Victory for whatdotheyknow website
A new decision this week by the Information Commissioner's Office represents a significant victory for the FOI requesters' website whatdotheyknow.com in its battles with the few public authorities that object to its mode of operation - in this case, the House of Commons.
The ICO has ruled [58.61KB PDF] that the House has to comply with a freedom of information request submitted through whatdotheyknow, even though it means that its response will be automatically published on that website.
The request, submitted in July 2008 by Francis Irving, was for documents on the possible deployment of electronic petitioning systems in Parliament.
The Commons told Mr Irving that it could send him material directly by e-mail, but it would not respond through the whatdotheyknow system because the automatic web publication of its reply would breach Parliamentary copyright.
After an internal review of its refusal, the Commons later offered [2.52MB PDF] to supply information through whatdotheyknow if the website publishers agreed to sign a licence for reproduction of Parliamentary documents.
This included the requirement "not to reproduce material for the purposes of disparaging either House or bringing it into disrepute". However, mySociety, the publishers of whatdotheyknow, refused to accept the principle of the licence or its detailed provisions.
Last November Mr Irving, who works on whatdotheyknow, complained to the Information Commissioner about the House of Commons' refusal to comply with his FOI application in the manner he requested.
On Monday the ICO instructed the House to send the information through whatdotheyknow within 35 days, unless it decides to appeal.
The House of Commons is not the only public authority which is uneasy about whatdotheyknow. Brent Council also refuses to respond to requests through the website on the grounds that it would breach copyright. It is the subject of similar complaints to the ICO.
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To add to the House of Commons and Brent Council examples, Richard Taylor remembered that Bristol City Council have had similar copyright concerns. Example here:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/list_of_residential_properties_o_4
And Alex has found a couple of other related examples:
Joint Nature Conservation Committee:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/nvc_database
Learning & Skills Council, who relented:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/emandate_data#incoming-50597
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So, just why do these organisations think that there should be a copyright applied to publicly owned data or information? The information has been produced using taxpayers' money, and its dissemination should be entirely free of such restrictions.
Presumably the reason for the concern is that people within these organisations wish to cover their backs, or that putting all of this information in one place will give too much power to their ultimate employers, namely us!
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It's our public data - every item of which we paid for! So who are these people to claim copyright? Are the forgetting exactly who they work for already!
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The public would be better off if ALL freedom of information requests had to be posted to this site. On principle, and in the pocket, too - it might prevent duplicate/overlapping requests
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It's time for a review of the licensing of data coming from public bodies. The US has a very liberal stance on public bodies with all information being public domain, hence all those lovely royalty free images we get to see from NASA.
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Brent Council have confirmed that they're waiting to see if the House of Commons appeal to the Information Rights Tribunal before deciding what to do:
http://bit.ly/blkkwE
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I fully support the concept and ideal of making information, especially that generated by Government departments or agencies, freely accessible to the public - after all we've paid for it! I also agree with Phil's comment that there should be one site where all requests and responses are published. Whether that should be whatdotheyknow I reserve judgement.
However, being aware of one of the cases cited in this article, I can also see that pushing an organisation to release incomplete or out-of-date information serves no real purpose other than waste the time of the poor office worker given responsibility for dealing with FOI requests, and possibly giving the public a distorted view of the issue being discussed. There needs to be a balance.
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Elected bodies that do not want the public to know what and how they do things! Honesty is considered a fault in those institutions. The public in thought to be unable to comprehend that workings of these august bodies..and there are instances when what they say and what they do, differ. Accountability is the mother of caution.
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Great
Now for the Balen Report
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Whilst I fully support the view that publicly owned/funded information should be in the public domain, free from copyright, I think that this should be done more proactively.
I work for an NHS Trust and we spend literally hundreds of man-hours chasing down information for spurious FOI requests, just to satisfy one person's crusade. The regulations and timescales around FOI mean that we often have to drop important work around contracting, performance managing and planning to comply with FOI requests.
