Step 5
Ask for the data (or create the data)
Understand
What if you did not find your data? Ask for it! Data may not always be available on the public administration website or portals. In this case, it is necessary to request that the authority publish the data or make it available for the monitoring action. You can use a specific transparency tool called FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request, which is nowadays present in 119 countries around the world and permits access to any information of public relevance. Using it, you can directly exercise your right to know.
There is also another possibility for having more data available, which is creating civic data with your group. Civic data can be of a very different nature from institutional data: it can fill in for a missing piece of institutional data that should have been already published, create one that does not exist yet, or have a value that is primarily political and adds to the public data that already exists.
Experience
To send your FOIA request to institutions and public authorities, the group can rely on some associations that already deal with access to information in your country, like:
AskTheEU for all European Union bodies and documents
MaDada in France
FragDenStaat in Germany
FoiaPop in Italy
Slobodenpristap or Aspi in North Macedonia
AccessInfo in Spain
Within the activity, you will find more general indications that are valid for all countries.
Regarding the creation of civic data, instead, the group can directly address the issue they are monitoring through some actions. For example, they can make monitoring visits to assess the condition of a public park, a road, or a new building (a library, a school, etc.), producing photo-reports and videos. They can also interview public officers, experts, citizens, etc. as well as extract and organise data contained in official documents and reports available online.
