Just resurrecting this old discussion briefly as I had a mini query: Surely councils, quangos and government departments already had to deal with vexatious requests *before* FOI? Even if you define "deal with" as "have a quick scan and throw in the bin", it's still going to cost you some amount of money. Has anyone done some research to compare the two? E.g. how much time / money was spent on answering questions about UFOs before FOIA? What *extra* costs has the FOIA introduced for dealing with such requests?
Seb On 21 December 2011 12:33, Mark Goodge <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > 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/seb.bacon%40gmail.com -- skype: seb.bacon mobile: 07790 939224 land: 01531 671074 _______________________________________________ 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
