 What they know.com is our site which basically is an easy way to make freedom of information on requests online and if it is a public archive of requests which is really useful for finding out what other people have been asking for and how things change over time. So the way it works we list like what was it 40 odd thousand or nearly 40,000 authorities but obviously you're mostly probably interested in Cardiff Council and maybe some other Cardiff related authorities. So you can kind of go and look at all the requests that have been made. I note there's a Cardiff Civic Society one there on the top page which I was very pleased to see and you can also follow public body so you can actually you know keep track on what other people are asking what responses are coming back and similarly you can follow like any search term or any other user so like I follow Cardiff Civic Society just to see what they're asking about because I'm quite interested. So you know it's a good way of like just getting a feel for the information that's being asked for. We also have what they know pro which is basically like an added toolkit built into what they know for like journalists, campaigners, researchers which makes it easy to keep on top of like quite complex FY investigations. Basically it allows people to make requests in private for a certain period of time more geared towards the journalists but it also helps manage like big batch requests to like all councils in the UK that kind of thing. So it gives you some like nicer dashboards and stuff. So making an FY request you can basically request information from any public authority or publicly funded body in the UK under the FY Act. So obviously government departments or like committees, local councils but also like schools, colleges, universities who often own buildings so you know that is something like a connection to make there is not just councils who own these things and many of these bodies are actually publicly owned or subject to FY like even GPs, dentists, pharmacists, opticians come under FY for certain functions. So and also actually worth noting I don't know if this applies in Wales actually off the top of my head but fairly recently social landlords have come become subject to FY in Scotland so you know that is definitely a campaign worth fighting for to get that to also be true in Wales. I'm not entirely sure on the legislation there but with knowing about. So you can request any kind of recorded information using FY so like what you can't do is say or like ask a question like please explain to me you know why you made this decision you've actually got to ask for things that have been recorded things like meeting minutes database tables reports internal correspondence that kind of thing. So it can be a bit of a slog to figure out the right things to ask for but you know once you figure out like the correct names for things like you know if the council are running like a regeneration project say you know it's worth like figuring out what those are in order to ask for like all correspondence related to that or correspondence in relating to meetings or project plans that kind of thing. There's also a very similar legislation called the environmental environmental information regulations basically much the same as FY but sometimes if you can't get information through FY you might be able to get it through EIR and that might be relevant to some of your stuff you know in terms of like the environmental impact of like redevelopments or new construction that kind of thing. So you know if like someone wants to go knock down some old building for a parking garage you know like you might be able to get more information from EIR and like the massive emissions which is going to come out from more cars you know arriving at this parking garage. Pretty obvious you can't request personal information or information relating to yourself through free of information or what do they know you can get that directly from these authorities under subject access requests. We do kind of like try to push our users to search for information that's already out there before making requests because you know even though bodies have like a duty to be open with citizens like it does cost the money to like process these requests and is quite or can be quite time-consuming so you know I think we try to encourage everyone to like be mindful of that and be good citizens about it. So yeah that's a bit of a no-view about like who you can request from and what you can request. Taking you through what do they know it is pretty easy you just click make a request on a public body and you get a really simple form with like a summary so you know like a gist of what you want to ask for and then some space for the information you want to ask for. We've we don't actually provide any templates ourselves but plenty of people do so this is one from The Ferret in Scotland who are a kind of community journalist organization and then there's another one from FOI directory which gives a sense of like how you can ask for this stuff. Again I'll share all this later don't worry about reading it too much now but it's good it's good to kind of like have a look at what other people are asking and you can obviously also use what they know itself to look how other people worded requests and to see what was successful in getting answers so you know you might look through say Bristol Council's page see what people are asking about there and then ask those same requests to Cardiff Council like I've actually done this myself use what they know as a basis to like figure out how to word my request and then once you've submitted your request it becomes public on what they know so you know we think that's quite a good incentive for public bodies to answer and not ignore them because everyone in public can see it and then what do they know kind of gives you email alerts if they become late or or you know when you get a response it'll give you an email alert so you know you don't have to like constantly chase them up and it'll give you help along the way as well and then finally you should get a response and usually well often it can be like an attachment or spreadsheet or whatever public authorities have 20 working days to respond again what they know helps you through all this when they become late we will tell you and give you some like help in following up and like pressuring them to respond and then what happens after you make your request while they hopefully respond and give you the information you've asked for they can also say we don't have the information which you know is often the case but they do have duties to like either point you towards an authority who might hold the information or actually transfer the request on your behalf so this is quite useful to know when you know like you ask Cardiff Council for something but it's actually I don't know some sub body that Cardiff Council part run you know they actually have a duty to help you find this information or they can also refuse to give you the information under what are called exemptions in FY so basically like reasons why they do have the information but might not want to release it we're actually just on the verge of launching new functionality which like actually helps you challenge these exemptions better and like understand what they are so one of them for example is getting the information would cost too much you know take like say you ask for all correspondence over a 10 year period you know it just take way too much time and effort for them to compile that so even though they can refuse they have specific they have to tell you why they're refusing under which exemptions and there are generally like public interest tests which they have to do to like strike a balance between keeping information private or publishing it this kind of comes up a lot in like commercial agreements if you ask for contracts so we're actually building some help to help you actually like make sure they do these tests properly and publish the results and that'll be launching in probably about a month or so is time so you'll always get the information you asked for through FOI but as I said if the authority does have the information but won't release it there's some pretty specific guidance around what they have to do in order to withhold the information like it's basically published by default unless some specific things exist and FOI directory have a really good guide on exemptions as I said we're also working on making it easier to challenge these and another good resource is the ferret story lab they actually have a course on freedom of information which goes into like a lot more depth of like you know how to word these requests um so there are like a community-based journalism group in Scotland but most of the stuff they have would is related to um or applicable to UK law as well so I would say that's definitely worse just like 30 pounds it costs um to like really get a good sense of how they use FOI in their journalism and like loads of their stories that they brought out use FOI and they're really like good at it