The Times has put online of their interview with the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, which led to about banks dumping confidential account details in street rubbish - although this is actually a story which .
The Times journalists clearly found Commissioner Thomas , thinking his remarks are sometimes 'more than a little hazy'. The merit of them placing the whole transcript online is that you can judge for yourself whether or not this is fair comment.
The transcript shows that Thomas says he needs to analyse the reasoning behind the government's costing proposals in more detail before expressing an opinion, and that he will come out with a considered view in a fortnight or so. How hazy or clear that view turns out to be will be interesting to see.
Very interesting in the Guardian today by David Leigh and Rob Evans about the government's FOI proposals. It picks up on several of the points discussed in my recent blog entries and comments. They reckon that the Frontier Economics report substantially overstates the number of Guardian FOI requests. Their article is accompanied by a shorter by Heather Brooke about the benefits of FOI.
Jack Straw made clear his lack of enthusiasm (to put it mildly) for freedom of information. Straw has been one of those Cabinet ministers pushing strongly for FOI to be restricted, as the government is now planning to do.
The government proposals have continued to face this week, including at a meeting of the on Wednesday. It will be interesting to see if the of this group are any more informative for Wednesday's meeting.
But one factor which doesn't seem to have figured much so far in the debate on these proposals is whether they will give public authorities perverse incentives and create loopholes.
The proposal to include consideration and consultation time in assessing costs could encourage authorities to adopt deliberately convoluted procedures in order to push difficult requests over the limit. It would mean that inefficient authorities with wasteful processes will be better able to avoid embarrassing disclosures than decisive and efficient ones.
This perverse incentive is not so true in the case of including reading time, since that is more easily measured in a standard way. However consideration and consultation are clearly indefinitely extendable.
The aggregation proposal also runs the risk of perverse incentives. I have already noticed how occasionally government departments will designate what I or a colleague think of as a simple 'business-as-usual' request as an FOI request. I assume they do this to help improve their statistics on the numbers answered within 20 working days.
Under the goverment's new aggregation proposal, authorities could seize on say any emailed requests to their press office from a media organisation, designate them as FOI requests, and (as long as they take up enough time) use that tactic to then block any real FOI request from that media organisation for the next three months.
I would not expect this to happen with most public authorities, but it would give a potential loophole to those particularly obstructive ones which are least willing to accept a new culture of more open government.
I've mentioned already (here and here) some of the surprising contents of the on the cost of FOI, but there are also some striking omissions.
From what I can see, the report does not even explicitly state the projected savings from the government's actual set of proposals.
The report states (Table 3) that the proposal to take into account reading/consideration/consultation time would save £8.2 million. But the additional saving from then also aggregating non-similar requests is not explicitly stated. However, extrapolating from the figures in Tables 1 and 2 suggests that it is nearly £1 million.
Apart from the fact that these figures are based on various arbitrary assumptions, as discussed, the report then fails to set against this various factors which could considerably reduce these projected savings:
* the scope for an increase in the number of internal reviews from frustrated requesters;
* the numerous ways in which requesters could (and doubtless would) seek to evade the aggregation policy;
* the cost of policing and attempting to enforce the aggregation proposal.
Nor does the report consider the possibility that .
Finally, there are all sorts of ways in which the costs of FOI could be reduced which are not touched on at all - for example, improving the quality of initial responses to information requests, so that unnecessary and expensive internal reviews are avoided.
Naturally within the 91Èȱ¬ there has been particular interest in the table in the report on the cost of FOI which puts the 91Èȱ¬ as the most frequent media user of FOI.
This of course is as it should be, given that the 91Èȱ¬ is by far the biggest employer of journalists in the UK. However, there are serious doubts over the figures it contains.
The report (Table 5) estimates that the 91Èȱ¬ puts 750 to 2,000 FOI requests annually to central government, at a cost of between £300,000 and £1,000,000.
From my knowledge I would say 750 is a plausible figure and 1,000 is conceivable, but that 2,000 is extremely unlikely. In other words the 91Èȱ¬ level of requests could be within the range suggested in the report, but in all likelihood very much at the lower end of this range.
Next, putting this to one side and looking now at the estimated costs, the figure of £1,000,000 has been obtained by the bizarre technique of combining the very unlikely upper bound for the number of requests with the very unlikely upper bound for their cost. (This is revealed in footnote 19 - always read the footnotes, remember). The figure this produces - the £1m figure - is therefore one which is much, much more unlikely.
