Conference planning
Seb Bacon
I'm still sorting the funding application to establish a travel grant
for attendance, but you can assume for the time being that there will
be a substantial grant available for those of you with a long way to
travel. Will update soon.
The main topic of this thread is that I'd like to start some
conversations about how we can make the most of the event.
Personally, I really want to make sure there are lots of opportunities
for meeting and chatting, because what I'd really like to get out of
the event is a strengthened community of people who know and trust one
another, which can collectively take Alaveteli forward over the next
year. Before the conference, I'd like us to work together on the
schedule to make sure we all get something out of it -- agree on the
talks, timings, things we'd like covered within the talks, etc. I'd
also like to use this list to get to know a bit more about each other
before the event.
In the pre-registration form, the most popular subject was "lessons
learned", so I was thinking we should probably spend most of Day 1
learning about and discussing each others' projects -- perhaps guided
by presentations from David (AskTheEU), Pedro (Brazil), Valon (Kosovo)
and Francis (UK) if they are willing and able? Here is a possible
model for the schedule, which is purely there to start a discussion,
so please feel free to tear it apart :) I tried to leave lots of
space in between the sessions, and day 2 is mostly workshops. What do
you think? Amendments, different timings, anyone particularly want to
do a talk?
Day 1
9.00 - 9.30 Registration
09.30 - 10.00: Welcome & Alaveteli overview for newbies
10.30 - 11.15: AskTheEU lessons learned (talk + discussion - David?)
11.45 - 12.30: Brazil lessons learned (talk + discussion - Pedro?)
12.30 - 13.30: Lunch
13.30 - 14.15: Kosovo lessons learned (talk + discussion - Valon?)
14.45 - 15.30: UK lessons learned (talk + discussion - Francis?)
16.00 - 16.45: Using Alaveteli for advocacy (talk + discussion -
Richard / other WDTK volunteer)
17.15 - 18.00: Lightening talks
19:30 - Conference dinner
Day 2
9.30 - 10.15: The bigger picture: trends in the global FOI movement
(talk - Helen?)
10.45 - 12.30 (stream 1): Install lab: setting up and customising
instances for new users
10.45 - 12.30 (stream 2): Hack workshop: coding on pre-agreed tasks
(e.g. improving admin interface?) and brainstorming plans
10.45 - 12.30 (stream 3): Developer lab (ask an expert one-to-one)
12.30 - 13.30: Lunch
13.30 - 14.15: (stream 1): How can we collaborate better? (workshop)
14.45 - 15.30: (stream 1): Non-technical Alaveteli administrator’s
workshop (Richard)
13.30 - 16.00: (stream 2): Hack workshop continues
16.00 - 16.45: The future of Alaveteli (workshop - bringing together
hack, administrators and collaboration workshops)
In addition to these topics, the following were suggested. There's a
clear grouping of suggestions on the theme of how far we can / should
adjust to local laws and practices, which perhaps suggests a session
of its own:
* It would be interesting to have a session on how to adapt Alavateli
to different countries and types of regulations that ask for different
processes of requesting information. Topics would be: 1) Do we want
to have Alavateli as a tool that is more adaptable to different
realities? Or do we want governments to adapt to an ""ideal"" process
for information request through Alavateli? How can we address both of
these interests? 2) How do we make it more possible for communities to
raise and track specific needs? How shoud we address them keeping the
international collaboration?
* Extending Alaveteli beyond FOIA requests, adapting it to countries
with laws that are uncooperative, the balance between practical tool
and using it as an activist tool (in terms of resetting service
expectations)
* Using Alaveteli for lobbying for better FOI and related laws
* Special law issues for Alaveteli projects
Then there are some more specific ideas that could be covered in some
of the existing workshops, I think:
* Some kind of advanced session on theming and customizing alaveteli.
* Hacking session to work on bugs, refactoring and extending the test
suite of the software with other developers
* Development infrastructure brainstorming session, e.g. CI and
anything else that could help development
* integration of aleveteli with other civic engagement projects: what
are the possibilities?
