Research:Freedom of Information Requests

This page documents Freedom of Information requests that are relevant to the Wikimedia movement's activities including sharing best practices in making successful requests.

What is an FOI request?

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What Countries can I do an FOI request in?

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What organisations can I do FOI requests

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How do I do an FOI request?

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This depends on the country of the organisation you are making the request to. Some pointers in chosing how to do an FOI request:

  • Make your requests and the responses public, sites such as whatdotheyknow.com allow you to do this

Please feel free to give recommendations below and sign your name:

United Kingdom

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  • WhatDoTheyKnow.com

United States

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  • muckrock.com

Germany

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  • fragdenstaat.de

Many countries

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  • alaveteli.org/deployments/

How should I write an FOI request?

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Commercial image library sales information

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Relevance

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Publicly funded organisations often operate commercial image libraries which are often in direct competition with the organisation's educational mission. FOI requests allow all parties to understand if this is a worthwhile process.

Please use the following table:

Organisation Question/s Response Associated costs Income Link to FOI request Notes
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United Kingdom

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Successful requests
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Organisation Question/s Response Associated costs Income Link to FOI request Notes
Geffrye Museum Please could you tell me much profit, giving a year by year breakdown (after all expenses and associated costs are deducted) has the Geffrye Museum made from image sales for the past 10 years or as many as the service has been running for if less than 10 years. Please find attached the list of very modest sales of images from the

Geffrye picture library over the last 10 years.

The sales are small as we have not, until now, actively developed the picture library to make available to the wider public.

Unfortunately I do not have the information relating to specific costs related to these sales.

I hope this is helpful to your enquiry.

Information not known by organisation

2003:£1,415
2004:£907
2005:£2,801
2006:£862
2007:£1,062
2008:£2,546
2009:£960
2010:£1,403
2011:£1,015
2012:£1,432
2013:£2,461

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Incomplete requests
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Organisation Question/s Response Associated costs Income Link to FOI request Notes
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Refused requests
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Organisation Question/s Response Associated costs Income Link to FOI request Notes
The Tate Gallery Please could you tell me how much profit, giving a year by year breakdown (after all expenses and associated costs are deducted) has the Tate (London, Liverpool and St. Ives, Cornwall) made fromimage sales for the past 10 years or as many as the service has been running for if less than 10 years. For this particular request, the information is actually held by Tate Enterprises Ltd which is a separate legal entity. May we suggest you contact Tate Enterprises Ltd directly who I’m sure will be happy to assist. Please contact Sarah Rogers, Head of Finance, Tate Enterprises Ltd [2]
Victoria and Albert Museum Please could you tell me how much profit, giving a year by year breakdown (after all expenses and associated costs are deducted) has the Victoria and Albert Museum made from image sales for the past 10 years or as many as the service has been running for if less than 10 years. Thank you for your enquiry addressed to the V&A concerning image sales. I am replying on behalf of V&A Enterprises, a separate organisation wholly owned by the V&A, which handles image sales. I apologise that our

response has been delayed.

V&A Enterprises does hold figures demonstrating the profitability of V&A Images, but these are not disclosed in the Company's published accounts. The figures we hold are subject to the internal allocation of the direct and indirect costs attributable to this section of the company's business. They cannot reliably be used for a comparison with any other institution, but their release would nevertheless be commercially damaging to the business. We have concluded, therefore that the information is exempt from release under section 43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act (commercial interests).

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Possible requests
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