A behind-the-scenes look at how Fiquem Sabendo uses Brazil’s FOI law to unlock data and support investigative journalism.

Maria Vitória Ramos, Co-founder and Director of Fiquem Sabendo, shares how the organisation prepares requests, processes government data, and supports journalists in turning information into impactful reporting.

Fiquem Sabendo is a non-profit newsroom and data agency that uses Brazil’s access to information law to uncover and share government data with journalists and the public. Since its founding, the team has released over a thousand new public datasets and trained thousands of journalists and citizens to make effective FOI requests. They also publish the popular newsletter Don’t LAI to Me, bringing transparency stories to a wide audience.

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Music: Serge Pavkin Music (Pixabay licence)

0:00 Julia: We are joined by the wonderful Maria Vitória Ramos from Fiquem Sabendo in Brazil. Some of you may already know her from her fantastic presentation at TICTeC in London in 2024: I think it was a highlight for lots of people, including myself.

0:12 If you haven’t come across their work before, Fiquem Sabendo is a nonprofit newsroom and data agency that uses Brazil’s Freedom of Information laws to unlock public data and make it useful for journalists, civil society organisations and the public.

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Discover how three organisations are using crowdsourcing and Access to Information laws to uncover data, monitor public projects, and drive accountability.

Access to Information (ATI) is the more internationally-recognised term for FOI or FOIA. Its laws make it possible to piece together insights from many different public authorities, creating a fuller picture of how decisions are made and resources are used.

This session explores how ATI empowers communities, volunteers, and civil society groups to use information requests to assemble datasets, track public projects, and enhance accountability through collective inquiry.

Hear from three projects that have turned transparency into a community effort with fantastic results! We’ve got fantastic speakers from across the globe:

• Nnenna Eze from PPDC Nigeria
• Marzena Błaszczyk from Citizens Network Watchdog Poland
• Stefan Wehrmeyer from FragDenStaat in Germany

Definitions:

• MDA – Ministries, Departments, and Agencies
• DEX – Digital Employee Experience

Credits:

Music by HigherUniversalMan, Pixabay free usage licence.

0:00 Julia: Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for today’s webinar, which is Networked auditors: crowdsourcing and community-led ATI.

0:06 My name is Julia Cushion. I’m the Policy and Advocacy Manager here at mySociety, and I’m really delighted to welcome you to this session, which is part of our Access to Information Community of Practice. (more…)

This recording is from a TICTeC gathering on the latest techniques to help civic and pro-democracy tech projects protect their services, data and users.

Across the world, websites and apps that promote democratic transparency and citizen participation are experiencing more sophisticated cyber attacks.

We hear some of the latest techniques to help civic and pro-democracy tech projects protect their services, data and users, covering specific internet freedom tools, how they’re being tested and integrated amongst pro-democracy actors globally, as well as the challenges of sustaining protection.

• Patricia Musomba, The Engine Room. Patricia is passionate about empowering at-risk communities to enhance their digital resilience through capacity building and tailored support. Patricia talks about The Engine Room’s Cybersecurity Assessment Tool (CAT), which is designed to measure the maturity, resiliency, and strength of an organisation’s cybersecurity efforts.
• Hui Hui Ooi, Advisor, Technology & Democracy at the International Republican Institute (IRI). Hui Hui shares lessons from IRI’s internet freedom user testing programme and how they could be integrated into the civic tech community. She also emphasises the importance of internet freedom tool developers working hand in hand with users at risk to conduct tool testing to ensure tool adoption and improve trust.
• Jocelyn Woolbright, Program Manager at Cloudflare Impact, and part of Cloudflare’s Project Galileo team. Since 2014, Project Galileo has been providing free cybersecurity to more than 3,000 at-risk websites from around the world, protecting them against attacks such as DDoS, web exploits, phishing, and automated bot traffic. Jocelyn discusses the full range of support provided and explain exactly how civic tech organisations can get involved and apply for this critical protection.

• The Engine Room’s Cyber CAT project
• CloudFlare’s Project Galileo
• TICTeC’s Democratic Transparency community of practice
• Find our podcasts useful? Please donate!

0:04 Gemma Moulder Hello everybody. I’m Gemma. I’m mySociety’s Events and Engagement Manager. And thank you for joining us today for this TICTeC community gathering. And thank you to NED for supporting TICTeC this year.

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