On 23/12/2011 09:57, Francis Davey wrote:
2011/12/23 Tom Steinberg<[email protected]>:
Incidentally, I see this silly season story as very much connected to
the DoJ report that started this thread:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16302375
One or two are prima facie sensible (who knows how many of the rest
are out of context - some serious fact checking would be useful).
Indeed. The question to Scarborough BC about the number of cheques sent
and received is very relevant, given proposals by the banks to phase out
cheques. But it's also a perfect example of a question which can't
simply be answered by making all the council's documents publicly
available to begin with.
But they illustrate exactly the point I and Mark have been making
about the way in which public authorities understand and work with
FOI. People *used* to make exactly these kinds of requests (before
FOI) of local councils. People really did send in letters - either
because they were mad, obsessed or just having fun, asking these kinds
of questions. The FOI has made essentially no difference to the way in
which councils should handle these requests.
The difference is that the councils can no longer just give a
non-committal reply to the nutters and then file the request in the
round receptacle.
I'd like to see some fairly thorough counter-propaganda that analyses
this sort of thing carefully.
The report from the Local Government Association[1] has some interesting
stuff in it which, on the whole, is broadly positive about FOI. But it
does raise some very valid points about what a lot of people consider to
be an abuse of FOI. For example, there's a whole series of FOI requests
on WDTK from someone asking for email addresses of GP practice
managers[2]. In at least one of these requests, he's admitted that the
request isn't for any public interest reason but simply so that he can
send them spam. (He doesn't call it spam, of course, but that's
precisely what it is).
The real issue, though, isn't that there are some abuses of FOI. It's
the proportion of abuse which is relevant. And the figures, again from
the LGA report, suggest that it's actually fairly low - low enough to be
considered an acceptable side effect that's more than outweighed by the
benefits. It's only when you get to some central government departments
that the ratio of frivolous requests gets worryingly high, but these are
organisations which, by and large, can cope with it.
[1]
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/constitution-unit/research/foi/foi-and-local-government/2010-foi-officers-survey.pdf
[2] http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/user/ian_murphy
Mark
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