FOI Man

March 6, 2012

Prime Minister comes out against FOI

Filed under: Freedom of Information Act,Open Data,Save FOI Campaign — FOIMan @ 8:11 pm

FOI Man puts his head in his hands over Prime Minister David Cameron’s latest comments on FOI.

Earlier today the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude was once again calling for more transparency in a talk to delegates at the Information Commissioner’s Data Protection Officers Conference. He gave the usual speech about the value of transparency, good for the economy, how it got governments “out of their comfort zones”. Yada yada yada.

As usual, there was no mention of FOI. It always seems odd to me that with the Cabinet Office embracing transparency quite so warmly, there is little mention at any time of the piece of legislation that has arguably done most to facilitate Government openness.

Also today, you may have spotted that the Government’s favourite Think Tank, Policy Exchange, published a report on transparency and open data. But once again, very little mention of FOI.

And now we know why. Because right at the top of Government, the man in charge thinks we’ve got it all wrong (the relevant bit is about 5 minutes from the end). FOI isn’t about what we want to know about. “Real freedom of information,” says David Cameron, “is the money that goes in and the results that come out”. We’re looking “through the wrong end of the telescope” apparently, wanting all this information about the process of governing and making decisions. And it’s “furring up the arteries” of Government.

The Government’s transparency agenda is great. I’m certainly not going to complain about it, and I’d encourage FOI Officers everywhere to see if they can get involved with it. But how the Prime Minister described FOI is exactly why we should have the general right of access (as it’s called) under FOI. We no longer live in a society where people are satisfied with being told “here’s what we the people running the country are prepared to give you – now go away and amuse yourselves with your iphone gadgets and wotnot while we get on with the important work”. Transparency is not enough if it means being grateful for what we’re given. True transparency allows individuals to interrogate their Government and other public bodies.

Some people think, I’m sure, that I’m making too much of all this FOI stuff. But it’s important. Let me explain why.

FOI is a way for individual people to take part in politics. Every election in recent history has prompted a debate about how people can be more involved in democracy, how can we get more people interested? How can we get people voting? Yet right here we have a mechanism which is used by real people – individuals (who in fact make most of the FOI requests, whatever some would like to suggest about the media and business) – who are engaging directly with public bodies to find out what they want to know. And what happens? There’s a post-legislative scrutiny and public bodies and politicians queue up to say that their interest in public life is too expensive and inconvenient.

It’s not just about individual people being able to ask questions and get answers, though. It’s about providing a further check and balance on those in power. Put simply, many eyes are better than few.

And some public bodies really do benefit from that extra scrutiny. Take the Greater London Authority, where I used to work. The GLA, as many of you will know, is the home of the Mayor of London. There has only been a Mayor, and a GLA, for the last 12 years – the whole thing was a creation of the Labour Government. The Mayor is supposed to be held to account by the London Assembly, a group of 25 elected members. But in effect, the Assembly has always had limited power to rein in the Mayor, not least because of its party politics. In that vacuum of accountability, FOI played an unintended, but essential role in keeping the Mayor and his appointees in check. They didn’t like it (either of the administrations), but it worked. They knew they were being watched, and when they did stupid or controversial things, FOI meant that people could find out about it. And with more councils moving to directly elected Mayors, that’s a lesson that others should learn from.

That experience confirmed me in the view that FOI can be, and should be, a powerful tool in governance of the public sector. What I find sad about the comments from David Cameron today, and those of his predecessor Tony Blair, not to mention Gus O’Donnell and the many council leaders who have attacked FOI, is that if they got behind the legislation, insisted that the public sector had to accept it and adapt to embed it in its processes, then it really could work very well. Public bodies would be more efficient because the information would flow inside them more effectively. There would be less security breaches and leaks because public bodies would be able to focus their attention on the most sensitive data. People really would start to have more trust in government at all levels because public bodies treated them with respect by answering their questions without grumbling.

