Tag Archives: Right To Know

“Strengthening” FOI or sabotaging It? Why we oppose the FOI Amendment Bill 2025

By Ben Fairless | Published: September 8, 2025

The Albanese Government has introduced the Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025, presented as a reform to “strengthen” the FOI framework. According to the Attorney-General’s press release, the Bill aims to modernise Freedom of Information (FOI) by: The OpenAustralia Foundation, the charity behind the Right to Know Freedom of Information service, strongly opposes these changes as they will make it harder for […]

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Our Submission: Changes to Part 3 of the FOI Guidelines

By Ben Fairless | Published: June 24, 2025

We have made a submission to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), who were consulting on changes they proposed to make to Part 3 — Processing and deciding FOI requests of their FOI Guidelines. The FOI Guidelines are detail how the Information Commissioner expects authorities to handle FOI requests. We’ve shared our feedback […]

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Why you can’t request external reviews via Right to Know

By Ben Fairless | Published: May 29, 2025

We’ve recently updated the page for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, also known as the OAIC, to make it clear people can’t use Right to Know to make FOI review applications. We’ve done this after seeing an increase in the number of external review requests and complaints being made via Right to Know. […]

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People Have Problems Accessing Information

By Kat Szuminska | Published: September 26, 2017

‘Australia will ensure our information access laws, policies and practices are modern and appropriate for the digital information age.’ That’s the ambitious task that Attorney General’s Department took on with Open Government commitment 3.1 Information management and access laws for the 21st century, in Australia’s first Open Government National Action Plan. Attorney General’s Department saw a […]

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We maintain things for people

By Henare Degan | Published: February 20, 2017

About a month ago we had our major planning session for 2017. The idea is to get everyone together for a few days, share and discuss project ideas, and ultimately come up with a plan for what OpenAustralia Foundation should work on over the whole year. We’ve done quite a few of these sessions now […]

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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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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 […]

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The year is almost over – here’s our plan for the rest of 2016

By Henare Degan | Published: September 30, 2016

While our trip to Cockatoo Island a year ago seems like it was an age away, this year feels like it has sped by. We’ve already launched two major projects in 2016 – something I don’t think we’ve ever done before. No wonder it feels like we’ve been busy. We had our final quarterly planning […]

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Happy Right To Know Day – you have the Right To Know, now right across Australia

By Henare Degan | Published: September 28, 2016

Is it safe for your children to swim in the river? How much did your council spend on that fancy new mobile app? Will we be building better public transport? How much graffiti is being reported in your area? What really happened to those stranded whales you heard about? Australia’s state and local governments create […]

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Setting sail for the second half of 2016

By Henare Degan | Published: July 5, 2016

A couple of weeks ago we had our third planning session for 2016. These quarterly planning sessions allow us to reflect on the work we’ve been doing and make any adjustments we need during the year. This post is a little update on what we discussed and what we’ll be working on from July through […]

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