Category Archives: Projects

What’s the latest with RightToKnow?

By Matthew Landauer | Published: February 6, 2013

Right To Know was launched at the end of last year and through the quietest part of the year when people are enjoying the fine weather and some well-earned free time people have already put in over fifty freedom of information requests. That’s pretty amazing. Requests have been diverse, including for information about thing like: […]

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Western Australians – Make a difference before you vote

By Henare Degan | Published: December 19, 2012
Screenshot of SMH article on ElectionLeaflets.org.au

In less than 3 months, over 1.3 million Western Australians will head to the polls to decide their state government for the next 4 years. Voters will soon be bombarded by advertising on TV, radio, billboards and online – that is if it hasn’t already started. But what about those largely hidden weapons in the […]

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Federal Senate congratulates the OpenAustralia Foundation for its ‘Right to Know’ initiative

By Matthew Landauer | Published: November 29, 2012

Earlier today a motion was presented to the Senate which notes the creation of the Freedom of Information request site Right To Know we launched yesterday and which urges the government to, “use the site, provide feedback, and support the Foundation in its aim of encouraging effective citizen access to government information.” We are very […]

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Why we think that Freedom of Information should be easy

By Matthew Landauer | Published: November 28, 2012

In the lead up to the launch of Right To Know, we organised an all weekend Hack[s]fest event for which we asked journalists, activists and software developers interested in Freedom of Information to come along and work together for the final push. As if writing software and making freedom of information requests wasn’t enough, volunteer […]

Also posted in RightToKnow.org.au | 1 Response

You have the Right To Know

By Matthew Landauer | Published: November 28, 2012

Whether you are an octogenarian human rights activist, a working mother, a twenty something surfer or still at school, the government undoubtedly has information that is useful to you and many people like you who share your interests. But am I allowed to access it? Yes! 30 years ago Australia enacted a law which changed […]

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You’re invited to our Freedom of Information Hack[s]fest

By Henare Degan | Published: November 5, 2012

As you may have heard, the OpenAustralia Foundation is really close to launching a new site that makes Australian Freedom of Information requests really straightforward for ordinary people. The site also opens up the whole process of making Freedom of Information requests by making the whole paper (or rather email) trail of request and responses […]

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Seeds of Parliamentary support to bring NSW Hansard on to OpenAustralia.org

By Matthew Landauer | Published: October 17, 2012

Since we started OpenAustralia we’ve wanted to republish not only the Federal but also State and Territory Parliaments on Openaustralia.org. Bizarrely (to us) its been much harder to get the States on board with this than our own Federal Government; while there remain challenges ahead we’re quietly confident. It’s the twenty first century after all, […]

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What’s new with PlanningAlerts, part 2

By Matthew Landauer | Published: September 10, 2012

In part one, we covered some of the new features that we’ve added in the last couple of months. Next, we’ll cover the myriad of improvements, some small, some large, that we’ve made to existing features. Most of these, as a normal person using the site, individually you might never notice the difference. Small aesthetic […]

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What’s new with PlanningAlerts, part 1

By Matthew Landauer | Published: September 5, 2012

The last couple of months have seen a mammoth development effort on PlanningAlerts. Throughout that time we’ve posted regular updates on the PlanningAlerts Twitter feed. Follow us there if you’re interested in the absolute latest and greatest. The purpose of this post is to bring together and summarise those changes, to make it easier to […]

Also posted in Development, PlanningAlerts.org.au | 2 Responses

And we’re back

By Kat Szuminska | Published: August 27, 2012

It’s been a quiet kind of year for the OpenAustralia Foundation. While we’ve seen maintenance work continue quietly in the background, upgraded OpenAustralia.org to catch up with changes at the official Federal parliamentary website aph.gov.au, ran Election Leaflets for the 2012 Queensland State Election, made Github our primary code host so we can accept more […]

Also posted in Announcement, ElectionLeaflets.org.au, OpenAustralia Foundation, OpenAustralia.org, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Leave a comment