But these benefits will never be fully garnered. Too many politicians and public servants have a blind spot about FOI. David Cameron, elsewhere in his session with the Liaison Committee, talked about the importance of accountability of public bodies to individuals – schools to parents, hospitals to patients and so on. Yet he can’t see that FOI offers that, and that by attacking it, he is, in effect, contradicting himself. I’ve seen the same thing happen with perfectly reasonable colleagues. They believe in public service and being accountable. But they get an FOI request to deal with and they start frothing at the mouth and panicking about how to answer it. Even when the answer is perfectly straightforward and the actions taken that are the subject of the request are utterly reasonable.

So I fear that even if our Save FOI campaign works, and we avoid the Act being watered down, FOI will continue to be an add-on in most public servants’ eyes. We FOI Officers will struggle on in the face of begrudging compliance from colleagues. We’ll have to defend something that we shouldn’t have to defend because our so-called leaders refuse to accept the will of Parliament and make it clear that answering questions is an integral part of providing a public service.

September 18, 2011

My FOI Wishlist – Part I

Filed under: Amendments,Freedom of Information Act,Open Data — admin @ 11:25 am
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FOI Man considers what he would change about the FOI Act – and struggles.

Recently I was asked what my FOI wishlist was. If I could make any change to FOI what would it be?

And I struggled. Despite ten years (in one way or another) working in this area, and almost a year of blogging about it, I found myself thrashing wildly about and failing to come up with something convincing or worthwhile. I wondered why that was.

After a week or so, I think I know why I found this question so difficult. The truth is that I’m not particularly convinced of the need for massive change to the FOI Act.

When I look back through the last year’s posts, it becomes clear to me what my view on this is. The problems that do exist with FOI are all to do with attitudes to the legislation and the openness agenda. Very few are to do with the legislation itself.

On the inside of the public sector, the problems as I see them are a continued cynicism from some at the highest level, and a failure to understand the benefits that greater openness will bring. On the outside, the issue is irresponsible use of FOI – the vexatious requesters, the people who see FOI as a handy method of beating up public officials that for whatever reason they despise, the ones who fire off huge numbers of requests without any consideration of the public money that will have to be spent. These attitudes are the biggest threat to FOI.

The legislation itself is not perfect – nothing is. But it pretty much does what it says on the tin, to borrow a phrase from commercial marketing. It has freed up public sector information to a massive degree within a very short period. It’s easy to focus on the things that aren’t quite right or could be better, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But we ought to remember that the majority of requests for information are fully met. When complaints are made to the Commissioner or the Tribunal, those bodies take a much more pro-openness approach than anyone dared hope before 2005. They have set a high bar and public bodies are, by and large, learning to reach it and sometimes even exceed it.

It’s worth remembering what an ambitious target the FOI Act set. Not only was it aiming to produce a massive culture change at the heart of Government, it was also asking thousands of other public bodies, right down to your local chemist, GP and school, to embrace that change. Bodies that most people hadn’t even realised WERE public bodies. The fact that most of the time people DO get information when they ask for it means that FOI is working.

The picture in the average public sector office right now is not what it was seven, or even five years, ago. Not only FOI Officers but also other public servants are casually familiar with the requirements of FOI. It is still scary for them, but it is no longer shocking.

The key, in my view, is gradual, but constant change. The current Government has so far made it very clear that it wants more transparency in the public sector. Its recent consultation paper on open government and the FOI provisions in the Protection of Freedoms Bill both make broadly sensible proposals to enhance the FOI Act, especially in relation to publication of datasets (as long as we can get better definition of what a dataset is, of course, but that’s another post). I’d encourage anyone reading this post to make sure that they respond to the consultation.

The priority for me is protecting the rights that we do have (and I say ‘we’ deliberately – many public employees have used FOI outside of work). I have to say that many of the suggestions for reform of FOI that I hear – and even some that I’ve thought about – are, when it comes down to it, about restricting these rights. Whether it’s charging for requests, placing a limit on requests, or whatever it is, they’re all about cutting down on FOI requests. We have to question our motives for wanting to restrict a right this hardly won.

