Re: Information on Alaveteli

[Jen Bramley]

Hey Marabel!

I'm copying in the dev list here who will likely have some ideas :)

All the best

Jen

On Wed, 4 Sept 2024 at 08:02, Marabel Catona <mar...@74projects.com> wrote:

Hi Jen,

the team is working on setting this up currently but we are facing an issue with switching to Production, we get error "no database for Production: alaveteli_production database". We tried adding a line to create a database too but that doesn't work either.

Any idea on how to fix that?

Thanks,

Marabel

On August 29, 2024 at 1:17 PM, Marabel Catona (mar...@74projects.com) wrote:

Hi again Jen,

Thanks a lot for replying - I think that clarifies all questions I had. I'm having a developer look at documentation in the next few days and try it out on my server.

Thanks again for the help,

Marabel

On August 29, 2024 at 1:09 PM, Jen Bramley (j...@mysociety.org) wrote:

Hey Marabel!

Ok good to know about the country :) I'm going to answer your questions in-line!

On Thu, 29 Aug 2024 at 10:23, Marabel Catona <mar...@74projects.com> wrote:

Hey Jen,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Yes you're correct on the summary - I'm mostly after a tool to help us manage the FOI Sending and replies organization we get back from them whilst still keeping them private. Ideally being able to also use it with multiple team members on the same account.

Currently we don't have organisational accounts - so you can't have multiple team members on the same account using different emails. They would all have to use the same email address which could be difficult if you have multiple different requests coming in at once.

However if you're running the platform yourself just for you, then it wouldn't be an issue to have each staff member with their own account.

Regarding Alaveteli, as I mentioned we've been using MuckRock for a while which is sort of similar with the difference that they also send some requests as FAX and also do middle-man when it comes to payment for requests that require a processing fee. How would we be able to handle that on the platform? As you said everything would be sent via a mail server, if a Police Department asks for us to pay a fee, then we would just directly ask them for a payment method and manage that outside of the platform?

You're right that payments aren't usually taken through Alaveteli, and most government systems would want you to make the payment directly to them on their payment service so other sites that encounter this tend to send people offsite to pay the fees. 

 

Connected to that, if the delivery of the material (normally we request Police Footage, so Bodycam / Dashcam footage), if they cannot send that on the email address, would we need to provide a physical mail in address outside of the platform?

Alaveteli handles all types of attachments so it can handle video footage. Files are large so there may be some extra disc space you'd need!

 

Lastly, you mentioned the Pro version has the option to keep requests private with a "privacy period", is there no option to have that be permanent private?

The theory behind Alaveteli and all of our software is that transparency should be the default, and if footage can be released under FOI it's suitable for the public domain. So while we respect that privacy periods are needed for people working on research or stories, there's no permanent function as we'd hope that data that could be public will eventually be made public when whatever research or story people are working on breaks. You can renew the privacy period as many times as you like. 

Hope that helps!

In terms of the cost of installation question - it depends if you want us to install it on your servers or run it on ours. We'd strongly recommend that you consider the former and also look into local ruby developers who could install for you. 

https://www.alaveteli.org has all the installation documentation :) And the code is of course, open source.

All the best

Jen

To answer your question, I'm based in Italy, but the target country of the requests would be for US, so US based police departments.

Let me know if you have any questions & thanks again.

Marabel

On August 29, 2024 at 11:02 AM, Jen Bramley (j...@mysociety.org) wrote:

Hey Marabel,

Thanks for your email! I'm a little confused - so let me see if I can recap what I think you're asking and you can tell me if I got it right. 

You need something that will help you send FOI requests, manage the requests and responses, and categorise the requests. You want to be able to send from the platform and do all of the management on the platform too. Ideally you'd also like to have the ability to keep requests and responses private - and you want to set it up on your own servers?

Everything I've mentioned above is possible using Alaveteli. Alaveteli allows you to send and receive requests and attachments through the service using a mail server. You can categorise the requests when you receive a response and, with the professional version enabled, you can also set a privacy period for requests, send batch requests and soon we will be adding a batch analysing tool called projects to the code which will also be available to pro version users. 

May I ask which country you're wanting to set this up for? 

All the best

Jen 

On Wed, 28 Aug 2024 at 17:46, Marabel Catona <mar...@74projects.com> wrote:

Hello there,

I recently came across your tool and I had a question on its intended use.

I'm currently looking for a software to help manage the SENDING of the requests, rather than being the one receiving them. So everything that comes from Filing the requests to managing the replies we get on said requests. To give you some further context, I currently use MuckRock but have been looking at alternatives and was wondering if Alaveteli could be of any use here or not. I would be using it with a team of requests who ideally would all send requests (via Email but on the Website/Tool) from the platform and then from there we are easily able to manage its statuses and files we receive from departments.

If this can be used for that use case, could you give me a rough estimate on what it would cost to set up the tool for our personal use? I believe Alaveteli itself can't be used as it is as the Website/Portal to send requests but we would need to host it ourselves for that. If that's the case, having an estimate on how much it would cost would be great. Also, would all requests be public regardless of who hosts it or are we able to just use its tracking/status process but keep all requests private within our team?  

Thanks in advance,

Marabel

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Jen Bramley

Partnerships, Projects and Delivery Manager

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Jen Bramley

Partnerships, Projects and Delivery Manager

mySociety | mysociety.org/ | Climate Newsletter

Love what we do? Why not donate!

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Jen Bramley

Partnerships, Projects and Delivery Manager

mySociety | mysociety.org/ | Climate Newsletter

Love what we do? Why not donate!