Presented at AlaveteliCon 2019 in Oslo. More details of the conference can be found here: https://www.mysociety.org/transparency/alaveteli/alavetelicon-2019/

1. Alaveteli Pro
Monday 23rd September 2019

3. - What are journalists’ freedom of information needs?
- Time for some research...
- Why weren’t UK journalists using WhatDoTheyKnow?
- How can mySociety help them?
- ….Alaveteli Pro

4. So what is Alaveteli Pro?
Three new features:
- Managing freedom of information requests more effectively
- Placing requests under embargoes
- Sending many requests at a click of a button (batch requests)
Personally speaking, it’s a game changer...

5. Managing requests:
- The journalist has an
overview of their
requests
- The journalist can
classify requests
- Prompts the journalist
to react

8. Embargo feature:
- The journalist is in
control as to when
they want to
publish their
requests
- They can publish
immediately, or
place a 3-month,
6-month or 12-
month embargo
on their requests

10. Batch requests:
- Journalists can
select the
authorities they
want to send their
request to
- They receive a
daily summary
email
- And there are
graphics so
journalists can see
how their batch is
doing

13. News stories using Alaveteli
Pro...

16. “Previously I had submitted and managed bulk FOI requests via email. However, staying on top
of more than 700 requests would have proven very challenging. I was aware of the
WhatDoTheyKnow Pro platform but hadn’t used it before, so thought this would be the ideal
opportunity to test it out.
“It was useful to have up-to-date contact details for each authority and to be able to send the
FOI requests in one go. But probably the most useful feature was the way in which
WhatDoTheyKnow Pro tracks the status of each request and shows you when the public body in
question has exceeded the statutory time limit. This made it a lot easier to stay on top of which
councils needed to be chased and when I needed to do it.”
“I don’t think I would have achieved that without WhatDoTheyKnow Pro and, as a result, the
investigation and interactive map we created would not have been as comprehensive.”

18. And now for Helen...