In my view, this Government should focus on making very clear that it supports FOI, and specifically the right to make FOI requests. It should lead from the front and keep publishing more information. It should firmly refuse any suggestions from senior public officials or politicians to water down FOI. In the meantime, the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Ministry of Justice should find better ways to provide support to public bodies in meeting their obligations – the ICO can’t always rise above the fray. And they should do more to encourage responsible use of these rights by those making FOI requests.

We need to keep progress going, but let’s not lose the chance to continue winning over influential critics. Resist more restrictions certainly – backwards is not the right direction. But we need to be careful not to destroy a growing acceptance and even, possibly, nascent enthusiasm to find new more transparent ways of working by only noticing the weaknesses and pushing too hard.

In a forthcoming post, I will talk about the ‘tweaks’ that I think could be made to the FOI Act without damaging the rights we have.

August 28, 2011

What’s wrong with FOI?

Filed under: Freedom of Information Act,Open Data,Politics — admin @ 5:39 pm
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FOI Man makes the case for and against FOI and more transparency – what do you think?

It’s very easy for an FOI Officer to find fault with FOI. But hopefully regular readers will have picked up by now that I support FOI and moves towards openness in the public sector.

Unlike some, I don’t have any beef with particular groups who use FOI. Let’s look at the usual suspects.

Of course businesses use it to draw up contact lists for marketing, or to build databases which they will then sell at profit. It’s their right, and those who promote FOI in Government think this is a “good thing”. It is a mechanism that allows information collected or created at public expense to stimulate the economy. It is a strong justification of FOI in a largely market-based economy. It is why Conservative, as much as Liberal Democrat and Labour supporters, feel able to support openness initiatives.

Students use it to research their degree projects. So what? It’s good that they have the nous to use a facility such as FOI. We only have to provide what we have and if the cost is excessive we have an answer to that. It’s frankly not true that, as some would have it, we have to do their work for them – if information is publicly available to them, we just have to point them in the right direction and if necessary cite the exemption for information that is otherwise accessible.

It’s a good thing that journalists use FOI. I’d rather see stories based on evidence that I’ve helped provide than see badly researched sensationalism in the papers. Surely I’m not the only FOI Officer that gets a buzz when I see something I’ve provided mentioned in the Press? I sympathise with those who have become jaded because of the attitude of some (not all, or even most) journalists, and the way that some disclosures have been presented, but the answer is to remain positive and open, not to become defensive. Otherwise we just reinforce negative attitudes to the public sector in the media.

Users of WhatDoTheyKnow are using a service to make requests. It’s marginally easier to make a request using it than sending an email. Some will abuse that ease, but that’s going to happen with any route made available. And by engaging with those who work for and with WDTK, we have an opportunity to encourage responsible behaviour amongst requesters.

My point is that we can’t have a right and then quibble about who’s “allowed” to use it. And FOI is an important right. Whether we like it or not, it has become an internationally recognised badge of a free and democratic society. It’s as much about demonstrating our aspirations as a modern and progressive country as it is about accountability and transparency. This is one reason that I was disappointed by Tony Blair’s admittance in his autobiography that he considered FOI a mistake. If that’s true, that’s not only hindsight, but also short sight.

That said, of course, it’s very easy for supporters and users of FOI to become blinkered. One of the vaguely articulated aims of this blog is to demonstrate the impact that the legislation, and people’s use of it, has on public authorities and the services that they provide. It is neither perfect nor pain-free. And maintaining it, somewhere down the line, means choosing between FOI and provision of other services.

I’ve said previously that I am irritated by statements such as “it’s our information”. Aside from the fact that it is legally inaccurate, it is hopelessly impractical. Information is collected by public bodies so that they can provide the services that some or all of us rely on. Often, the provision of those services will be compatible with, and may even be served by, disclosure of the collected information to the public. But on occasion, it just isn’t possible, and it wouldn’t be in our interests (as a society) to do so. It’s not that I view Government as always benevolent and paternal, or take a view that we should accept what we’re given without question. But I do accept that at least some of the time, things work better without me or others knowing every last detail. If only because the physical means of disseminating that level of information will get in the way of the provision of essential services.

