Category Archives: Projects

Our plan for PlanningAlerts

By Henare Degan | Published: May 30, 2017

Today we’re excited to welcome Hisayo Horie to our team. Over the next 3 months they will be working with us to make updating councillor data for Ask Your Local Councillors a breeze. This will breath new life into this important part of PlanningAlerts and will give thousands and thousands more people the opportunity to […]

Also posted in Planning, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses

A great win for Right to Know, FOI and transparency

By Ben Fairless | Published: May 11, 2017

Ben Fairless is a volunteer administrator of our Freedom of Information (FOI) request site, Right To Know. When the ATO started to refuse valid FOI requests from people on Right To Know he made a personal complaint to the OAIC about his refused request. He has some good news to share! You may have been […]

Also posted in Announcement, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged | 3 Responses

Our first ever Outreachy Internship

By Luke Bacon | Published: May 5, 2017

Today we’re excited to announce that Hisayo Horie will be working with us for the next 3 months in our Outreachy Internship position. Before we introduce Hisayo, and the project we’ll be working on together, let us tell you a little about how the Outreachy application process has gone since our announcement blog post just […]

Also posted in Announcement, Outreachy, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Tagged , , | 1 Response

They Vote For You: “dishonest”?

By Mackay Ash | Published: April 28, 2017

A common query we get over email or social media is how we choose what bills appear on They Vote For You and why we don’t just include every bill that passes through Parliament. Occasionally, these queries are accompanied by accusations of dishonesty, inaccuracy, bias and more. As much as I’d love to dismiss these […]

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Making your emails faster and more secure

By Henare Degan | Published: March 13, 2017

Last week we made a couple of changes that make your PlanningAlerts emails more responsive and a bit more secure. They’re great examples of the kind of improvements we’d usually struggle to find to the time for, were it not for our maintenance-focussed start to the year. When you sign up for an alert or […]

Also posted in Development, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Hacking democracy and playing the long game – Luke Bacon at linux.conf.au 2017

By Luke Bacon | Published: February 10, 2017

Last month Henare and I were in Hobart for linux.conf.au. We met lots of really nice people working on a dizzying array of interesting projects. Linux.conf.au is Australia’s biggest conference for people building and using Free and Open Source Software. People come from all over the world to be there. Henare and Matthew from the […]

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Right to Know, the ATO, independence and transparency

By Henare Degan | Published: January 25, 2017

Since August 2016, the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has been refusing to process the valid Freedom of Information requests they receive from people using Right To Know. At least two of the people who have had their requests blocked have lodged complaints to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). One of them is […]

Also posted in Announcement, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged | 1 Response

There’s no better way to learn how easy FOI requests are than to make one

By Luke Bacon | Published: November 24, 2016

Most people I speak to about making Freedom of Information requests think it’s too difficult to waste time on—it’s for lawyers, not them. When I’ve seen our FOI system presented in a teaching context, the clear message is ‘FOI is too hard, too slow, and too expensive’. The message has sunk in, including with journalists, […]

Also posted in Event, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , | 4 Responses

Our look at Australia’s current draft of its first Open Government National Action Plan

By Kat Szuminska | Published: November 18, 2016

On November 13, the Open Government Partnership (OGP) wrote to the Australian Government http://www.opengovpartnership.org/sites/default/files/Australia%20-%20Steven%20Kennedy%20-%20November%202016.pdf “This letter is to inform you that, the Government of Australia has now acted contrary to the OGP process for three consecutive action plan cycles (2014, 2015 and 2016).” Australia is now at the final stages of preparing an action plan. […]

Also posted in Announcement, Open Government Partnership, OpenAustralia Foundation | 1 Response

How to send your Freedom of Information request to many authorities at once

By Henare Degan | Published: November 7, 2016

Right To Know makes it simple for you to request information from any public authority in Australia. Sometimes you might want to ask the same question but to lots of different public authorities at once. Right To Know can help you there too, with batch requests. Batch requests let you write one request that gets […]

Also posted in RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged , , , | 1 Response