We all need to acknowledge that there is a balance between the availability of public information and already stretched public services having the time to do their core business.
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I must apologise to one small branch of the mass media. It seems that a small company called ClydeSide Television Productions has decided to make a TV programme about it. Since that will take a considerable time they have, in the meanwhile, established a website, which will carry substantial film clips plus some explanatory text.
This seems quite a courageous departure. Not only are they risking the wrath of the powerful people who are trying to keep this under wraps, but by telling most of the story before they have made the programme they might shoot themselves in the foot a bit in the financial sense.
I salute the humanity and sense of duty of ClydeSide Television. Here is the link to the website they have established:
http://www.clydesidetv.com
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Whoops the proper link to the Clydeside TV site is:
clydesidetv.com/thecan2.htm
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Strange, I kept trying to post the original comment (#11) above and every blessed time a 'alert box' would pop up and tell me I had contravened a swearing filter. Eh? Do wot?
So I determined by a process of elimination that what it didn't like was the whole of the website address link that I was trying to include all the while it was in one contiguous lump, the way it is supposed to be. as soon as I knocked off the page sub address /thecan2.htm it immediately accepted my post. Clearly there is a glitch in the 'swearing filter'.
Oh, well, never mind. I suppose most of the people reading this stuff will have at least a nodding acquaintance with links with website addresses and will realise how to put it together to get at the information.
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While welcoming the intentions of the FOI Act, there is potential for abuse, particularly by well-funded lobbying groups. For the people in the Climate Research Unit at UEA, it certainly looked as if a coordinated campaign of FOI requests was being used to hamstring their ability to deliver the work they were contracted to do.
This is a particular issue for any individual who is working for a government body on a short contract - you really cannot expect a body of work to be delivered on time and on budget if the individual delivering it is also expected to have an indefinite commitment (even beyond the end of their contract?) to contribute to the response to any resulting FOI requests.
It would seem to me that the procedures around FOI need to record (and control) the costs imposed by responding to requests, as a proportion of the budget of the unit concerned, if we want contentious work to be completed.
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Re: 'disparaging either House or bringing it into disrepute'
Have I recently awoken from a long and deep coma or wasn't this exactly what those in the last Fraudsters' Parliament managed to do all by themselves?
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@10
If there was an assumption that data will be released to the public unless there was a specific reason to make it secret that might reduce some of the burden FOI currently imposes. Personally I'm more interested in data than documentation of deliberation, hopefully the new push for transparency will mean more of this is available as a matter of course.
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Governments are usually the first to 'reassure' us, when stripping us of our privacy, that if we haven't done anything wrong, we shouldn't have anything to hide. It is ironic and slightly bemusing to see the shoe on the other foot and how the gov squirms at the thought of transparency and oversight over their actions and day to day activities.
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Brent Council has been found to have attempted to silence one of its former employees through the use of a "gagging clause" within a compromise agreement. Look closely, in the paragraph which begins "In relation to the second part...." as it seems to have been carefully buried within the standard 'denial' text:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/total_annual_figures_for_comprom_34#incoming-151034
Like Cheshire West and Chester Council before them, they are out on a limb. The research on WDTK entitled "Total Annual Figures For Compromise Agreements, etc" reveals that 229 English Councils have responded since 1st January 2011, but only 2 have admitted to this (mal)practice?
Over 100 councils are still to respond in full, but an educated guess would be that amongst the stragglers, there are a few more (mal)practitioners? to be chased out into the open.
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Openness in the information of government can really only be a good thing, ask the people of East Berlin.
The internet is cutting a huge swathe through the barriers behind which the political elite have hidden since the dawn of time.
I think the times we are in now are fairly revolutionary, rather than money they sharing of information has become the most important thing.
Its a lot like the Robin Hood story, sometimes you need a bit of a maverick like the Robin Hood's, the Julian Assange's and so on to sometimes show the powers that be the power of the will of the people.
Technology and the freeness of information has been heavily implicated in the revolutions in the middle east, lots of oppressive regimes keep the populous in the dark in order to control them.
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