If FOI and other transparency initiatives are going to work, they have to be managed as a process. That means, I’m afraid, refusing requests that will cost too much. Recognising that some people do abuse the privilege and turning them away. And using exemptions where we have concerns over the impact of disclosure of certain information. It means thinking carefully about the resource implications (I know, dirty words in the public sector at the moment) of more transparency. I think it also means looking at how transparency and FOI can contribute to the wider aims of the public sector. It has to be more obvious to public servants what the point of openness is, beyond satisfying curiosity. Can it help us make the savings expected of us? Are there ways that it can be built into our processes to make them more (and not less) effective? What are the wider benefits to our society?

So what do you think? Do you have any ideas about the future of FOI and how it can be made to work better? I’m particularly interested in hearing your constructive comments on FOI and transparency (rather than the knee-jerk reactions that we’re all prone to when we feel very strongly about something). Let me know by commenting here, or via Twitter (@foimanuk).

August 4, 2011

FOI 2.0

Filed under: Amendments,Freedom of Information Act,Open Data — admin @ 2:03 pm
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FOI Man looks at the Government’s latest proposals for FOI 2.0.

The Government has launched a new consultation looking at Open Data and transparency in public services. I’m all for progress in this field.

I wanted to focus though on what the Government is saying about FOI specifically in this report. It suggests the following:

  • establishing the principle that data/information not subject to exemptions should be published;
  • a new requirement that all public bodies/providers of public services should proactively publish information about the services they provide;
  • an enhanced right of challenge against decisions not to publish data to an independent body (I’m really hoping that they’re thinking about the Information Commissioner, and not another body to confuse matters);
  • reform of the fees regulations – notably raising the ‘acceptable limit’;
  • reviewing the Information Commissioner’s powers;
  • statutory limits for internal reviews;
  • using procurement rules to ensure that new ICT systems are designed to facilitate the publication of data;
  • phased introduction of new generation of ICT systems that facilitate publication of data.

I don’t have a significant problem with individual proposals here. I worry about the practical implications of making it all work, especially at a time when the public sector is cutting staff. But I’m sure that Government, enlightened by the responses to its consultation, will factor all that in and make sure that adequate resources are provided.

My main concern is the general tone of this section of the report. In common with many reports by this Government, the underlying message is that public sector bodies and their employees are the problem. In this case, we’re clearly doing all we can to thwart openness. We’re only refusing requests that exceed the ‘acceptable limit’ because we can. All internal reviews are being delayed as long as possible, just because we can. We’re deliberately procuring ICT systems that make it difficult to publish data just so we can argue that it will cost too much to publish it.

No, no, no. I’m sure that some of you reading this will immediately respond that that reflects your experience of public bodies and FOI. And no doubt you have had bad experiences, or felt that you’d had a bad experience because your request was refused. But just because you didn’t get the outcome you wanted, or you had a bad experience with an authority that got it wrong, doesn’t mean that all public bodies are actively anti-openness.

As I’ve tried to make clear in this blog on a regular basis, the biggest obstacle to openness is the resource implication. Not only does it stop you getting information when your request exceeds the ‘appropriate limit’, but it’s also behind 90% of the disputes that I have with colleagues over disclosure – they’re not secretive, they’re busy; and the experience of having to carry out their main function whilst also digging out information  poisons the minds of some officials to FOI in the long term. It’s a real issue. And you can hit us over the head and tell us how awful we are as much as you like, making FOI and openness work is about winning people round so that they can think about these issues positively rather than under duress.

So here are my proposals for a better, more effective FOI regime:

  • more powers for the Information Commissioner;
  • even more important, more resources for the Information Commissioner;
  • ensuring that FOI requests can be regulated – I don’t mind how, but there does need to be some way to do this; like it or not, we have limited resources and likely to become still more limited. Charging is far too blunt a tool, but I’m not really in favour of raising the ‘acceptable limit’ – 18 hours is still a vast amount of time for an authority to spend on answering one person’s questions;
  • ensuring that public authorities are resourced to facilitate openness;
  • abolishing the ministerial veto;
  • requiring public authorities to publish their statistics for FOI compliance (after all, how can the Commissioner ‘name and shame’ authorities if they’re under no obligation to publish or return such statistics).

