AskYourState - Freedom of Information Portal which digitizes the Principle of Public Access
| Reference number | |
| Coordinator | Open Knowledge Sweden |
| Funding from Vinnova | SEK 100 000 |
| Project duration | May 2015 - December 2016 |
| Status | Completed |
Important results from the project
We have made available a central channel for users and the public sector. It can be the basis for creating, viewing, and analyzing the social, economic and ecological value released by official documents. Overall, it shows how a stronger Freedom of Information, primarily through open data will benefit societal development in Sweden through an open platform. The project has embarked on a journey to show the public value of transparent processes and data with public documents which are published, as well as societal value by pro-active and continuous releases of open data.
Expected long term effects
The platform has begun to demonstrate how deep powerful public documents are as open data. There are users that during the test phase, use the FrågaStaten-platform as their de-facto standard channel to request public documents and so save society significant resources, which bodes well. Mentioned in the Memorandum ´Mediepolitiska slutsatser och visioner´ by Mediautredningen (SOU 2016: 80) as a good example of the use of public information in the public sphere. The proposed future shape of media support benefits the new players can make use of FrågaStaten.
Approach and implementation
With the agile and dynamic methodology that we worked with, we have learned about the bad situation that Freedom of Information and transparency in Sweden is in since several years. The platform has enabled democratic transparency on a scale that Sweden has not seen before. Feedback on the project´s purpose and function has been convincingly positive. Feedback is continually in for improvement. The project benefited greatly during time periods it had extra help from volunteers. Therefore it is key to the further success of the project to involve more people for Freedom of Information.