The Campaign for Freedom of Information has published a collection of over 1,000 press stories from 2006-7 arising from freedom of information requests.
According to the campaign, they include significant revelations about a wide range of topics from the Iraq conflict to dubious public spending. And they include one about ghosts.
The document does not cover FOI disclosures reported by broadcasters. But you can find a collection of the BBC's FOI-based news stories here and those of Channel 4 News here.
When someone expresses an opinion about you, should you have the right to know who is saying it as well as what they are saying?
The Information Commissioner has just issued an enforcement notice against the Department for Communities and Local Government. This instructs the DCLG to release more material in response to an individual's data protection request for information held about themselves, including the identities of the officials who have expressed opinions about the individual.
The Commissioner says: 'it is reasonable in the circumstances to release third party information without the consent of the individuals because they were acting in a professional rather than a private capacity'.
I don't normally venture into data protection matters, but this is interesting and important from the FOI viewpoint too.
Public authorities often try to withhold the identity of officials who have written documents released under FOI, on the grounds that this is personal information. This runs counter to the Commissioner's guidance that 'information which is about someone acting in an official or work capacity should normally be provided'.
This latest decision from the ICO confirms that the same principle applies across data protection and freedom of information. The Information Commissioner Richard Thomas has often argued that it makes sense for him to handle both DP and FOI complaints to ensure consistency and avoid the sort of conflicts that have arisen in other countries which have different commissioners for the two topics. Perhaps this case illustrates the strength of this argument.
Some things we didn't know before freedom of information:
the hazards of gravestones - Tens of thousands of headstones have been flattened or removed across the country because of fears that they could fall on gravediggers or members of the public
what happens to lazy police officers - Cheshire force has not sacked any officer for incapability in the last decade - from which the LibDems conclude 'police forces are failing to sack lazy and incompetent officers'
But we still don't know what alternatives to the M20 have been considered as the sites of lorry parks when the Channel Tunnel is shut, because it could lead to 'unnecessary public concern caused by premature disclosure especially as such sites have been discounted.'
(This may become an occasional feature).
Is it vexatious to follow up a freedom of information request by later asking the public authority for all their internal correspondence on the handling of your initial request?
This is what is called a 'meta-request' in the trade. Some FOI officers would certainly find it vexing - but that doesn't necessarily give them the right to consider the request 'vexatious' and thus legally reject it.
Earlier this month the Scottish Information Commissioner Kevin Dunion ruled that the Scottish Government has to give the journalist Rob Edwards (a big and successful user of FOI) various documents relating to how they handled a previous request of his. Dunion dismissed the argument about vexation, along with most of the case put forwards by Scottish ministers.
Dunion has been considering this complaint for sixteen months. But it seems that such long delays in Scotland are being eliminated. Dunion says that he expects he will soon finish dealing with all complaints made to him before the start of the year (apart from some delayed by legal actions).
This will be a stark contrast with the backlog of cases at the office of the UK Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, who covers FOI in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and is still dealing with appeals submitted over three years ago (including one of mine).
Another difference is that while Thomas's caseload is stable, the number of complaints to the Scottish Commissioner is dropping, as Dunion discussed in a presentation he gave yesterday to a seminar at the Constitution Unit at University College, London. The reasons for this are unclear. Is it a good sign that requesters are getting the material they want, or a bad sign that they are no longer bothering?
Warwick University's mission is 'to increase significantly the range of human knowledge and understanding', but preferably not, it seems, through answering freedom of information requests.
I was intrigued to read an article in last Friday's Times Higher Education, in which the university's registrar Jon Baldwin argues that subjecting universities to FOI undermines their independence.
Baldwin doesn't like time-consuming requests from companies seeking information for commercial advantage, nor conspiracy theorists, nor journalists who trawl large lists of universities with questions in hope of a story. And of course he's not the only recipient of FOI requests to be vexed by these annoyances.
Since I've never put an FOI request to Warwick, I don't think he can have me in mind. But maybe now's the time. He writes that 'I almost expect the next one to be "please simply list the three things you would least like us to publish in our next edition".'
Now supposing the university really does have a document entitled 'the three things we least want published', it's quite possible they could be the three things about the university whose publication is most in the public interest. That's given me an idea ...
Possibly it could make a greater contribution to human knowledge and understanding than the pleasant year I spent at Warwick University pondering the under-determination of theory by data and other equally crucial philosophical matters.
I've written before that many public authorities seem to lack enthusiasm for compiling 'disclosure logs' on their websites which contain the information they've already released in response to FOI requests.
A colleague has just drawn my attention to this on the HM Revenue & Customs site:
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