This would be all along side more pro-active disclosure. But it all needs to be balanced against the ability to provide a workable service. Change, yes, but let’s make it gradual and realistic.

May 18, 2011

FOI, Datasets and the Protection of Freedoms Bill

Filed under: Amendments,Environmental Information Regulations,Freedom of Information Act,Open Data,Re-use and Copyright — admin @ 12:38 pm
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A little while ago, Ibrahim Hasan of Act Now Training kindly asked me to write a piece for their Information Law Newsletter. It appears in the latest issue which has been published today.

In summary, I talk about the proposed amendments to the UK Freedom of Information Act in the Protection of Freedoms Bill. The piece covers what datasets are (also covered in more depth by Ibrahim in another piece elsewhere in the Newsletter), what practical steps we should be taking, and finally calls for FOI Officers to get more involved in open data projects in their organisations.

There are also pieces in the Newsletter from Emily Goodhand, better known as @CopyrightGirl on Twitter, who wrote a couple of great guest posts here and here a few months ago, and Jonathan Baines, an Information Rights Specialist at Buckinghamshire County Council, who writes about the Environmental Information Regulations.

March 28, 2011

Public Data Vs FOI?

Filed under: Freedom of Information Act,Open Data — admin @ 1:06 pm
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FOI Man welcomes Government moves to improve transparency across the public sector. But a more pro-active approach to publication of data mustn’t be used as justification for (or a smokescreen for) weakening the right to make requests for information through the Freedom of Information Act.

The Government’s Transparency Board is, as they say,  just what it says on the tin. It is a Board that champions transparency across the public sector, chaired by Francis Maude. Its membership is impressive, including in its number Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, a champion of open data. And as you’d expect from such an institution, its minutes are published online.

The minutes of the latest meeting of 2 March are already available to anyone who’s interested. They include a discussion of the Freedom of Information Act and its relation to the transparency agenda. The thing that strikes me about the report of this discussion is that a presentation on FOI very quickly gets usurped by the general discussion about open data, despite the fact that the rest of the meeting covers much the same ground. This may be just the way its been recorded, and it may not be anything to worry about, but the sense to me is that FOI isn’t seen as a significant part of this process. There seems to be a belief that wider transparency is almost a ‘cure’ for rising FOI requests (which I’m sceptical of, by the way). To quote the minutes:

“It was noted that a move towards proactive publication, rather than just a response to requests for data, was firmly in line with the aims of the Transparency Board.”

Obviously, the Government is keen to press its own agenda, and doesn’t want to work within the straightjacket of the previous Government’s law. Though in truth, there seems little in their agenda that FOI didn’t already permit – it’s a difference of emphasis rather than real substance. Which isn’t to say that an emphasis on more transparency isn’t welcome.

But I think that those who support FOI as a powerful tool for opening up Government ought to be watching developments carefully. I’m still nervous that the Government at some point is going to suggest that as they’re disclosing all this data, there’s a reduced need for the general right of access (the right to make FOI requests). That they use this agenda to bring in restrictions on that right, such as a prohibitive fees regime. This won’t happen until after the post-legislative scrutiny process has been completed of course, but we need to keep an eye on where that scrutiny is led.

The general right of access is very important. As I’ve said before, it means that you choose what information you want (subject to statutory exemptions approved by Parliament). Increased pro-active disclosure is valuable, of course, but it means that the public body, or Government, chooses what it will allow you to have access to. True transparency requires both to be truly effective, not an either/or.

So it should be Public Data + FOI.

March 13, 2011

Open Data – Just Do It?

Filed under: Freedom of Information Act,Open Data,Re-use and Copyright — admin @ 4:04 pm
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Central Government has established a datastore for Open Data. But if you’re outside of Central Government, how do you react to calls for more online data? And what is the role of FOI Officers in getting them established? Southampton University’s new datastore may give us some clues.

