Blog post - requests arising from the current hot weather in the UK

[RichardTaylor]

Are people asking for information like the temperatures of prison cells and police custody suites?

Searching reveals one request seeking a transcript of a reported phone call during which the Prime Minister was briefed about the impending high temperatures:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/transcript_of_the_telephone_call

[RichardTaylor]

More requests

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/search/15/07/2022..22/07/2022%20AND%20variety:sent%20%20(temperature%20OR%20heat%20OR%20heatwave%20OR%20temperatures)/all

[RichardTaylor]

Could mention the listing of

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/national_fire_chiefs_council

and the unclear FOI status of that body.

[garethrees]

Has this ship sailed? Might be worth reopening next year as we'll undoubtably find ourselves in the same situation?

[mdeuk]

Has this ship sailed? Might be worth reopening next year as we'll undoubtably find ourselves in the same situation?

Actually, I think we might be in a better position, as many of the requests will now have responses.

Consider, say, this user's requests regarding infrastructure, and add in some others which @RichardTaylor identified, and there could be an interesting blog.

Perhaps, thinking along the lines of cross-promotion - we very conveniently have a Climate Emergency related service, and some lovely colleagues in mySoc's Climate team - maybe they have a view on how we could present data in a meaningful way which might help users engage with CAPE?

[garethrees]

@ajparsons and @zarino might have a better sense of that than I!

[ajparsons]

In principle a fan of writing and publishing whenever and then just republishing when at maximum relevance.

[ajparsons]

I'm self assigning, will see if I can revisit before the climate newsletter next month.

[zarino]

Aside from blog posts, on the potential for cross-promotion inside the websites themselves… I’m reminded of this ticket about linking between local authority pages on WDTK and CAPE. I guess, if these hot weather requests were tagged with their local authority’s cape tag, then something similar could be done for those. Eg: "This is a request about Merseyrail’s climate response. Visit CAPE to see more about Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s actions on climate." (He says, knowing very little about how the new Alaveteli tagging functionality works.)

[FOIMonkey]

Tag based notes are amazing in all ways and super flexible. Abused my admin powers to tag this request as a test. Was this the sort of thing you had in mind?

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/climate_emergency_staff_training

We're talking about ways to use the notes on tomorrow's activism call, so I'll make sure to raise it.

[zarino]

@FOIMonkey Exactly that sort of thing. I mean, I’ve not given much thought to it, and wouldn’t want to encourage something that will add maintenance burden to WDTK. But if the volunteers think it’d be a worthwile thing to add, we certainly wouldn’t complain.

[mdeuk]

I guess, if these hot weather requests were tagged with their local authority’s cape tag, then something similar could be done for those. Eg: "This is a request about Merseyrail’s climate response. Visit CAPE to see more about Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s actions on climate." (He says, knowing very little about how the new Alaveteli tagging functionality works.)

AFAIK, we can't refer to variables in the tags themselves yet ¹, but that doesn't mean we couldn't do this on a small scale!

As @FOIMonkey states, the functionality is "amazing in all ways and super flexible". 😄

Footnotes

1. e.g. dynamically pulling a link in / tagging based on key:value https://github.com/mysociety/alaveteli/issues/7293 ↩

[FOIMonkey]

I think it'd be a great thing to do. Once a note is written, it only takes a few seconds to tag a request to add it.

[garethrees]

It's July again! Reopen if we have anything to say this year.