Privileges for Public Authority Users

[mysociety]

Privileges for Public Authority Users

[hsenag]

#427 - make the domain matching logic more sophisticated to avoid the webmail/ISP problem

[RichardTaylor]

Noting a case where a user made a FOI request to a public body by sending them a message via their user page rather than making a request via their body page.

An approach to dealing with public body users should seek to prevent such confusion.

[RichardTaylor]

Noting we do actually have public body users on WhatDoTheyKnow. We see them monitoring the site, and sometimes classifying requests and adding annotations.

[RichardTaylor]

We could let public bodies add / update their logos

#6172

and an illustrative photo

mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme#880

[RichardTaylor]

Idea related to this - site banners shown only to public body users. We could specifically target some messages to users with a public body address, and perhaps more broadly a .gov.uk

[RichardTaylor]

Allow public body users to re-open correspondence threads which are closed to new responses. (ie. go further than "More structured way to request reopening of correspondence - #6791 ). [Idea noted from Slack]

[RichardTaylor]

Increasingly public bodies are offering advice as to how requesters could check their website for information before making a request.

We already offer links to disclosure logs and publication schemes and encourage users to search public body websites, and previous releases.

We could offer a "public body note" but it might need to be moderated or they might direct people to their own web-forms using it!

Perhaps its best that site admins add these kind of advice notes as has been done for example at https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/council_of_the_isles_of_scilly and https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/south_yorkshire_pensions_authority