Glossary
Domain terms for the FragDenStaat.de API, in English with the German term. Enum
values are the verbatim machine values; German labels are what the API returns in
readable_status / *_name fields.
The platform
FragDenStaat.de — Germany’s central Freedom-of-Information (Informationsfreiheit) portal, run by the Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland e.V. Users file FOI requests to public bodies; the platform sends them by email, receives the replies, and publishes both request and response. The underlying software is Froide (open source, MIT).
FOI request (Informationsfreiheitsanfrage) — a citizen’s request for access to
records held by a public body, under a Freedom-of-Information law. The central
resource of the API (request), ~285,000 of them.
Request lifecycle — status
The status field on a request; the German label comes back in readable_status.
| Value | German label | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
awaiting_user_confirmation |
Warte auf Nutzerbestätigung | Created; waiting for the user to confirm before it is sent. |
publicbody_needed |
Behörde benötigt | No recipient body chosen yet. |
awaiting_publicbody_confirmation |
Warte auf Bestätigung der Behörde | Sent to a body whose address/existence is unconfirmed. |
awaiting_response |
Warte auf Antwort | Delivered; waiting for the reply — the normal open state. |
awaiting_classification |
Anfrage muss klassifiziert werden | A reply arrived; the user must set the outcome. |
asleep |
Anfrage eingeschlafen | Dormant — no activity for a long time. |
resolved |
Anfrage abgeschlossen | Closed; a final resolution has been set. |
Outcome — resolution
Only meaningful once status = resolved; an empty string "" otherwise.
| Value | German label | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
successful |
Anfrage erfolgreich | Information was provided in full. |
partially_successful |
Anfrage teilweise erfolgreich | Some provided, some withheld. |
not_held |
Information nicht vorhanden | The body does not hold the information. |
refused |
Anfrage abgelehnt | Access denied (see refusal_reason). |
user_withdrew |
Anfrage zurückgezogen | The requester withdrew it. |
user_withdrew_costs |
Zurückgezogen wegen Kosten | Withdrawn because of the fees demanded. |
FOI laws — law
FragDenStaat models ~189 distinct legal bases across federal, state, and local level. The three federal pillars:
- IFG — Informationsfreiheitsgesetz (Freedom of Information Act): general access to federal-government records.
- UIG — Umweltinformationsgesetz (Environmental Information Act): access to environmental information (implements the EU/Aarhus regime; states have their own, e.g. HUIG in Hessen).
- VIG — Verbraucherinformationsgesetz (Consumer Information Act): access to consumer-protection / food-safety information.
Most Länder have their own IFG or Transparenzgesetz (transparency act), but
not all: the catalogue lists neither for Bayern or Niedersachsen (checked
2026-09-15). Many districts/municipalities add a local Informationsfreiheitssatzung
— which is why the count is 189, not 3. A meta law (meta: true) bundles several laws a
requester can invoke together (combined[] lists them). Each law records a statutory
max_response_time (+ max_response_time_unit, e.g. working_day, month_de) and
whether it requires_signature.
Jurisdiction — jurisdiction
The legal/territorial scope a public body and its applicable law belong to. 18
in total: Bund (federal), the 16 Länder, and the Europäische Union.
Local Informationsfreiheitssatzungen have jurisdiction: null, so filtering laws
by a Land’s jurisdiction does not return them.
Other resources
| Term | German | Endpoint | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public body | Behörde | publicbody |
An authority that receives requests; has email, address, classification, jurisdiction, number_of_requests. |
| Classification | Behördentyp | classification |
Hierarchical taxonomy of the type of body (Ministerium, Grundschule, …). |
| Category | Thema | category |
Hierarchical topic taxonomy (is_topic flag) for requests/bodies. |
| Geo-region | Region | georegion |
A geographic area with a kind: country/state/district/municipality/zipcode… (~24,000). |
| Campaign | Kampagne | campaign |
A coordinated mass-request project (e.g. “Frag den Bundestag”). |
| Message | Nachricht | message |
One piece of correspondence within a request; kind = email/post/fax/upload/phone/visit/import. |
| Document | Dokument | document |
A published (often OCR’d) file extracted from FOI responses; has pages. |
| Attachment | Anhang | (embedded) | A file on a message; may exist in original and redacted variants. |
The wire format (Tastypie)
- List responses are a
{ meta, objects }envelope.meta={ limit, offset, total_count, next, previous };next/previousare full page URLs ornull. - Detail responses are the bare object.
- Related resources are hyperlinked as absolute
resource_uriURLs, not embedded (except a request’spublic_body, which is nested; and detail responses that inlinelaw/public_body/messages). - Page size (
limit) is hard-capped at 50 by the server; page withoffset. redacted_descriptionandredacted_*fields carry the redaction-safe variants — prefer them for republication (the corpus contains personal data).