This week Southampton University launched data.southampton.ac.uk, its open data repository. It is perhaps unsurprising that Southampton should take the lead in the Higher Education sector in this way. Two of its academic staff, Professors Nigel Shadbolt and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (yes, that one), sit on the Government’s Transparency Board and are heavily involved in the data.gov.uk site.

However, this is the lowest tier of the public sector at which I’ve seen this done. The Greater London Authority (GLA) in London has a Datastore, but the GLA has always been a strange beast – a weird hybrid between local government and central government with more flexibility than most public sector bodies. There may well be others doing great things, but I’m not aware of them. The fact that a higher education institution could do this set me thinking. Was this something I should be doing?

I’ve been hearing great things about the power of open data, but it all seems rather distant from me. The language used can be off-putting at times. All this XML, ODF, even the term ‘Repository’ suggests to me something difficult, technical and, most of all, expensive.

A journalist asked me last week if FOI Officers were involved in Open Data initiatives in the public sector. Being honest (like Superman, FOI Man never lies), I explained that from what I had gathered, where open data initiatives were in place (basically Government and the GLA) the two things seemed to be dealt with separately. FOI Officers were busy dealing with FOI requests and required specific knowledge of the application of legislation. Open Data projects tend to be run by techie-types, statisticians and economists. And it rankled with me that I was being left out of this important stage of the openness agenda.

Why shouldn’t we be involved in these projects? Through answering FOI requests we’ve built up a vast knowledge of the information held in our organisations and how feasible it is to extract and make public. Those of us who are records managers as well have an even deeper knowledge of our organisations’ information resources. Some of us even maintain Information Asset Registers so have already identified all the key datasets in our organisations. No, scratch that. Not only should we be involved, we should be initiating and leading on these projects.

A ‘repository’ is no more than the place where the files are put; it doesn’t have to be something new – unless and until the volume of material is massive, it can just be saved to our Content Management System (CMS) and published to the website that way. The format we publish in is probably less important than just getting it out there, but I have a hunch that the Excel spreadsheets we often send out when asked for data under FOI would be sufficient for most people who wanted to re-use our data. Once we start publishing this data routinely, we’ll presumably get feedback which will tell us which formats we should make data available in in future.

The biggest obstacle is perhaps the legal side of things. Here too though, things are simpler than they were. The National Archives’ new Open Government Licence provides a straightforward way to licence re-use of our data. Assuming the Protection of Freedoms Bill is passed, it will become mandatory for public bodies to adopt such a licence, so why not get ahead of the game?

But surely FOI Officers are there to deal with the requests that come in under the general right of access? Well, we’re also supposed to be maintaining Publication Schemes, pointing to the information our organisations make available pro-actively. And we’ve come under increasing pressure to create and keep up-to-date disclosure logs of the responses we’ve made to FOI requests. The Publication Scheme and Disclosure Log could well be used to structure our datastores.

I may be being terribly naive here, but it seems to me that establishing institutional online datastores outside central government is simpler than we may think. And that FOI Officers ought to be leading the way on them. We already have the tools and the justification for doing these things. Much of it won’t even need additional approval (which if you read We Love Local Government’s amusing, if depressingly familiar, post on Friday, you may appreciate).

I’d love to hear from anyone who has been involved in establishing an Open Data store for their organisation, or has expertise in this area. Am I over-simplifying this? Or perhaps I’m being slow on the uptake (not the most unlikely thing in the world) and everybody else is already well aware how to go about this? Whichever, do please comment on this post – I’m particularly interested to hear your views on Open Data and what we should be doing to make it a reality.

March 11, 2011

FOI Man at Large: the DPO Conference

Filed under: Freedom of Information Act,Open Data — admin @ 12:09 pm
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Earlier this week I was lucky enough to attend the Information Commissioner’s Data Protection Officers Conference in Manchester. Don’t be misled by the name though – there was plenty to entertain us FOI obsessives.

