Occasionally I go a little off-topic to draw attention to some of my other work for the 91Èȱ¬, since freedom of information is only one part of what I do. And this is another such occasion.
I've produced a programme about the political values of The Simpsons, being broadcast on Radio 4 at 10.30 am tomorrow morning. You can read more about it .
But I wouldn't want you to think there is no connection between FOI and Springfield's famous family. After all, The Simpsons have been the subject of an from Downing Street - although these documents have little relation to the content of Tony Blair's appearance on the show.
Not only that. There's an which reveals what really happens to investigative journalists who disclose stuff the authorities don't like, such as this dramatic from 91Èȱ¬r.
Gordon Brown's reshuffle means that Jack Straw is Secretary of State for Justice, and so back in charge of freedom of information policy.
It was Straw who as 91Èȱ¬ Secretary introduced the Freedom of Information Act, at a time when FOI came under the 91Èȱ¬ Office. However remarks he's been making recently, for example , suggest that he's not all that enthusiastic about his own legislation.
In fact, the law he brought in to implement Labour's manifesto commitment was less far-reaching than the initial plans of his ministerial colleagues. And he's reputed to have remarked to Tony Blair, 'I told you no good would come of it.'
In fact, he's one of the cabinet ministers least keen on FOI. It remains to be seen whether this will mean clashes with Gordon Brown's rhetoric about open government.
FOI campaigners have recently taken heart from their belief that Gordon Brown will abandon the government's plans to restrict FOI. Jack Straw's appointment will not be the one they wanted.
In a further change, the junior minister who had responsibility for FOI previously, Cathy Ashton, has been promoted to Leader of the House of Lords.
The German question is - why aren't there more German questions?
According to from last week on the freedominfo website, there were 2,278 requests for information from German federal agencies in 2006, the first year of FOI at the federal level in Germany.
In contrast, UK central government bodies received 38,108 FOI requests in 2005, the first year here.
As the article states, the requesting of information from the German government seems to have got off to a slow start. Of course there are important differences between the role of federal government in the UK and Germany, and there are also differences in the FOI laws, but are they sufficient to explain the discrepancy (a ratio of 17 to 1) or is there something else going on here?
Once upon a time - well, around the time freedom of information was coming into force back in 2005 - ministers said they would soon review the question of which additional bodies should also be made subject to FOI. It was expected to be done within a matter of months.
FOI in the UK is wide-ranging, applying to over 100,000 public bodies. The current legal dividing line between bodies within the ambit of FOI and those outside it leaves numerous apparent anomalies - for example, neither regional assemblies or academy schools are covered by the FOI law.
However the task of reviewing this still doesn't seem to have made it to the top of anyone's 'To do' list. In a last week, the government stated it has 'no plans to review the coverage of the Act at present'.
The government's on whether to amend the freedom of information regulations closes today. It now has three months to review the arguments and announce a response.
The 91Èȱ¬ submitted its comments this week and argued against the plan to restrict FOI disclosures. In its submission, the 91Èȱ¬ states:
Amending the regulations to restrict access to information has inevitable and important disadvantages – it would prevent valuable FOI disclosures which are in the public interest and it would risk undermining the principles of FOI. This course should only be pursued if there is an even more important need to reduce the administrative burden of FOI. We do not believe that exists. There will always be some inappropriate and burdensome FOI requests, but they do not reach the level which requires a change to the regulations.
Who are the people who can - and quite often do - overrule the Information Commissioner's decisions on what information should or should not be released under FOI?
They are the members of the . Some are lawyers, some are lay representatives. They are not public figures but, as I have discussed previously, their rulings matter.
The Tribunals Service has now sent me an updated list of lay members who handle FOI cases. They are given here. Note that while this should be current in terms of who is a lay member of the IT, the biographical details given may be outdated (but are the latest which I have been sent).
Which government departments are slowest at dealing with complex and tricky freedom of information requests?
The worst laggard is the Department of Trade and Industry, according to government figures released today. The other slowest departments are the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the 91Èȱ¬ Office.
These departments have the worst record for extending the time limit allowed to assess whether it is in the public interest to release information. They are the most likely to extend the initial period allocated of 20 working days by a further 40 working days or more, thus taking around three months or even longer to answer a request.
The requesters involved often find this a very frustrating experience, as they receive a stready stream of letters saying that the department expects to take another (say) ten days to answer the request, followed ten days later by another one, and so on.
In contrast those departments with a much better record on this are Work & Pensions and Education & Skills, both of whom managed not to extend any request by that amount last year.
