Alaveteli is

free and open source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

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 the ...

to help citizens write

Freedom of Information request Freedom of information laws allow access by the general public to data held by national governments and, where applicable, by state and local governments. The emergence of freedom of information legislation was a response to increasing dissatisfa ...

s and automatically publish any responses. Alaveteli is described as "a project to create a free, standard, internationalised platform for making Freedom of Information (FOI) requests". Alaveteli is funded by the

Open Society Institute Open Society Foundations (OSF), formerly the Open Society Institute, is a grantmaking network founded and chaired by business magnate George Soros. Open Society Foundations financially supports civil society groups around the world, with a st ...

and the Hivos Foundation. It started life as the software running

WhatDoTheyKnow 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 ...

, a UK site that publishes responses to FOI requests. The original WhatDoTheyKnow code was written primarily by

Francis Irving Francis Irving is a British computer programmer, activist for freedom of information and former CEO of ScraperWiki. Francis Irving developed TortoiseCVS. He co-founded Public Whip with Julian Todd and became a developer of the affiliated T ...

while working for mySociety. Alaveteli is named after Alaveteli in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

where

Anders Chydenius Anders Chydenius (; 26 February 1729 – 1 February 1803) was a Swedish-Finnish Lutheran priest and a member of the Swedish Riksdag, and is known as the leading classical liberal of Nordic history. Born in Sotkamo, Finland (then part of Swed ...

who was an early campaigner 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, and regular conferences Alternative free and open source software that are used to operate FOI-request portals include Froide, whic
FragDenStaat.de
in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

an
FragDenStaat.at
in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

are based on, and

MuckRock MuckRock is a United States-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization which assists anyone in filing governmental requests for information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other public record laws around the United States, then p ...

, which is used for MuckRock and FOIA Machine in the United States.

Sites running Alaveteli

* Australia – https://www.righttoknow.org.au * Belgium – https://transparencia.be/ * Bosnia – https://web.archive.org/web/20170925022926/http://pravodaznam.ba/ * Brazil – http://www.queremossaber.org.br * Congo (DRC) – http://www.tunabakonzi.org/ * Croatia – http://imamopravoznati.org/ * Czech Republic – http://www.infoprovsechny.cz/ * European Union – http://www.asktheeu.org/ * Hong Kong – https://accessinfo.hk/ * Hungary – http://kimittud.atlatszo.hu/ * Israel – https://web.archive.org/web/20140408222116/http://www.askdata.org.il/ * Italy �
Chiedi
* Kosovo – https://archive.today/20130415060831/http://www.informatazyrtare.org/ * Liberia – http://infolib.org.lr/ * Macedonia – http://www.slobodenpristap.mk/ * Malaysia – https://web.archive.org/web/20160817111902/http://foi.sinarproject.org/ *Moldova
https://vreauinfo.md
*Nepal – https://asknepal.info/ * New Zealand – http://fyi.org.nz * Nicaragua – https://derechoapreguntar.org/ * Norway – https://www.mimesbronn.no/ * Paraguay – https://web.archive.org/web/20161016103538/https://www.queremosaber.org.py/ * Romania – https://web.archive.org/web/20161014060621/https://nuvasuparati.info/ * Rwanda – https://sobanukirwa.rw/ * Serbia – https://archive.today/20140615094118/http://www.daznamosvi.rs/ * Spain – http://tuderechoasaber.es * Sweden – http://fragastaten.se/ * Ukraine – https://dostup.pravda.com.ua/ * United Kingdom –

* Uganda – http://askyourgov.ug/ * Uruguay – http://www.quesabes.org/

References

{{reflist Freedom of information MySociety Free software programmed in Ruby Software using the GNU AGPL license