What Do They Know
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What Do They Know
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. Around 15% to 20% of requests to UK Central Government are made through WhatDoTheyKnow.com. Over 45,000 public bodies have been added to the site, mainly by volunteers. More than 800,000 requests have been made using the site and more than 4.5 million people visited it in 2014 WhatDoTheyKnow has been described by The Guardian as "an idiot's guide to making a freedom of information request." The Information Commissioner's Office has stated that it believes "the most up-to-date informal list of all public authorities is held on the website". Information released through the site ha ...
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Freedom Of Information In The United Kingdom
Freedom of information (FOI) in the United Kingdom refers to members of the general public's right to access information held by public authorities. This right is covered in two parts: # Public authorities must regularly publish updates and information regarding their activities, and # Members of the public can make requests for information and updates regarding the activities of public authorities. Under the governance of FOI in the UK, public authorities generally include organizations that are publicly funded: like the NHS, police and governmental departments, and state schools. However, public funding is not the final arbiter of whether an organization must comply with FOI rules, as certain publicly funded but privately held operations (like grant receiving charities) are exempt. Healthcare and dental practices only have to make accessible information for the work they perform under the NHS (where it does not reveal personal data). Information made public under FOI rules incl ...
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Bytemark Hosting
Bytemark is a server hosting and datacentre provider headquartered in York, United Kingdom. It was founded in 2002, and was the first provider of virtual machines and cloud hosting through User-mode Linux in 2003. In 2012, the company launched BigV, a public cloud platform designed in-house using open source software. In 2013, it moved into a £1.2 million datacentre and headquarters in York. In 2017, their BigV platform was renamed Bytemark Cloud. In September 2018, the company was acquired by iomart Group plc. On 2 February 2023 Bytemark announced that it would cease to support BigV on 30 April 2023. Environmental and ethical policies Bytemark's datacentre uses fresh-air cooling, not common in the UK, and was shortlisted for Innovation in Medium Data Center at the DatacenterDynamics Awards EMEA 2013. Each of its servers is built using efficient power supplies as certified by the 80 Plus scheme, which requires power supplies to be at least 80% efficient at up to 100 ...
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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 code could be (and soon was) redeployed in other countries. History mySociety was founded by Tom Steinberg in September 2003, and started activity after receiving a £250,000 grant in September 2004. Steinberg says that it was inspired by a collaboration with his then-flatmate James Crabtree which spawned Crabtree's article "Civic hacking: a new agenda for e-democracy". mySociety went on to simplify and internationalise its code and through the now dormant Poplus project, encouraged others to share open source code that would minimise the amount of duplication in civic tech coding. Like many non-profits, mySociety sustains itself with a mixture of grant funding and commercial work, providing software and development services to l ...
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Open-source Software
Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative, public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration, meaning any capable user is able to online collaboration, participate online in development, making the number of possible contributors indefinite. The ability to examine the code facilitates public trust in the software. Open-source software development can bring in diverse perspectives beyond those of a single company. A 2024 estimate of the value of open-source software to firms is $8.8 trillion, as firms would need to spend 3.5 times the amount they currently do without the use of open source software. Open-source code can be used for studying and a ...
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Brighton And Hove
Brighton and Hove ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority area, ceremonially in East Sussex, England. There are multiple villages alongside the seaside resorts of Brighton and Hove in the district. It is administered by Brighton and Hove City Council, which is currently under Labour Party (UK), Labour majority control. The two resorts, along with Worthing and Littlehampton in West Sussex, make up the Brighton and Hove built-up area, second most-populous built-up area of South East England, after South Hampshire. In 2014, Brighton and Hove City Council and other nearby councils formed the Greater Brighton City Region local enterprise partnership area. Unification Local Government Commission for England (1992), In 1992, a government commission was set up to conduct a structural review of local government arrangements across England. In its draft proposals for East Sussex, the commission suggested two separate unitary authorities be created for t ...
