An online Freedom of Information platform has launched a bid to promote journalists’ stories which are produced as a result of requests made under the legislation.

WhatDoTheyKnow, which archives FoI requests and also offers an online form allowing people to make and send them, has changed its site to enable news story links to be added to resulting responses.

It is hoped providing such links to stories produced as a result of FoIs made via the site will “serve to show others just what a simple FOI request can do”.

The change has been announced by Myfanwy Nixon, marketing and communications manager at mySociety, the not-for-profit social enterprise which runs WhatDoTheyKnow.

Myfanwy, pictured, said: “We’ve recently made a small change to WhatDoTheyKnow. Now, if your request has resulted in a news story, you can add the link as a ‘citation’.

“If you’re a journalist or a campaigner, we hope this is a useful way to give your stories some more readership (not to mention a nice inbound link from a high-ranked site for your search engine ratings).

“And if you’re simply a citizen whose request was picked up by the press, there’s now a way to share how the information you’ve obtained fits into the news agenda.

“There’s a benefit for the wider transparency community, too. We think that, in aggregate, these links will serve to show others just what a simple FOI request can do.”

More information can be found here.