Transparency
Limitations of this content
A single page collecting every limit stated across the site, so that what this project does not offer is unambiguous before anything here is relied upon.
No accreditation, no qualification
Open Data Desk is an independent editorial reference. It is not accredited, recognised, licensed or supervised by any educational, professional or regulatory authority, in Ireland or elsewhere. It runs no courses, lessons, programmes, examinations or individual tuition, enrols no students and issues no certificates, diplomas or attestations.
Reading this material confers no qualification, accreditation, professional registration or entitlement of any kind. Where a page describes a professional practice, it describes it; it does not qualify anyone to perform it.
Not legal or professional advice
Nothing on this site is legal advice, data-protection advice, or professional advice on any specific situation. Descriptions of access rights, data-protection duties, media law, copyright and defamation are general and simplified, are limited to the sources consulted on the dates recorded, and may have been superseded.
Rules differ between jurisdictions and change. For any concrete question — a request, a refusal, an appeal, a publication decision, a data-protection assessment or a threat of proceedings — the legislation in force and a qualified professional govern, and this project is a substitute for neither.
No guaranteed outcome
No page here promises a professional result. This site offers no placement, makes no introductions to newsrooms, secures no commissions and guarantees no publication, employment, funding or advancement.
Checklists and worked sequences make certain steps explicit. They do not replace professional judgement, do not guarantee that an analysis is free of error, and do not establish that a story is safe to publish.
The boundary on technique
The material covers publicly available records and lawfully obtained data. It does not describe, and will not describe, circumventing access controls, using credentials that are not yours, exploiting technical vulnerabilities, acquiring data of unclear origin, or obtaining information by deception or impersonation.
Open-source research remains subject to law and to data protection. Compiling information about identifiable people is processing personal data even where each item is public, and proportionality, security, minimisation and retention duties continue to apply. Take advice on your own situation.
No assistance with obtaining data
This project does not undertake research for third parties, does not obtain records or datasets on anyone's behalf, does not draft or submit access requests for others, and does not act as a recipient for confidential material. The enquiry form on the contact page is for questions about this site, not a channel for submitting documents.
Please do not send confidential documents, health information, credentials or anything that could identify a protected source. Material requiring protection should go to a publication with the legal and technical arrangements to receive it.
No endorsement of tools or organisations
Tools, platforms, registers, publishers and public bodies are named for identification and description only. No ranking, review, recommendation or endorsement is offered or implied, and no affiliate arrangement or commercial relationship exists with any of them.
Where a technique depends on a particular kind of tool, the page describes the category and the checks its use requires rather than directing a reader to a product.
Not a technical or security guide
The material describes editorial method. It is not a technical manual, and it does not instruct anyone in configuring software, hardening a device, running a network service or handling a security incident. Where a page mentions encryption of research files, access limits or separation of devices, it is naming a practice that has to be implemented with proper technical advice, not giving instructions sufficient to implement it.
Nothing here should be relied on as a source protection procedure. Protecting a source is a decision with legal, technical and organisational parts, taken inside a publication that has the arrangements for it, and a general description of good habits is not a substitute for that.
Audience and reading level
The material is written for adults, and it assumes a reader who is choosing to consult a reference rather than one being taught to a syllabus. It is not written for children, it is not a school resource, and it contains no exercises, assessments or progression of any kind.
It also assumes no professional status and confers none. Where a page describes a duty that falls on a publication or on a controller of personal data, it describes the duty in general terms; whether that duty falls on you, and what it requires of you, is a question for a qualified professional and for the rules in force where you work.
Availability, revision and the archive
No undertaking is given that a page will remain available, unchanged or at the same address. Pages are revised when sources change, and a page that can no longer be maintained accurately is withdrawn, with the withdrawal recorded on the index of pages. If you are relying on a passage, quote it with the date you consulted it and the review date shown at the foot of the page.
There is no subscription, no notification of changes and no published change feed. Each page carries its own review date, and substantive revisions are noted at the foot of the page concerned; that is the whole of the record a reader is offered, and it is deliberately kept where the text is rather than in a separate log that could fall out of step with it.
If you are not sure whether something applies to you
The most consequential misuse of a reference like this one is reading a general description as an answer about a particular situation. Three signals mean the page has run out: the question involves a deadline, it involves a named person or organisation, or the answer would determine whether something is published. In each case the material here can help you frame the question and cannot answer it.
The appropriate destinations are set out in the table below. This project cannot make a referral, cannot review a document and cannot say whether a specific piece of work is lawful, and a request of that kind will be answered by pointing back to this paragraph rather than by an assessment.
Limits of the figures and tools
Figures in examples are illustrative unless a source is named beside them. The calculator performs arithmetic on values a reader enters; it assesses no real survey or dataset, accounts for no source of error beyond sampling variation, and produces no advice.
Nothing entered into it is transmitted or stored anywhere, because the site has no server-side processing. The formula is displayed so that the calculation can be checked by hand.
Currency and errors
| Area | What is not provided | Where to go instead |
|---|---|---|
| Qualifications | Accreditation, certificates, tuition | Recognised educational institutions |
| Legal questions | Advice on a specific matter | A qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction |
| Data protection | Compliance assessment | A data-protection specialist; the supervisory authority |
| Career outcomes | Placement or introductions | Employers and professional bodies |
| Obtaining records | Requests made on your behalf | The public body's own request procedure |
| Tool selection | Recommendations or rankings | Independent technical evaluation |
Reporting a problem with a page
If a page appears inaccurate, outdated or misleading, a report through the contact page is welcome. Please name the page, quote the sentence in question and give a verifiable source. Reports are acknowledged within five working days, and where a report is not accepted the reason is given.
Material is reviewed at least annually and revised when a relevant source changes. Even so, a page reflects the sources available on its review date, and that date is shown at the foot of every page for exactly this reason.