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New Statesman
''The New Statesman'' (known from 1931 to 1964 as the ''New Statesman and Nation'') is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director. The longest-serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–1960), and the most recent editor was Jason Cowley (journalist), Jason Cowley, who assumed the post in 2008 and left in 2024. Today, the magazine is a print–digital hybrid. According to its present self-description, it has a modern Liberalism in the United Kingdom, liberal and Independent progressive, progressive political position. Jason Cowley (journalist), Jason Cowley, the magazine's editor, has described the ''New Statesman'' as a publication "of the left, for the left" but also as "a political and literary magaz ...
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Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as ''The Daily Telegraph and Courier''. ''The Telegraph'' is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The paper's motto, "Was, is, and will be", was included in its emblem which was used for over a century starting in 1858. In 2013, ''The Daily Telegraph'' and '' The Sunday Telegraph'', which started in 1961, were merged, although the latter retains its own editor. It is politically conservative and supports the Conservative Party. It was moderately liberal politically before the late 1870s.Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Journalismp 159 ''The Telegraph'' has had a number of news scoops, including the outbreak of World War II by rookie reporter Clare Hollingworth, described as "the scoop of the cent ...
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Francis Irving
Francis Irving (born 1974) is a British software engineer, freedom of information activist and former CEO of ScraperWiki. Education Irving studied A-levels in Biology, Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Physics and General Studies at high school and was subsequently educated at the University of Oxford. He received a first class degree in mathematics in 1995 as a student at Lincoln College, Oxford. Career Irving developed TortoiseCVS. He co-founded Public Whip with Julian Todd and became a developer of the affiliated TheyWorkForYou website, a project which parses raw Hansard data to track how members vote in the UK Parliament. Initially risking prosecution for re-using the raw data which was under crown copyright, the developers of Public Whip were later successful in getting permission to use it. In 2004, Public Whip was recognised in the New Media awards. In 2008, ''The Daily Telegraph'' rated TheyWorkforYou 41st in a list of the 101 most useful websites. Irving together ...
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The Register
''The Register'' (often also called El Reg) is a British Technology journalism, technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee (journalist), Mike Magee and John Lettice. The online newspaper's Nameplate_(publishing), masthead Logo, sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." The publication's primary focus is information technology news and opinions. Situation Publishing Ltd is the site's publisher. Drew Cullen is an owner and Linus Birtles is the managing director. Andrew Orlowski was the executive editor before leaving the website in May 2019. History ''The Register'' was founded in London as an email newsletter called ''Chip Connection''. In 1998 ''The Register'' became a daily online news source. Magee left in 2001 to start competing publications ''The Inquirer'', and later the ''IT Examiner'' and ''TechEye''. In 2002, ''The Register'' expanded to have a presence in London and San Francisco, creating ''The Register USA'' at theregus.com through a joint ventu ...
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WHOIS
WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase "who is") is a query and response protocol that is used for querying databases that store an Internet resource's registered users or assignees. These resources include domain names, IP address blocks and autonomous systems, but it is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format.RFC 3912, ''WHOIS Protocol Specification'', L. Daigle (September 2004) The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in . Whois is also the name of the command-line utility on most UNIX systems used to make WHOIS protocol queries. In addition, WHOIS has a sister protocol called ''Referral Whois'' ( RWhois). History Elizabeth Feinler and her team (who had created the Resource Directory for ARPANET) were responsible for creating the first WHOIS directory in the early 1970s. Feinler set up a server in Stanford's Network Information Center ...
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Information Commissioner's Office
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is a non-departmental public body which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and is sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. It is the independent regulatory office (national data protection authority) dealing with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation, the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 across the UK; and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and, to a limited extent, in Scotland. When they audit an organisation they use Symbiant's audit software. Role of the Information Commissioner The Information Commissioner is an independent official appointed by the Crown. The Commissioner's decisions are subject to appeal to an independent First-tier Tribunal, tribunal and the Courts of the United Kingdom, courts. The Commissioner's miss ...
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. S ...
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