FOIbles
at 10:11am on Friday, 4th August 2006
The Freedom of Information Act has been in force for a year and a half now. It's an extremely important piece of legislation, promising to help alter the relationship between state and citizen - between state officials and members of the public. It's vital for anyone looking to fan the flames of people-led politics and to empower communities to develop mechanisms to wield real power over their lives and places.
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?
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?
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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.
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...