Isn't it about time there was a presumption that all these documents are public from the outset, that public bodies should keep documents confidential as an exception, and that it would be a relatively simple matter of Content Management System administration to make documents visible to the public?
That will save an awful lot of money on unnecessary administration of FOI requests. People would still make requests, but they would only be necessary for information public bodies had classified exceptionally, meaning people will only be spending their time dealing with questions of disclosure that really matter. Mark. On 22 December 2011 14:42, paul perrin <[email protected]> wrote: > FoI was the best thing Blair did (won't argue about whether there were > any others!) > > However Blair has since described it as his worst mistake, MPs are > known to hate it (expenses debacle) > > Main thing I would change is the time limit - most requests are > answered on the last possible day (or just after). So there should be > an *additional* target AVERAGE response time - so theres a max and an > average. > > Paul /)/+) > > > > On 22 December 2011 14:18, Mark Goodge <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 22/12/2011 13:42, Adam McGreggor wrote: > > > >> ... that aside, I'm one for chucking out the option of (machine& > >> human -readable) live-data; counts&c, against the database, so there > >> > >> is real-time info, along with, the chunky annual report, that has had > >> (crowd-sourced?) manual review. > >> > >> We could then see some stats on the authority pages; "Consistently > >> replies on time; Consistently fails to respond in time, Has an > >> extra-ordinary high count of internal reviews:requests" > > > > > > Similar to what I did earlier in the year by extracting data from the > API: > > > > http://mark.goodge.co.uk/2011/08/number-crunching-whatdotheyknow/ > > > > I think stuff like that would be a useful addition to the WDTK site > itself. > > The problem with it, though, is that some authorities, for no fault of > their > > own tend, to attract far more unanswerable or daft requests than others, > > which distorts the stats (look at requests to the Prime Minister's Office > > for some classic examples). > > > > What I'd like to see is some form of peer-review on WDTK to try and weed > out > > the more frivolous or daft requests. As I pointed out in that blog post, > a > > significant proportion of requests which result in either a refusal or a > > "not held" response are caused by people asking misguided or malformed > > questions. I'm not sure that we can - or should - actually stop people > > asking them (since FOI is, by design, applicant-blind and that means it > has > > to be numpty-blind as well), but allowing people to rate a question > itself > > as good, bad or indifferent (maybe via something similar to the > > classification game, or by means of the annotation system) could help to > > give a truer picture of which authorities are better or worse at > responding. > > > > > > Mark > > -- > > Sent from my Babbage Difference Engine 2 > > http://mark.goodge.co.uk > > > > _______________________________________________ > > developers-public mailing list > > [email protected] > > > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > > > > Unsubscribe: > > > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/paul%40idltd.com > > _______________________________________________ > developers-public mailing list > [email protected] > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public > > Unsubscribe: > https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/markjballard%40googlemail.com >
_______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
