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.

FAQ

What Countries can I do an FOI request in?

• EU: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=URISERV:l28091

How do I do an FOI request?

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

• WhatDoTheyKnow.com

United States

• muckrock.com

Germany

• fragdenstaat.de

Many countries

• alaveteli.org/deployments/

Commercial image library sales information

Relevance

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
replace	replace	replace	replace	replace	replace	replace

United Kingdom

Successful requests

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	[1]

Incomplete requests

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

Refused requests

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).			[3]