FOIbles
by Peter Bradwell
As the Campaign for Freedom of Information have shown with this, a stack of documents have been released covering the whole range of central and local government areas. It's a list detailing 500 releases covered in online media sources in the first year or so of the Act's existence, and makes fascinating reading.
The government has claimed to be the government of openness - and, in fairness, it was during this government that the legislation came into being. So it is odd to see a much speculated-on new charging regime appearing to come a step closer. It seems that there are plans to make it easier for government officials to charge for requests (by allowing them to charge for the time they spend considering requests, not just looking for the data). That seems really disappointing, and CFOI spell out why far better than I could here.
Freedom of Information isn't just a front-of-house customer service provided by departments to their 'consumers'. Thinking in those terms makes it easier to legitimise price rises and refusals when requests become inconvenient. Are we serious about open government, and if so, is an increase in fees and the likelihood of refusal a retrograde step?
martin farrington
Hey Will - This is martin F from Viewpoint. We have been trying to find your nember to call you regading some work. Good fortune to find you here - can you call me in the office?
Pete Bradwell
Thanks martin. Demos 2.0. Gotta love it!
On Will's point - absolutely. There's certainly a mismatch in the ideal of an FOI regime, its potential implications etc - and how the current one is working, or at least is approached by those 'leading' its implementation. Which is a real shame.
Paul Skidmore
I am one of the (I suspect) relatively few people who has both submitted an FoI request and been asked to respond to one, and I have to say I found both experiences very irritating. My request took about 4 months as DfID dithered about how much of it they were going to withhold. But then my moral posturing rapidly disappeared when as a civil servant I had to respond to one and found it an irritating distraction from the day job. (Pricelessly of course I spent longer dealing with a compliance officer wanting to find out how long I'd spent answering the request than I did actually answering it, but that's another matter.) Sorry Pete, but in practice all the risks feel like they are on the downside. I think if a charging regime is introduced civil servants should personally pocket a commission for each one they answer - that would soon transform the culture!
But the point that has been missed is whether it matters that only small numbers of people actually exercise their rights under FoI. I agree that to radically transform the civil service you'd need many millions more requests - but frankly a civic culture capable of generating that many requests would have transformed the civil service in myriad ways already by then. Given that we need to work with what we've got, I'm not sure it matters much that it's just journos and think-tankers taking advantage of it, because the basic effect is still to challenge - not yet more than that - the culture of secrecy in Whitehall.
It's all about the One Per Cent Solution, man...
Will Davies
I agree with all of this, but I suspect you've never seen the DCA's FOI 'department' up close. Sorry for sounding cynical, but I think the notion that the current model of FOI could genuinely transform the relationship between government and anyone other than journos and think tanks is a little out of date. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they spend moost of their time and money coming up with reasons for not doing anything. And if even the DCA barely takes it seriously, you can imagine how the rest of Whitehall views it...