Alaveteli

Last updated
Alaveteli
Written in Ruby on Rails
License AGPLv3 [1]
Website alaveteli.org

Alaveteli is free and open source software by mySociety to help citizens write freedom of Information requests and automatically publish any responses. [2]

Alaveteli is described as "a project to create a free, standard, internationalised platform for making Freedom of Information (FOI) requests". [3] [4] Alaveteli is funded by the Open Society Institute and the Hivos Foundation. [5]

It started life as the software running WhatDoTheyKnow, a UK site that publishes responses to FOI requests. The original WhatDoTheyKnow code was written primarily by Francis Irving while working for mySociety. [6] Alaveteli is named after Alaveteli in Finland where Anders Chydenius who was an early campaigner [7] for Freedom of Information worked as a curate. Alaveteli is the name for the software rather than a public facing website or brand.

People who run sites on the Alaveteli platform are also invited to become part of a community, with support and tips shared via a message board, [8] and regular conferences [9]

Alternative free and open source software that are used to operate FOI-request portals include Froide, which [10] FragDenStaat.de in Germany and FragDenStaat.at in Austria are based on, and MuckRock, [11] which is used for MuckRock and FOIA Machine in the United States.

Sites running Alaveteli

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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 the code could be redeployed in other countries.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">WhatDoTheyKnow</span> British website dealing in freedom-of-information requests

WhatDoTheyKnow is a site by mySociety designed to help people in the United Kingdom 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.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">FragDenStaat</span> NGO working in freedom of information

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References

  1. "Alaveteli – GitHub".
  2. "About « Alaveteli – international Right to Know software". Alaveteli.org. Retrieved 2012-05-27.
  3. Credits, WhatDoTheyKnow.com
  4. "Alaveteli".
  5. "Funding / mySociety".
  6. "About". WhatDoTheyKnow. Retrieved 2012-05-27.
  7. The World's First Freedom of Information Act
  8. "Google Groups".
  9. "AlaveteliCon 2015 / mySociety".
  10. "stefanw/froide". GitHub. Retrieved 2016-10-28.
  11. "MuckRock/muckrock". GitHub. Retrieved 2017-03-23.