# How to request public data in open formats

Draft FOIA requests under Romanian Law 544/2001 and Law 179/2022 to receive machine-readable data.

## 1. Check existing public catalogue releases

Search data.gov.ro and institutional portals before filing a formal request. Citing existing entries saves administrative time.

[data.gov.ro](https://mariuscomper.uk/cunoastere-deschisa/en/resurse/data-gov/)

## 2. Cite the statutory open-format mandate

Explicitly cite Article 5 of Law 544/2001 in conjunction with Law 179/2022 on public sector information reuse, obliging authorities to supply machine-readable files (CSV, JSON, XML).

[Romanian legislative portal](https://mariuscomper.uk/cunoastere-deschisa/en/resurse/legislatie/)

## 3. Request column metadata dictionaries

Ask for column definitions and nomenclature codelists. Tabular dumps without metadata definitions are frequently unusable for empirical analysis.

[DCAT-AP 3.0.1](https://mariuscomper.uk/cunoastere-deschisa/en/resurse/dcat-ap/)

## Caution

Public bodies often supply scanned PDF images in response to FOIA inquiries. State explicitly in your request that image formats are unacceptable when source data is managed in databases.

A legally structured FOIA request template tailored for open-data requisitions with mandatory machine-readable citations.