Sadly the report does not give enough methodological detail to calculate the real likelihood of the £1 million figure but it is clearly utterly tiny (and would be even tinier taking into account my first point about the probable number of requests). Yet the report presents it as if it is some kind of plausbile figure.
Always read the footnotes, even to the appendices - this is good advice for readers of company accounts, academic textbooks and independent reports from economics consultancies which have been commissioned by the government.
Last week the Department for Constitutional Affairs released it had commissioned from the consultancy about the cost of FOI.
Having read this report more throroughly than I could initially, I can now say how I have been struck by the way it contains numerous assumptions about cost which seem to be entirely arbitrary and have important consequences for their calculations.
This includes for example assessing ministerial and private office time at £300 per hour, without providing any justification or comparison figures (page 58).
However the most startling example is the decision to double a major element in the cost (the time spent on consideration and internal discussion) on the basis that they only recorded the time spent on this by some officials. There is absolutely no justification provided as to why doubling the estimated cost is the right way to compensate for their failure to measure the time spent by other officials.
On the face of it this is a completely arbitrary assumption, yet it has major consequences for the report's cost calculations, increasing them by several million pounds (it is impossible to say exactly how much without further details of their methodology).
However, this assumption is only revealed when you read footnote 40 to annexe 1 and footnote 44 to annexe 2. These footnotes are on pages 58 and 64 of a 65-page report, a long way after the promiment and crucial figures that they affect so much.
I will be making some more comments about this report over the next few days.
I've been asked numerous times today what the impact of the latest government proposals would be on 91Èȱ¬ journalism, so here is the answer - they would dramatically curtail the use of FOI by the 91Èȱ¬.
The cost limits (£600 for government department, £450 for other public authorities) would be imposed not on one request (as at the moment) but on the total of all FOI requests from one particular organisation (eg the 91Èȱ¬) over three months, even if the requests are from completely different indviduals and relate to completely unconnected topics.
So effectively if one 91Èȱ¬ journalist puts an FOI request to, say, the Ministry of Defence then it would probably prevent any other 91Èȱ¬ journalist (of whom there are thousands) putting another FOI request on any other topic to the MoD anytime in the next three months.
I wonder if it would lead to discussions about whether I am just putting in FOI requests in my spare time?
By the way, I had to smile when I read in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph last week referring to a '£600 million limit on handling Freedom of Information queries' - now that really would punch a hole in government budgets.
There has been a to the , announced yesterday, to cut back on the use of freedom of information.
The government also published . I was reassured to see from Table 5 that, according to the review's estimates, the 91Èȱ¬ has submitted more requests than any other media organisation. Given that the 91Èȱ¬ employs far more journalists than any other media outlet in the UK, anything else would have been strange and disconcerting. Other large media users of FOI, according to this review, are next the Guardian, and then the Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times.
However the review doesn't draw attention to the benefits of FOI, and ways in which FOI may sometimes save public money as well as making the public better informed. To see some of the benefits, the 91Èȱ¬ some examples of the information we have put into the public domain through FOI. The Guardian also on its website.
writes that he's trying to organise a blog-based campaign to encourage MPs to sign the opposing changes to the charging arrangements for FOI requests.
He calls it an attempt at blog-islation - part of the increasing role of blogs in influencing the political process. Will it work?
FOIFA - it's not an international football association, but the Freedom of Information Filer and Archive, a new web-based idea to both make it easier for the public to put in freedom of information requests and also to publish the results.
It's the initiative of the team behind the successful website. The idea came originally from FOI journalist , arising out of the example of the in the US.
It should certainly be a useful tool for individuals who want to submit FOI requests to numerous government departments, and over time it may become an interesting repository of answers. It's currently in development. If you want to get involved,
Doubtless a lot of people will sympathise with this comment about delays at the Information Commissioner's Office from Paul Francis (the political editor of the Kent Messenger Group and a journalist with many good FOI stories to his name).
The ICO now says that for the past few months it has been closing more cases than it has been opening and so it is reducing its backlog of cases, which currently stands at about 700. However at the rate things are going at the moment it is still going to be a matter of years before the backlog is cleared.
More detail should emerge in the next fortnight or so with the Commissioner's next report to the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee.
As we await a statement from the government on possible changes to the fees regime for FOI requests, there is some interest in the question of what Gordon Brown thinks of it all.