From the keynote speech from Lord McNally, the Lib Dem Minister of State in the Ministry of Justice, through to the Commissioner’s closing remarks, this was a conference that aimed to fully integrate the Commissioner’s Data Protection and FOI duties. So what was there that caught the eye on FOI?

It was clear from Lord McNally that support – and opposition – for FOI and openness issues is cross-party within the Coalition. He spoke of his surprise at finding himself on the same side as Francis Maude and Eric Pickles in meetings.

In questions, it became clear however that there was some dispute within Government over whether FOI should be extended to the private sector when it provides public services. Some in Government are sceptical as they argue that this would deter companies from bidding for Government contracts. From the tone of the Minister’s response it appeared that there is some fierce debate going on in Government on this very issue. Interestingly, Graham Smith of the ICO later argued that the private sector was effectively covered under the existing Act, as FOI continues to cover services provided on behalf of public bodies.

Lord McNally stated that the changes to the Information Commissioner’s role proposed in the Protection of Freedoms Bill were designed to strengthen the independence of the Commissioner. The Commissioner himself welcomed them later in the day, though he did suggest that if the Commissioner is only to serve one term, that term ought to be longer.

The Orders bringing ACPO and UCAS under FOI will be laid at some point from October this year. My guess, based on nothing in particular (other than neatness), would be that the aim would be for the order to come into force on 1 January 2012, but perhaps it will take effect instantly. I know that ACPO have some excellent people helping them prepare for this, and I’m sure it’s the same picture at UCAS.

Lord McNally also spoke about the changes to the 30 year rule for Public Records. He explained that the long lead in time is because the move to a 20 year rule is an expensive exercise.

Post-legislative scrutiny of FOI is seen by the Minister as an important step after 6 years of the Act. The fact that issues will be aired in a public forum will help in developing proposals to amend the Act further.

We also heard from Katie Davis of the Cabinet Office. It was clear from Katie’s presentation, as from the Minister’s speech, that the Government really does attach great importance to opening up public data. The Government’s aim is to be the most open and accountable government in the world. She explained that the Government’s Transparency Board, chaired by Francis Maude, was challenging assumptions across Whitehall. Its membership is certainly impressive – as well as ministers, it includes luminaries such as Professor Nigel Shadbolt (whose Southampton University home launched their open data repository this week) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of a little thing called the world wide web). It was good in questions to hear her comment that Local Government is leading the way on transparency.

A question mark still remains over the impact of open data initiatives on the general right of access under FOI. Senior figures within the Information Commissioner’s Office remain as sceptical as many of us FOI Officers as to whether bulk disclosures will lead to reduced numbers of FOI requests.

Graham Smith, Director of FOI at the ICO, struck a cautious note. He commented that FOI was certainly embedded in the public sector; everyone knows they have to comply, but whether they want to is very much another matter. There is a culture of compliance rather than openness at present, in his view. The Government’s transparency agenda is very much welcomed by the ICO. Graham spoke of a lack of political direction on openness in the past which has contributed to lack of progress in changing the culture.

An interesting point raised by Graham was the fact that our FOI legislation was very much designed with paper record-keeping systems in mind. Now that much of the work of Government is carried out electronically, does that affect the effectiveness of the Act? Finally, he observed that the private sector appeared to be ‘waking up’ to FOI. Not just in terms of using it, but in realising the implications of FOI for their dealings with the public sector.

Later in the day, there was the message that public sector bodies shouldn’t be afraid to apply the provisions for vexatious and repetitious requests where necessary. Similarly aggregation of requests when estimating costs. The ICO will be supportive when looking at these cases where it is clear that requesters are making significant numbers of requests or are harassing authorities. It was clear that this attitude was coloured in part by the ICO’s own experience with some requesters! Public bodies should also be careful to protect personal details of their employees – in many cases, these details will still be protected by the Data Protection Act and section 40 ought to be utilised.