* How to crowdsource the contacts needed for an Alateveli project when
such lists are not publicly available?
OK, that's all for starters! Any thoughts? Specifically:
* Comments on the sample schedule
* Offers to lead other sessions
* Topics that haven't been mentioned
* Ideas about how to structure and organise the conference overall
Thanks,
Seb
Seb Bacon
When I've put names in brackets, they were tentative suggestions for
people to take a lead on organising something around that subject with
others -- and there have been lots of offers of help, so no-one should
feel left out or strong-armed :) For example:
* we have several people with global FOI expertise who have offered to
talk or run a session, so that could be a longer session or a
different type
* we may have two non-Alaveteli FOi website people coming (US and
Germany) whose lessons learned might make an interesting counterpart,
instead of one of the proposed Alaveteli lessons learned sessions
Seb
David Cabo
James McKinney
The potential speakers will have a better idea, but I'm not sure each site will have 45 minutes of lessons learned to present. To avoid too much overlap of material, I think this information may be better presented as a panel discussion. If there is a lot to talk about, you may consider splitting it into two parts, each having a centralizing theme. Maybe one on internal aspects (scalability, volunteer coordination, maintenance tasks) and another on external aspects (publicity, education, funding, issues with government recognition, interactions/talks with government and the press, etc.). I think 4 hours of lessons learned may be too much. 2-3 may be better.
Alternatively, if some of these topics are of special interest, they can be broken off into a separate session instead of covering everything in the lessons-learned talks. A good candidate for a separate session is one that focuses on advocacy/lobbying for change. As Seb mentioned, Alaveteli isn't only about making use of existing FOI laws easier; it is in many ways about making FOI law, process, and culture better.
A discussion of what options exist in countries or regions without FOI laws would be interesting assuming there's a sufficient number of people from such countries in attendance. Similarly, what alternatives exist in jurisdictions that charge fees: e.g. launching in subnational regions that don't have fees to put pressure on those that do; using published lists of FOI requests to submit requests for the responses; or other means of making it a pain for governments to maintain a fee structure (like requesting a fee waiver with every request).
Currently the schedule is somewhat lacking in outreach to legal, academic, and other communities. I think such people may have new, interesting perspectives to contribute. By talking to such colleagues in Canada, I've learned that some of the info/privacy commissioners have order-making powers, that some FOI offices have ombudspeople to lobby on behalf of citizens, etc. which are interesting mechanisms for lobbying for changes to FOI law/process.
For Day 2, I'm not sure what the space looks like, but like David, I'm concerned about splitting the expert hackers. If most want to hack, it will be difficult to run "ask an expert", and similarly people who've finished an install will probably have questions for experts.
I may not be able to help lead much on Day 1, but I can help on Day 2.
Ákos Maróy
Thanks for the detailed planning.
Other then the topics listed, I'd like to add an additional angle. We're
talking with public organizations here in Hungary about serving freedom
of information acts, and it seems that this is an unwelcome baggage for
them not necessarily for the fact that they don't want their
organization to be transparent - but simply because it's a lot of effort
for them to go through their old-school paper-based data and respond to
the request.
for example when we ask them to give us all contracts that they signed
with a particular company, because have these filed in a number of
different departments, on paper, on a time-linear fashion, they have to
manually go through all these and find the relevant contracts. it's a
lot of manual effort. for this very reason they regularly exceed the
amount of time given by the law to respond to an information request.
thus, I'd be interested to discuss a topic of how public institutions in
other countries cope with such issues? is it so that bookkeeping is more
efficient and electronic everywhere else? :)
moreover, did anyone consult such institutions, mainly on how can one
make their lives easier when responding to information requests?
Akos
Pedro Markun
sorry for taking so long (my baby was just born :~ drooling parent!).
I think the schedule is great Seb. Agree with James that it might be too much time and a round panel - maybe moderated by you, seb? - could be better. So we all could have like 10~15 to present an overall on how things were done and then we just go to a open debate on specifics. This way we can narrow down on other people actual concerns.