This information is contained in the Ministry of Justice's , published today. Much of the data in this annual report has already been issued in previous quarterly publications, but the departmental split on the use of time extensions is new.
However there is no information published on how many extensions go on for even longer periods. Some requests can take six months or more before being answered.
The balance between personal privacy and freedom of information is a matter of continuing controversy in many countries, although cultural attitudes towards openness and privacy vary enormously across the globe.
Last week in Sweden to find out details of someone else's income and debts - but to many people in other countries the surprising thing will be how comparatively easy it still is.
And yesterday indicates that in many American states the salaries of individual state employees is a matter of publicly available information.
Meanwhile a new website in the US makes much easier the task of applying for a copy of a dead person's FBI file - . But of course it's not limited to checking out the background of your own family ...
One of those who requested information about MPs' allowances in the cases mentioned in my previous entry was the journalist Heather Brooke, author of the FOI guide 'Your Right to Know'.
She is now at the lack of notice that she as a complainant was given that her case had been decided.
I have to say that I have a lot of sympathy with her, based on my own experience with the Information Commissioner's Office. On one previous occasion I had the following problems with a decision notice on one of my complaints to them:
• They posted it to me instead of emailing it, despite the fact I had requested that communications to me are sent by email
• They didn’t put any stamps or franking on the envelope.
• So the Royal Mail didn’t deliver it, and I had to go the local delivery office and pay £4.85 for the privilege of collecting it.
The decision notice told me my appeal was rejected. But I needn’t have paid the £4.85 to find that out, since by the time I got to the delivery office and found out what was inside the undelivered item of post the decision notice was on the Commissioner’s website. As Heather says on her blog, 'With the ICO you're the last to know'.
The Commissioner’s office apologised and refunded me the £4.85. But they wouldn’t promise to send me future decision notices in my cases by email. They said they need to make sure that both parties receive decisions simultaneously. But using the post is less likely to guarantee this than using email.
The Information Commissioner has issued some decisions this morning which give us a better idea of what level of detail the public will eventually get to know about how MPs spend their allowances.
What it shows is that the Commissioner wants more information to come out than the Commons authorities - but that on the other hand there are limits to the levels of disclosure he will press for. I suspect this will leave some MPs angry about what they see as approval for intrusiveness but others reassured about what they regard as being reasonable and responsible.
MPs are allowed to reclaim expenses for the cost of having a job which may require two homes - one in their constituency and one nearer to Westminster. The Commissioner has that the amounts claimed under various headings (eg mortgage costs, utility bills, furnishings, insurance etc) should be public information, but not the fully itemised details of household expenditure as that would infringe the privacy of MPs and their families.
This goes beyond the current level of disclosure which just provides one overall total for what are called 'Additional Costs'.
The House of Commons authorities now have 35 days in which to decide whether to appeal to the Information Tribunal (as they have done previously but without much success) - as do the requesters involved who have failed to get all the information they are seeking.
Next week in another case the Information Tribunal will consider the disclosure of further details of MPs' travel expenses, in an appeal brought by the Commons against the Commissioner's ruling on that topic.
So we still don't have a definite answer to the question of what level of detail on MPs' expenses will be revealed to the public, although today takes us the next step towards the matter being resolved.
There are those who suspect that the main factor behind some MPs supporting the Bill to exempt Parliament from freedom of information was indeed concern about these more detailed disclosures on expenses that the Commissioner and Tribunal may require.
If this information now does come out it will be politically difficult to revert to the previous more limited level of disclosure of summary totals alone, which is what the Speaker of the Commons was promising.
It is now generally assumed that the Bill to exempt Parliament from freedom of information - the 'Maclean Bill' - is dead.
This is because no peer had decided to sponsor it and obtain a second reading debate for it in the Lords by last night's deadline. This does not guarantee for certain that it has come to an end. Parliamentary procedure does still allow for it to be revived later in the session. But it has now missed a crucial window of opportunity to make progress. Even if someone does emerge to sponsor it later it will have major difficulties in getting sufficient debating time given the other business in the Lords between now and the end of the session.
For some this will be a victory for transparency in public life. For others it represents the frustration of the will of the elected House, because any peer feels too intimidated by the prospect of media attention to sponsor the Bill.
Wherever freedom of information has been introduced it has prompted a reaction from some of those subject to it who want to reduce its impact. It looks like this is the end to the first such dispute in the UK.
There's plenty I could say - some agreement, some disagreement - about yesterday about the feral beast that is the modern media. But as this is a blog about FOI, I will limit it to freedom of information.