The Commissioner raised a laugh at the end of the day when, following his best impression of the former Prime Minister expressing his regret over FOI, he exclaimed, “Tony, it wasn’t about you!”. He reminded FOI Officers that we should be on the side of Dr Samuel Johnson – a famous exponent of openness – and not that of Cardinal Richelieu, who believed that secrecy was the first requirement of Government.

March 4, 2011

Why my £9K saving wasn’t a victory for the Big Society

Filed under: Freedom of Information Act,Open Data,Procedures — admin @ 5:25 pm
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Earlier this week I sent the following Tweet:

“Preparing an FOI response, identified £9k that should have been reclaimed. Hasty emails being sent to recover it. FOI can save real money.”

This is great news, of course. As a direct result of FOI, a significant figure was saved, which can now be reinvested in other areas of our work. I was able to use it to demonstrate to a senior figure how, despite its occasional frustrations, FOI can save the organisation money. What this isn’t though, is evidence that through more openness we can cut down on the number of public servants employed. This isn’t a triumph of the Big Society.

Although the information was requested through FOI, the error would not have been evident to the requester. In order to provide the information requested, more detailed information had to be collated. It was only when somebody directly affected (ie a member of staff) saw the detailed figures before the response went out that they noticed the error. Even if the detailed figures had been disclosed, it is highly unlikely that the requester, or anyone else, would have noticed the discrepancy.

This also highlights the importance of having someone check responses before they go out. I’ve posted before about the fact that no process of discovery is fool-proof. David Higgerson wrote yesterday about the irritation for the requester when erroneous data is released. The only real answer to this is for someone who knows the information well to check it over before it is disclosed. And for the FOI Officer to cross his fingers before hitting send.

February 15, 2011

Why not just publish everything?

Filed under: Freedom of Information Act,Open Data — admin @ 1:39 pm
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I’ve been meaning to write this post since I read last week about Harrow Council. Their Head of Law was reported in The Lawyer as saying:

“The default model for most councils is that we won’t give anything away unless we have to…I want to turn the whole edifice on its head. I want us to move away from the defensive position of keeping everything to ­ourselves. I want to say that everything’s public except for a few obvious areas.”

Freedom of Information campaigner and journalist Heather Brooke Tweeted that “Finally a British Council sees sense.” Surely this is exciting news for us all. The walls are falling down. Us FOI Officers can pack our bags and head off into the sunset, secure in the knowledge that our work here is done. Maybe not.

Everybody assumes that information is in handy readable chunks that can readily be published on websites, and it’s only because public authorities are all terribly secretive that they’re not there already. There may well be reports that Harrow could be publishing on its website, and as many authorities are now beginning to do, and the Protection of Freedoms Bill aims to encourage, they can make many of their datasets (ie databases) available on their website. But beyond that, there’s a big fat problem.

Email. Or correspondence in any format, for that matter. A large proportion of FOI requests across the country are for correspondence on particular issues. And much of it won’t be exempt.

But how do you cater for that in Harrow’s model? Do you ask people to tick a box whenever they send an email to indicate if it is likely to be exempt under FOI? Do you then automatically publish any email that hasn’t been ticked? What happens if somebody doesn’t realise that the content of the email is sensitive? What if they accidentally forget to delete an email trail? And do you really want to know that I met Bill from Accounts for lunch at 1 on Friday? And even if you can set up such capabilities on an email system, it is likely to involve the introduction of expensive technology. Staff will begin to argue that time is being wasted working out which box to tick when they send an email. If you avoid the technological route, you still need staff to spend time afterwards working out whether correspondence can be published. And imagine the capacity required on the web server…

My point is that whilst it’s great that public authorities are looking at ways to be more open, it’s important not to oversell what they’re doing. I don’t imagine that Harrow are contemplating publishing all emails for a moment. Yet that’s how most business is carried out in organisations across the country.

What they’re really talking about, I imagine, is publishing reports and policies to their website rather than their intranet as a default. There are already some organisations that take that approach, and I’d agree that it’s a welcome move and could have potential to save money. But don’t expect to see public authorities up and down the country rushing to publish the contents of their email inboxes.

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