FOI or E-Enabled Open Government?
We could be heading for an era of 'E-Enabled Open Government' in the world of freedom of information in the UK.
That anyway is according to a new book, Constitutional Futures Revisited, which predicts the future of constitutional change in the UK. The authors of the chapter on FOI, Mark Glover and Sarah Holsen, argue that a scenario of 'government on the web' with an emphasis on proactive disclosure of information by public authorities is the most sustainable scenario, satisfying both government and openness advocates.
But they do point out that this is set against an international trend towards 'a gradual weakening of the FOI law through administrative or legislative means'.
If public authorities do move towards much greater proactive disclosure, then one vehicle should be their publication schemes. The Information Commissioner is introducing a new model scheme from 1 January 2009, which public authorities will have to abide by (the BBC has just revamped its FOI site here).
The current pattern of proactive disclosure certainly seems to throw up all sorts of apparent anomalies. For example, if you want to know about cases where judges have imposed unduly lenient sentences, the full detail is available - name of judge, details of the initial and the increased sentence, nature of offence, etc. But suppose you wanted comparable information for sentences reduced on appeal. Some overall statistics are available (and admittedly there are many more cases), but nothing like the same level of detail - and the Courts Service has refused to provide it to the BBC.
Glover and Holsen do see alternative possible scenarios of 'Death by a Thousand Cuts' (in which FOI is starved of resources) or 'Legal Trench Warfare' (in which government resists disclosures in every way).
Of course some requesters will feel they are living through such experiences already. This week the BBC received an apology from the National Offender Management Service, now part of the Ministry of Justice, which had spent several months claiming that it was considering the public interest in releasing certain items of information - information which it then turned out it did not actually possess.
The letter of apology to my colleague Nicola Beckford stated: 'The lapse in the handling of your request was caused by a breakdown in our procedures. This resulted in officials being mistaken in judging that information existed when it did not.'
I have discussed the topic of 'NOMS and the ontological problem' previously. NOMS has a particularly bad reputation for its requests and records management, but perhaps it hasn't quite got to the point of the German government. A few days ago it was reported that the German government has lost more than 300 files that are so top secret no-one knows what was in them.
But whatever the problems that sometimes crop up with freedom of information, the latest MoJ quarterly statistics on FOI out this week indicate that the number of requests to central government bodies is remarkably stable, perhaps even slightly increasing.
This suggests that freedom of information is not so pointless that people are giving up on it, nor so fruitful that people are wanting to use it much more. And my view is that things are likely to continue in this way for the moment, whatever scenarios may appear in the future. Personally I'm going to be concentrating on some other projects at the BBC for the next three months or so. I may continue to post on this blog from time to time, but it will be more intermittent.
A 
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~28~RS~)
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We shall miss you
Andrew
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Sad you wont have time to continue to actively write on this topic. Although I believe in transparency, I find the whole FOI and EIR regimes ill thought. The idea that every Tom, Dick and Harry can wake up wondering what the ratio of blue chickens against red ones is and sending an FOI request and forcing a gov department to not only 'find' the data but find the ratio or find the time and money to request someone to do it (and later charge the individual if he or she accepted the charges earlier) is a total waste of government's time. Also, there has to be certain 'privacy' in the goings on of government, freedom to consider certain issues, certain views, even if dismissed later as nonsensical or inadequate. Thinking that their thoughts will show up in minutes, emails and other records and that they will be happily released to who knows who for who knows what can only deter any right thinking individual from actively engaging with the work at hand, for fear of misconstruction, defamation or even ridicule. Why should average Joe have the right to request every single email and minute of any meetings on conservation of coffee grounds or anything related to the expansion of the first 300m of right lane on the M20....? a total waste of public time and money and surely the wrong mechanism to uphold transparency.
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What a crazy time for you to take time off from this blog. This government are hiding behind the FOI and it looks like the BBC has done it's normal tactic of removing blogs/stories which paint the present regime in a bad light.
The BBC is a shadow of it's former self, and seems to just regurgitate labour propaganda, what a pity.
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I have been following your commentary closely and it is a pitty to see that you stop from writing on this blog.
(Kostas-economist magazine reader)
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Martin Rosenbaum:
I hope that you will do the projects and we will miss you....
~Dennis Junior~
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"Personally I'm going to be concentrating on some other projects at the BBC for the next three months or so. I may continue to post on this blog from time to time, but it will be more intermittent."
There goes the one BBC blog that provided a genuine public service.
It was obviously detracting from the childish slanging matches and propaganda in other BBC blogs.
Holding the government to account should be a primary aim and not just a fortunate side effect of a juicy story.
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It's always a good thing when the government opts for greater transparency (if they can pull it off), but I'll certainly miss your regular updates.
Cheers,
Max
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Indeed. On the assumption that FOI is still in existence in a few years hence, its going to be fascinating unpicking 'who said what to whom' as the credit crunch unfolded.
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It's a shame no updates are being made with the controversy over MPs expenses claims being made public currently in full row. Perhaps someone else at the BBC can take over while Martin pursues his other projects?
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