The Freedom of Information Act, also known as FOI gives you the right to request recorded information from public authorities.

As well as documents and emails, it also covers things like spreadsheets, presentations, maps, videos and photographs.

By law requests have to be answered promptly and within 20 working days.

In most cases information should be released, but various exemptions allow authorities to withhold information.

🔍 Find the evidence: Survey responses, research reports and board papers can help you to uncover the truth behind decisions and public statements.

⚖️ Compare and contrast: Compare the situation in your local area with what’s happening in other parts of the country and highlight disparities or similarities.

💰 Follow the money: Contracts, invoices and budget information let you see where public money goes, ensuring greater accountability for how funds are allocated and spent.

🧩 Fill in the gaps: You can ask a group of authorities to build or extract a dataset that didn't exist. This can fill knowledge gaps and improve public understanding of specific issues.

🤔 Understand why: Meeting minutes, policy papers and internal correspondence can help you to understand why important decisions were taken, and who is accountable for those decisions.

☀️ Promote openness: Asking for datasets can help to show that there is public demand to see it, which might persuade the authority to publish it themselves without needing to be asked.

🔀 Find the right authority: A database of 46,000+ public bodies, kept up to date by a team of staff and volunteers.

🗂️ Public archive: A permanent, searchable, public record of over one million information requests and responses.

✍️ Write your request: Inline guidance and a collection of help pages to help write your request.

🤖 Automate bureaucracy: Built in assistance and reminders to manage your request from submission to completion.

🏟️ Correspond in public: Requests and responses are automatically published online with proof of delivery to hold authorities accountable to respond.

🛑 Refusal advice: Encouragement, support, guidance and snippets to help challenge refusals at internal review, regulator appeal and tribunal^(soon).

FOI and appeals to the regulator

How do appeals to ICO and OSIC vary in outcome and time taken?

Network Rail: how accounting definitions of control can expand FOI/EIR coverage 

Appealing to the Court of Accountants.

What are environmental information requests and how do they differ in Scotland?

Understanding what makes Environmental Information special in Freedom of Information and the (minor) differences in how this is interpreted in Scotland.

Prioritising FOI complaints

Draft response to ICO consultation on how to prioritise FOI complaints

Using Access to Information to support social change

A look at how organisations which support marginalised communities use and request information from public bodies, what the information unlocks and what mySociety can do to better support this use of access to information.

mySociety response to “Call for Evidence: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”

Response to Ministry of Justice consultation