Over the last half year, Rowan Crawford has been quietly working on a New Zealand version of the UK website WhatDoTheyKnow used for filing official information requests.
The New Zealand version has been named FYI (For Your Information) and a Beta version is available here: FYI.org.nz
FYI automates the process of creating an official information request and receiving responses from the relevant public authority. Any official information received is published on the Internet for anyone to access.
There’s still a few quirks, the design and layout are under active development, and the About pages refer to the UK site, but the functionality is all there and contact details for New Zealand agencies and councils are loaded in. Rowan will add more details on FYI’s current state with a later post.
Credits
FYI is an all-volunteer effort supported by the following people and organisations:
- Rowan Crawford – developer and lead energy
- Nat Torkington – general support, and supply/funding of the server and domain name
- Myself (Ed Corkery) – organiser and future heavy user
- Rob Coup – configuration & operations of the server and emailing system
- Greer Mitchell & Ludwig Wendzich – logo and design (still underway)
- WhatDoTheyKnow / MySociety – original code used for FYI
- Open New Zealand
TODO before leaving Beta
- Update the About pages with New Zealand-specific content
- Implement further design changes
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rowan Crawford, Chris McDowall. Chris McDowall said: RT @wombleton: @edcorkery throws down with a post about #fyi's beta: http://bit.ly/9eA1bi #itsnotdone #release #fear #relief [...]
Excellent work team. I could have used this twice in the last month for requests that I have made. I’ll be sure to use it for any further requests.
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This post was mentioned on Twitter by wombleton: @edcorkery throws down with a post about #fyi’s beta: http://bit.ly/9eA1bi #itsnotdone #release #fear #relief…
Great stuff! Will it be possible to upload historical requests and responses? I’ve got a couple that I would add to increase the corpus.
Excellent question! Uh, I will investigate and get back to you.
Short answer: no.
I have created an issue here: http://github.com/wombleton/fyi/issues/issue/45
I’m considering how to hide the checkbox to say it’s a historical request away from regular users.