4 ms·

The background here is that someone did a FOI request for the announcement audio, crowdsourced transcriptions, and various things have been built on top of it.

• mellosouls 4y ago
  The background here is that someone did a FOI request for the announcement audio Whatever the other merits of this project, I'd like to know the motivation behind the FOI - I really dislike it being used for trivial reasons.
  • dvdkon 4y ago
    Presumably, a train fan wanted to play with announcement audio. Is that not reason enough? I'd try it myself, but local train station announcement systems are commercial software that's licenced by the central rail authority, so I suppose it wouldn't work.
  • JoshTriplett 4y ago
    Literally everything that is available via FOI should just be posted online proactively.
    • sokoloff 4y ago
      Curation would become a problem (maybe even to the point of requiring more resources in aggregate than complying with current FOI/FIOA requests).
      • JoshTriplett 4y ago
        I'm not suggesting any curation that wouldn't already have happened as a result of existing needs for organization. Just publication.
        • sokoloff 4y ago
          Look at your own photos on your phone. Mine are all IMG_####. Scale that up to thousands of organizations and tens of thousands of users.
          • samwillis 4y ago
            The point is publicly funded and government data should be public by default. The organisation of that now public data isn’t within the mandate, and doesn’t need to be, of the originating organisation. Journalist, hobbyist, investigators, or the just generate intrigued can organise the data or trawl through it to their hearts content. That’s literally what Datasette was built for.
            • JoshTriplett 4y ago
              Exactly. Is there some expectation that the governmental organization will have a giant pile of completely unorganized data? Or that they'll have it organized for their own day-to-day usage? The latter will suffice.
              • sokoloff 4y ago
                “I would like the ScotRail audio files.” “We don’t do FOI any more; it’s all online but uncurated. Download the petabytes of data from gov.uk and I’m sure you’ll find it in there somewhere.”
  • avianlyric 4y ago
    One persons trivial is another persons art. FOI exists to liberate information created using taxpayers money, so that information can be used by the public as they wish (after all, they paid for it). Every request enhances the publics understanding of government, and every request creates the opportunity for the information to be reused in new unforeseen ways. Some may seem trivial (like a random apology generator), others may significantly impact people’s day-to-day lives (better public transit routing apps). But until the FOI happens, and people can play with the data, neither will ever happen. Frequently the people doing impactful things with the data, aren’t the same people requesting it. It’s also likely that many of those impactful projects would never be started if the data wasn’t already free. So every “trivial” request may lead to something far more impactful down the road. If you’re concerned about the cost involved. Then I would recommend criticising government for not making FOI fulfilment either efficient, or unnecessary. If government agencies just published the data (like TfL does), then there wouldn’t be any need for FOI requests.
  • virtual_void 4y ago
    Why is that? You clearly feel strongly about it. I’d not considered that FOI requests might elicit such a response. Perhaps you could define the boundary between trivial and non-trivial uses? Have you had to deal with requests for information that you regard as falling on the trivial side of things? Is there a solution to the your dislike of certain types of use? Apologies for all the questions but your comment feels like it’s missing some genuinely interesting detail.
    • mellosouls 4y ago
      I've seen public sector organisations where FOI laws have been used by salesmen spamming to determine technology infrastructure to pitch their product. It's not why FOI was created or motivated. There is genuine need for openness but this sort of thing just tasks already underfunded and stretched departments with work that distracts from providing core services.
      • virtual_void 4y ago
        I can see how that would be frustrating and sort of causes a misuse of public funds. Feels like infrastructure queries shouldn’t come under FOI when i first consider it. Then i suppose there might be legitimate reasons to care; Perhaps things like conflict of interest in contract allocation, or things not being put out to tender. As you mention, it feels like publicly funded things should be able to be inspected by default, so perhaps having it out in the open all the time is best. That requires funding and it requires a commitment at a governmental level to get it right. With the lack of funding provided to public institutions in the uk though it’s pretty hard even for the basics to be done well. I’d better not get on to that subject lest i get testy. Back to your main point though, I don’t know how to differentiate (with a set of unambiguous rules) between the trivial and non-trivial in a way that doesn’t accidentally prevent real use cases. Perhaps the way FOI is set up is at fault here rather than the people who make use of it, trivially or otherwise.
      • Xylakant 4y ago
        FOI laws have been created so that the public can gain information about the internal workings of the government - and the scope is deliberately wide. It includes activities that you or me may not consider worthwhile, but that’s our judgment call. If handling FOI requests overloads the departments, then the answer would be to just make the information accessible to the public from the outset or supply sufficient funding to the departments so that they can provide the services required by law, including answering FOI requests.