right email address for where to submit the request. Our platform makes that much easier, as we have\u00a0gathered the right contacts for each institution included,\u201d Romeo said.<\/p>\n

A second step that an Italian citizen, not familiar with local\u00a0freedom of information\u00a0laws, needs to complete when\u00a0submitting\u00a0a FOIA request is to ensure that it is correctly structured.\u00a0 \u201cFor this reason we think it is very useful to collect and show on the website all the requests that have been previously sent through the platform,\u201d Romeo said.<\/p>\n

In order to assist journalists and citizens to\u00a0prepare a request, Diritto di Sapere\u00a0has also\u00a0released\u00a0an online manual, LegalLeaks<\/a>, which describes the legislation, and how to use it.<\/p>\n

Chiedi, currently still in a beta phase,\u00a0is developed on the Alaveteli<\/a> software. This\u00a0is coded by the British MySociety<\/a> and is already used successfully in many countries. It allows users\u00a0to select the recipient they want to get in touch with,\u00a0then Chiedi addresses the email to the right contact.<\/p>\n

Chiedi enables users to track the progress of FOIA requests<\/strong><\/p>\n

Users can also track the progress of their requests and browse\u00a0examples of\u00a0what other citizens have previously done, and\u00a0evaluate the outcomes. \u201cWe don\u2019t manage the requests directly as we don\u2019t filter or regulate anything that comes through the platform. It is the open source software which does it all and the system also signals to requesters if an answer comes in, or if the legally required 30 days for answering has expired,\u201d Romeo explained.<\/p>\n

Similar websites already exist in 17 countries<\/strong><\/p>\n

A similar platform has been already launched by the British WhatDoTheyKnow<\/a> website and in Spain by Tuderechoasaber<\/a> and by the AsktheEU<\/a> project, operated by Access-Info Europe. Globally, there are 17 countries where such a platform is available and 200,000 requests have been sent through these sites so far.<\/p>\n

As well as the practical advantages of Chiedi and similar sites, there are also ethical benefits. \u201cWith Chiedi, we want to show what citizens ask for and what they actually get in response,\u201d Romeo said. He added that\u00a0after a few months of operation\u00a0the site\u00a0would also reveal\u00a0which institutions respond well to FIOA requests, and which do not.<\/p>\n

Chiedi should not be seen as a threat by institutions, but as a tool to\u00a0better understand public expectations<\/strong><\/p>\n

Diritto di Sapere pioneered a similar survey in 2013 with the help of 40 volunteers when \u201cThe Silent State\u201d report<\/a> was published: \u201cChiedi will enable us to have a continuous and more ubiquitous monitoring,\u201d explained Romeo. \u201cI really hope Italian public bodies won\u2019t see Chiedi as a threat, but rather as a tool to understand what citizens want and how to make their work better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s FOIA rules are complicated and technical, and journalists\u00a0are not always aware of\u00a0their rights<\/strong><\/p>\n

Diritto di Sapere also wants to evangelize about the opportunities the Italian\u00a0freedom of\u00a0information laws offer journalists, despite the weakness of\u00a0current FOIA legislation. But are journalists aware of their rights?<\/p>\n

Romeo believes they are not: \u201cJournalism schools do not cover these issues and in newsrooms there\u2019s usually one guy doing investigative work who\u2019s also skilled in this sense. Moreover, while the US law is much easier to use, in Italy a certain expertise is required to ask for a document by quoting the right commas of the law. Response rate in our country is very low and this disincentives many. What we need to understand as journalists is that a public institution which doesn\u2019t respond to lawful request is news worth covering.\u201d<\/p>\n

Italy ranks very low in the International Right to Information (RTI) rank<\/a>. The country\u2019s freedom of\u00a0information laws date back to the 1990s and\u00a0contain no reference to the Internet. Recent attempts\u00a0to improve this\u00a0did not have a serious impact. Even before the launch of Chiedi, Diritto di Sapere has been very vocal in pushing for the launch of a proper Italian FOIA by guiding the Foia4italy<\/a> initiative which crowdsourced a law proposal<\/a>, recently presented<\/a> to MPs in Rome.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Chiedi is hungry to gather requests from citizens and\u00a0journalists.<\/p>\n

This article was first published on the Italian EJO website.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Madrid, 13 April 2015 – Access Info Europe welcomes the launch of the Italian version of the Alaveteli request platform, called \u201cChiedi\u201d meaning simply \u201cAsk!\u201d. The following article was originally published in the European Journalism Observatory’s website. An online platform\u00a0that\u00a0enables\u00a0citizens and journalists\u00a0to send automated freedom of information requests to public bodies in Italy has been launched by Italian\u00a0non-governmental organisation,\u00a0Diritto di Sapere (Right to Know). The platform, Chiedi (Ask), aims at making access to Italy\u2019s\u00a0public records and data easier, and at strengthening transparency and accountability in the country. Chiedi\u00a0is a \u201cFreedom of Information Act (FOIA)\u00a0machine\u201d: a tool which simplifies the bureaucracy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nat-es"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15598"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32784,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15598\/revisions\/32784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.access-info.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}