FOI Forest
The searchable, centralised archive of Australian FOI releases
FOI Forest is an unofficial, independently maintained archive of Australian government Freedom of Information disclosure logs. It currently collects disclosure logs from — federal agencies, comprising — entries, into a single, consistently structured, searchable dataset.
Why this exists
Under the Freedom of Information Act 1982, anyone has the right to request access to documents held by Australian federal government agencies. Agencies are required to publish a disclosure log, which serves as a public record of documents released in response to FOI requests. This allows others to access information that has already been made available.
In practice, I find trying to find information in FOI disclosure logs frustrating. Each agency has its own log (in some cases multiple logs) which are often hard to find, inconsistent in structure, and difficult to search. Finding out what’s been released on a particular topic across agencies means checking each one manually. This makes it difficult to see patterns across agencies or to analyse the data. FOI is intended to make government more transparent, but the fragmentation of disclosure logs undermines that goal.
I decided to create FOI Forest to fix that.
Data and updates
Each agency’s disclosure log is collected and processed into a standard schema that includes agency, reference number, date, description, and document links where available. The pipeline runs every weekday, so data is usually current within a day or two.
This is an independent project maintained alongside a full-time job. I’ll fix errors as quickly as I can, but I can’t make guarantees about uptime or turnaround times. If something looks wrong, please get in touch.
The underlying datasets are available for download on the Data page under a CC0 licence. Attribution is appreciated but not required.
About me
I’m Gabrielle Josling, a data scientist based in Melbourne. Outside my day job, I work on independent projects that examine how data moves through organisations, how decisions are made, and where responsibility sits. You can find more of my work at Mind Your Own Data.
Funding
FOI Forest has no funding and is not commercial. It costs a small amount to run, which I cover myself.
Built with
Most of the code is written in R. The site is built with Quarto and hosted on Netlify. Analytics are provided by Plausible. The dataset is stored on Cloudflare R2.
Some parts of the code were developed with the assistance of a large language model. The data pipeline, schema design, scraping logic, and privacy decisions are my own work. The model was used to extend patterns I had already established, and all generated code was reviewed and tested by me.
Contact
I’d love to hear from you, whether you’ve spotted an error, want to suggest an agency to add, have ideas for features, or just want to let me know you’re finding it useful. You can reach me at gabrielle@foiforest.org or on Signal (gabriellejosling.01).