Alaveteli is an open source platform deployed in 20+ countries that helps citizens make Freedom of Information requests and publishes them and the responses online. Access to Information laws are powerful tools by which citizens, journalists, and civil society organisations can obtain information to scrutinise government, and an important prerequisite for accountability and participation, and one of the cornerstones of a healthy democracy.
Alaveteli’s architecture, designed long before the introduction of GDPR, presents difficulties in balancing public access to information with individual data rights. The project aims to redesign and replace Alaveteli’s antiquated search architecture and technology and implement key missing functionality to effectively locate and, when appropriate, remove personally identifiable information to ensure GDPR compliance.