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My thoughts on freedom of information, the issues it raises, the changes it is causing, the stories that result – and what it means for you
08:57 UK time, Wednesday, 27 February 2013
The likelihood of becoming a student at Oxford or Cambridge Universities can be strongly influenced by date of birth.
Last year the chance of someone born in October becoming an Oxbridge undergraduate was more than 30% higher than for someone born in July.
08:40 UK time, Friday, 15 February 2013
How serious is the problem of drunkenness and indiscipline within the Royal Navy's submarine service?
Figures obtained by the BBC show that there have been more than 300 disciplinary incidents in the past three years on the navy's 13 submarines, including 42 cases of misconduct or unfitness through alcohol or drugs.
18:39 UK time, Sunday, 13 January 2013
Martin added analysis to:
Police numbers have been falling due to the financial squeeze on the public sector - that is a widely publicised fact. But what hasn't been made known until now are the details of how the drop has been concentrated among younger officers.
These figures are collected by police forces in England and Wales for reporting to the Home Office. But the Home Office doesn't include them in the police statistics that it routinely publishes. The BBC obtained them by a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
10:33 UK time, Friday, 21 December 2012
In September the Department for Education abandoned the controversial legal case it had been fighting to try to establish that emails sent by ministers on personal email accounts were not covered by the Freedom of Information Act.
This position was in defiance of the clear stance adopted by the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, who had already ruled that all emails sent on government business could fall under FOI, whether an official or private account was used.
09:01 UK time, Thursday, 13 December 2012
How many disabled police officers are there in each force in England and Wales?
Judging by the statistics that each force gives to the Home Office, the answers would appear to be somewhat surprising.
17:55 UK time, Monday, 10 December 2012
The educational organisation United Learning runs 31 schools, whose aim is to impart knowledge to tens of thousands of pupils.
Yet the organisation seems to have a surprising gap in its own knowledge - it has told the Information Commissioner that it doesn't hold any information on what its chief executive is paid.
08:21 UK time, Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Some top civil servants have deliberately obstructed plans that ministers want implemented.
That's the view of the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, who in a speech to the Institute for Government last month complained that "there are cases where permanent secretaries have blocked agreed government policy from going ahead or advised other officials not to implement ministerial decisions".
10:47 UK time, Thursday, 1 November 2012
Last night BBC Radio 4 broadcast a documentary about the Climategate affair, in which thousands of documents mysteriously obtained from a computer server at the University of East Anglia were released onto the internet in 2009.
The material belonged to some of the world's leading climate scientists and caused them difficulty just before the major United Nations Copenhagen summit on climate change.
17:06 UK time, Friday, 28 September 2012
What do civil servants in the Department of Energy and Climate Change think about the Guardian's environmental columnist George Monbiot - and why does it have to stay secret?
I was pondering on these questions when I read a document released earlier this month by the energy department in response to an information request.
10:40 UK time, Thursday, 13 September 2012
The vast quantity of material released by the Hillsborough Independent Panel contains much of the truth - the real truth - about the nation's worst sporting tragedy and its aftermath. In some ways the panel's work and its reception is testament to the power of documentary evidence.
This wasn't a traditional public inquiry aimed at analysing causes, interrogating the views and counter-views of those involved, attaching blame and devising recommendations for the future.
08:50 UK time, Tuesday, 11 September 2012
"It feels wonderful to work free from fear of FOI!!"
This expression of relief came in an email from a civil servant at the business department discussing government matters - but sent from his personal email account to colleagues at their private email addresses.
06:07 UK time, Thursday, 26 July 2012
Supporters of freedom of information will be relieved, but many of its critics will be disappointed.
That is the likely reaction to the new report by the Commons Justice Committee, which has assessed how FOI is working in practice and concludes that the UK's Freedom of Information Act "is serving the nation well".
15:16 UK time, Wednesday, 4 July 2012
For years the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) has been failing to cope with the number of complaints it has to handle into whether particular nurses or midwives are fit to practise, leading to long delays.
Yesterday it was the subject of a scathing report from the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), which condemned the NMC for - amongst other failings - its longstanding record of confusion of purpose, lack of clear strategic direction, inconsistent governance, unbalanced working relationships, deficient leadership, weak business planning, internal cultural problems, poor financial stewardship, unreliable management information, risky IT systems, and insufficiently transparent decision-making.
09:54 UK time, Thursday, 14 June 2012
The Treasury has released a copy of the illustrative examples which left George Osborne "shocked" about wealthy tax avoidance and led him to introduce his since-abandoned plans to cap tax relief on charitable donations.
In April the chancellor told the Daily Telegraph that he was "shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs... so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax."
10:58 UK time, Monday, 11 June 2012
Recently I discussed freedom of information in Ireland and how the level of FOI applications there has been much lower since those requesting information had to pay an up-front fee for doing so.
While in this case there is something in common with the UK - in that some British public authorities would like the same policy to be adopted - often the most striking aspect of international comparison is the very wide discrepancies between the laws and attitudes that are accepted in different countries.
17:31 UK time, Thursday, 31 May 2012
The House of Commons Justice Committee has been reviewing the Freedom of Information Act, and during this process it seems to have some taken some interest in what's been happening in Ireland, which a few years ago introduced an up-front fee for making FOI requests.
But while some UK politicians may be thinking of following suit, the Irish government could soon be heading back in the opposite direction.
10:19 UK time, Monday, 26 March 2012
The telecommunications company Vodafone is the only major government supplier which has agreed to the release of data about how much Whitehall has saved through renegotiation of contracts.
For the last financial year, the government and Vodafone agreed that the state could save £5.3m on its payments to the mobile phone company.
13:01 UK time, Thursday, 15 March 2012
Cabinet Office papers from 1989 seen by the BBC show how Margaret Thatcher's government was misinformed about the cause of the Hillsborough disaster - and illustrate why the Information Commissioner demanded the disclosure of these secret documents.
Last July the commissioner ruled that it was in the public interest for documents about the Hillsborough tragedy to be released, since it would "add to the public knowledge and understanding about the reaction of various parties to that event, including the government of the day".
14:25 UK time, Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Real freedom of information is about "the money that goes in, the results that come out", as opposed to "FOI requests that are all about processes".
That's the view of David Cameron, which he expressed yesterday at the end of his evidence session in front of a House of Commons committee.
11:04 UK time, Thursday, 9 February 2012
The Department for Education is more than three months late in responding to a BBC freedom of information request about internal government guidance on the use of personal email accounts.
This is a controversial topic given recent allegations about ministers and political advisers using private email to seek to avoid FOI. These claims are currently under investigation by the Information Commissioner.
BBC News specialist in using the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act.
Trains and advises BBC journalists on FOI, and has addressed international conferences on journalism and FOI. Some stories the BBC has produced using FOI can be found here.
Executive producer in the BBC Political Programmes department, overseeing a variety of radio programming.
Producer of radio documentaries on topics ranging from the inside story of Gordon Brown's premiership to the politics of The Simpsons.
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