"While academic studies on the impact of FOI are still surprisingly few and far between, many more studies are available as institutional reports (e.g. the 14-country study by the Open Society Foundations in 2006). Around the world, government and non-governmental organisations are launching web platforms enabling people to make FOI requests (we found at least 34, at different stages of implementation and use). However, studies of online FOI impact are scarce. We only found six such studies of online FOI sites – one brief Spanish-language report on the government sites in Brasil, Chile and Mexico (Fumega, 2014), and other reports of the CSO [Civil Society Organisations] sites in Chile, Spain, Uruguay and the European Union – and one experimental study of 300 emails sent to government offices in Italy. This makes it difficult to separate the “added value” of online requests and responses from that of offline ones. In theory, online FOI should reflect the same benefits found for ICTs in general transparency and accountability literature: ease of access, ease of request and response, the “multiplier” effect of many groups accessing the same information, building on it and sharing it, the “glare effect” of information being much more visible, and generally beating the path to accountability. However, both offline and online, FOI faces similar challenges: impact and the transition from transparency to accountability; equitable access, security and privacy; cost and time burden both to requester and responder; institutional and public perception; and complex roles of CSOs and the media." (Executive summary)