Blair mentioned FOI as one item in a list of measures he introduced which, he now thinks, did not deal with the central issue of how politics is reported (although FOI has of course much wider implications than just for political reporting).
But one of the things that I like about FOI-based journalism is precisely that it doesn't fall under many of the criticisms he made of other reporting.
Look at the the 91Èȱ¬ has produced via freedom of information (and the same point would apply just as much to other parts of the media who have made much use of FOI).
They are based on facts. Not speculation. Not briefings or quotes from anonymous sources. Not analysis, interpretation or comment. (Although there's nothing wrong with all of these - in the right place at the right time).
They're about numbers, statistics, raw data, actual quotes from actual documents. It's clear what the source is and how we got it. And using FOI is not a herd-like but an individualistic activity - individual journalists extracting facts that the rest of the herd haven't thought to bother about.
That's not to say it's all perfect. It can still be partial, selective or presented out-of-context. But I think it's been good for reporting politics and other aspects of public life.
Another Bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act was presented to the Commons today - but with a rather different approach.
The Freedom of Information (Amendment) (No 2) Bill would by, for example, tightening up the time limits on public authorities when they respond to FOI requests.
It was introduced by the LibDem MP Tom Brake and, lacking government support, has no chance of getting anywhere. The most noticeable aspect of the brief proceedings on the Bill today was the reaction of Speaker Michael Martin to Brake reciting criticism of the Maclean Bill. The Speaker was sufficiently riled that he interrrupted Brake twice to tell him to tone it down and move on.
As for the Maclean Bill, it looks unlikely to get through the Lords. We should know more tomorrow evening. Unless a peer agrees to sponsor it and take it on to its second reading debate on a specified date by close of business in the Lords tomorrow, then it will fall foul of Parliament's procedural rules.
Even if it does get sponsored, the pressure of government business in the Lords during the summer months and the 'spillover period' after the recess will still make it difficult for it to make much more progress in this session.
Sometimes one gets reminded of the apparently petty culture of secrecy that affected some government activities prior to the introduction of freedom of information.
Recently I was looking through some old papers and found this. It's a copy of a message sent in 2004 by the Foreign Office to Entry Clearance Officers in UK posts abroad who consider applications to enter the UK. It was included in a batch of documents released to the 91Èȱ¬ following a freedom of information request.
What it shows is that the government then maintained a 'List of Educational Establishments' in the UK that it referred to when deciding whether to allow entry to those seeking permission to come into the UK as a student. Officials wanted to ensure they were not deceived by claims of intended study at non-existent institutions.
However not only were the contents of this list of colleges and other places of education kept confidential - even the fact that it existed at all was a secret not to be revealed.
As another similar Foreign Office memo from 2004 obtained by the 91Èȱ¬ states, "Entry Clearance Officers are further reminded that the existence of the list should not be disclosed and that no reference to the lists should be made in any refusal wordings".
The current comparable list is now publicly available on the Department for Education and Skills .
At Prime Minister's Questions today Tony Blair was asked about the Bill to exempt Parliament from freedom of information - and, as is sometimes the case, .
But what Hansard doesn't convey is the heckling directed at David Winnick, the Labour MP who raised the issue and is a determined opponent of the Bill. As soon as the topic of his question become clear, the angry rumblings of disagreement from his Parliamentary colleagues started.
The Bill is awaiting its fate in the Lords. On Sunday, , Tom McNally (the LibDem leader in the House of Lords) promised that his party would - contrary to the normal precedents - oppose the Bill outright when it is first debated by peers at Second Reading.
If you want something to remain secret, get a lawyer to tell it to you.
That's the feeling you get from looking at some from the Information Commissioner.
While the Commissioner has occasionally instigated the disclosure of legal advice (as, partially, in the Iraq war case), he is clearly very reluctant to overrule public authorities when they don't want to reveal material on the grounds of legal professional privilege.
Of course there are often good reasons why legal advice should remain private, but it's not entirely clear to me why the secrecy needed for the frank views of lawyers doesn't dwindle as the events involved recede into the past in the same way as it does for the frank views of others, like say cabinet ministers or permanent secretaries. Maybe I need to ask a lawyer.
Not that all lawyers seem so keen on secrecy for their advice. One influential one proclaiming a different view is the justice minister Harriet Harman. Appearing on Sunday AM at the weekend, as part of her campaign for the Labour deputy leadership, her enthusiasm for making public legal advice from the Attorney General.
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