Still, I'll be happy to talk about Brazillian experience :)
--
I think day two will rock! Specially if we can set the actual goals upfront... but I also agree with James that the 'ask an expert' might now work well or it might undermine the hacking potential.
[]'s
Pedro Markun
Derek Dohler
I'm not sure I have much extra to add, but I want to support two of
the previous points:
Lessons learned: I agree with shortening or reformulating this
section; I especially like James' idea to provide some structure to
the lessons learned section by asking speakers to talk about lessons
from specific areas (maintenance, volunteer coordination, etc.). I
also like the idea of a panel discussion--that would allow immediate,
direct comparisons across countries.
Service to governments: I really support Akos' point about thinking of
ways that Alaveteli can provide benefits to governments as well. It
probably won't be able to solve all, or even most, of their document
management problems, but to the extent that Alaveteli can make
government employees' lives easier when handling FOI requests, I think
this will help to secure cooperation rather than resistance in some
cases.
Derek
Daniela B. Silva
Romina Colman
My name is Romina Colman. I´m a student of Social
Communication at the University of t Buenos Aires in Argentina and I
will be attending to the conference on April. So glad to be there! Can
´t wait!
I would like to tell you what I do in Argentina.
I have been making FOI requests in Latin America for about 5 years
now. I am an activist here and I feel passion for all kind of access
to information issues, especially those related to electronic systems:
I test them, study their main strenghs and weaknesses, make requests,
etc.
I have made more than 100 requests in Argentina, Mexico, Chile and The
World Bank. I can take some examples with me.
Right now I am working on my thesis. It´s about the mecanisms of
access to information in the countries I mentioned befere.
I am writing to you because I would like to share my experience and
talk about the main problems citizens have to deal with from the time
they decide they want to ask something to their governments. For
instance, here in Argentina we can´t ask for information by email and
we don´t have an alectronic platform either. We have to write the
request in a paper and take it to the agency under the jurisdiction of
the Federal Executive branch where the information is. It is also very
difficult to get to government public servants that should help us in
the process.
Last November when I was making some requests in Chile and I decided
to travel there so I could learn how public servants work. The
relationship between citizens and agencies is quite different and the
procedure to ask for public information, too.
What do you tihnk?
Best,
Romina
On Feb 22, 4:35 pm, "Daniela B. Silva" <danielabsi...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I think the agenda looks great :)
>
> If we still find space and time, I would be happy to organize a session on
> one of the extra topics mentioned by Seb - the one related to running
> Alaveteli for different types of FOIA / Access to Information Laws /
> political contexts.
>
> We are using our (short, but intense :P) experience with Alaveteli in
> Brazil to raise issues that can reflect on our Access to Information Law
> regulations (as some rules are still being defined by public bodies, we
> have been trying to influence authorities to consider our thoughts to
> create a better process for requesting information). There are clearly some
> tension between the way Alaveteli works and the way the law (or the
> policies) work in different countries, and I think it would be great to
> discuss strategies to deal with this.
>
> Just wondering if these topics can fit in the session about the Bigger
> Picture of FOI that was already booked by Seb (or even in the Activism
> session?), or if it would be useful to schedule another session to discuss
> them... If so, I volunteer to organize it.
>
> I also missed a moment (maybe a workshop) to raise ideas on how to engage
> new users to Alaveteli websites (something that would cover improving UX,
> communications and community management). We have been planning to run
>
> read more »- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Tony Bowden
> here in Argentina we can´t ask for information by email and
> we don´t have an alectronic platform either. We have to write the
> request in a paper and take it to the agency under the jurisdiction of
> the Federal Executive branch where the information is. It is also very
> difficult to get to government public servants that should help us in
> the process.
Hi Romina,
Great to hear from you. Do you know the guys from GarageLabs and/or
Poder Ciudadano in Buenos Aires? I met with them last week to discuss
the idea of doing an Alaveteli for Argentina — you should definitely
chat to them about your experiences, and what you'd like to see
happen.
Tony