On 21/12/2011 11:31, Seb Bacon wrote:
Hi,
Tom is absolutely right that the starting gun has been fired. There
have already been a couple of stories along the line that Cabinet
debates should not be subject to FOI [1], and the
not-entirely-relevant-but-overlapping idea that the DPA should be
revoked [2]. At the same time, the outgoing Scottish ICO commissioned
research showing strong public support for FOI [3]
I think the concerns raised in the stories reported in the first two
links are real, and need to be addressed. Personally, I wouldn't have a
problem with excluding Cabinet minutes from FOI, at least in principle.
In practice, though, I'd be very wary of anything which might be seen as
the thin end of the wedge - if we accept the removal of one thing,
what's to stop the removal of another? So I'd only accept such a change
along with a broader review of FOI that not only excludes some things
that it may have been wrong to include but also includes some things
that were previously excluded.
I read the general thrust of the report as "FOI is a great success,
but probably costs too much money" (see para 221 in the Conclusion
section, for example).
There is a lot of space dedicated to how much requests cost (a total
of 900,000 requests at an average cost of £160 - £254), to how
authorities view the costs as being too high (e.g. opportunity costs
of staff having to deal with requests other than their day jobs), and
to the subject of vexatious requests.
I think there are two separate points to be made about costs. Firstly, a
lot of costs would be minimised, or even eliminated, if the sort of
information likely to be requested via FOI was pre-emptively published
by the authorities themselves rather than waiting to be asked for it.
Obviously that isn't going to apply to every possible request, since you
can't predict every question that will be asked, but simple things like
making sure that budget documents, etc can readily be found on the
relevant website would help a lot.
But, on the other hand, with my councillor hat on, I do think that the
cut-off is possibly too high for some authorities. £600 is peanuts for a
central government department, but £450 is a significant sum to a local
council which needs to account for it in their annual precept-setting
budget meeting. But I'm not entirely sure what the solution is, since
reducing the limit might make it unduly difficult to obtain some
information.
On the one hand, the WDTK team is committed to discouraging any
non-serious requests. And in the context of severe budget cuts, it's
clear that consicentious FOI officers are suffering [4]. Perhaps one
thing we can do is add a note during the request process about the
average cost of an FOI request (and/or an internal review)? Just
along the lines of "please consider if this request is important
enough to justify the average cost of answering it" (though worded
much better than that, of course!).
Vexatious, frivolous and misguided requests are a real issue. I'm not
quite sure how to stop people sending them, though, without it looking
like censorship.
Mark
--
Sent from my Babbage Difference Engine 2
http://mark.goodge.co.uk
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