Although an announcement may come soon, it's expected that it would be some time before any changes were actually implemented, since the DCA minister Baroness Cathy Ashton In which case a final decision might happen under a Brown premiership.
Gordon Brown's inner circle have made it clear that they would aspire to restore trust in politicians if he becomes prime minister. Will they see FOI in this context? The to put FOI as a factor in the level of trust in public authorities.
So what does Gordon Brown think about FOI? Examining reveals that 'freedom of information' is mentioned two times in its 436 pages, which hardly suggests that the topic is at the forefront of his mind.
In one case FOI features in a list of citizens' rights; in the other Brown includes as part of the Labour programme for redistributing power from the state to people themselves a proposal for 'free information'.
But does he mean free as in 'not restricted' or free as in 'doesn't cost'?
Freedom of information is such an easy and effective way to extract all sorts of information from public authorities that before long everyone will be doing it and authorities will be unable to cope with the administrative burden. That's one point of view.
Another is that FOI is such a slow-moving and ineffective process that no one who tries it once will ever bother again.
I've heard both these views expressed, but the from the Department for Constitutional Affairs suggest that both are way off the mark. They show (Table A) that, apart from the pent-up demand in the first quarter FOI was in force, the number of FOI requests seems to have been remarkably stable - in the region of 8,000-9,000 or so per quarter for the government departments and selected major quangoes that the DCA monitors.
If anything, this suggests that the experience of early users of FOI has been sufficiently productive that it's not going to fade away, but not so productive that it's going to become a much more popular activity.
Court records are one of the major exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act. However, the Department for Constitutional Affairs was planning to introduce new which would make a much greater range of information about civil court cases available to the public (this would be outside the remit of FOI).
This DCA attempt to open up much court information has been blocked, by the . As journalists like to say, the case continues.
We all know the Foreign Office employs top-class brains who immerse themselves thoroughly in understanding the political systems of other countries so as to provide ministers with the full benefit of their detailed and specialist expertise.
But when it comes to briefing ministers ahead of important international visits, it seems they do what everyone else does and cut-and-paste from the internet.
John Prescott visited Warsaw in May 2005 and discussed European border and passport matters with Polish leaders. In response to an FOI request the Foreign Office has sent the 91Èȱ¬ some of the policy briefing material given to Prescott - they wanted him to 'discreetly follow up on previous discussions' on obtaining Polish support for British positions.
Along with their policy brief, the Foreign Office also provided Prescott with a biography of the then Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and one of the then Prime Minister Marek Belka.
These are not exactly the distilled wisdom of well-informed British diplomats with deep insights into the characters of foreign leaders. In fact, they have simply copied from the internet the somewhat one-sided official Polish government biographies of and .
Any echoes of the
Is a new sense of urgency gripping the Information Commissioner's Office?
I only ask because things seem to be speeding up in the handling of one of my complaints, which had been affected by lengthy delays that I described here.
Three weeks ago I finally received an email from the Complaints Resolution Officer who will be examining the case. He asked me for some additional documentation.
Since I was a little busy at the time, and since the ICO had done nothing to investigate the complaint for the first 13 months since its submission, I hoped they might cut me a little slack on the time for me to reply.
Instead I was impressed to receive two reminders chasing me for this documentation (which I have now supplied) in the three weeks since it was first requested. The complaints officer involved in this case has certainly shown a devotion to speed of action which is rarely encountered in dealings with the ICO.
I now look forward to further fast-moving developments in this case - or is the urgency only required when it's my turn to do something?
Parliament returns next week after the recess, and the FOI community is awaiting an announcement from the government on any changes to the rules on charging for freedom of information requests.
We can certainly expect some MPs who are worried about to organise against them, supported by the . As the Commons has been in recess since these ideas surfaced at the end of July, next week is the first opportunity for the MPs involved to really mobilise opinion.
Last month Tony Blair concluded his by itemising freedom of information as one of the goverment's changes which reduced cynicism and increased trust in politics. If true, this clearly won't be boosted by any changes which hinder access to information.
The practical impact of any changes will depend on their nature - the possibilities most often mooted vary from ones which would generate bad publicity but make little real difference to ones that would generate worse publicity but cut the administrative burden of FOI while dramatically reducing FOI requests from those least able to pay.
The 91Èȱ¬ clearly has an interest in all of this - in fact, a unique one as an organisation which both and responds to a large number of FOI requests. As indicated in its earlier this year, the 91Èȱ¬ position is opposition to increased charges.
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