Remember the MPs’ expenses scandal? Freedom of Information exposed this misuse of taxpayers’ money. And the two year battle by School Week’s editor Laura McInerney to get the Department for Education (DfE) to release free school application forms? Wouldn’t have been possible without Freedom of Information. Freedom of Information has resulted in articles on this site. These include Emma Bishton’s campaign to discover the cost of two Suffolk free schools; Henry Stewart’s finding that sponsoring academies is not the best route to school improvement; my discovery that the DfE had received no complaints about ten of the Trojan Horse schools. And without Freedom of Information we would never have learned that the surveys used by the then Education Secretary Michael Gove to underpin his claim that UK teenagers were clueless about history came from such robust pollsters as UKTV Gold and Premier Inn. Such revelations rankle. And politicians are nervous about the public finding information politicians would rather remain private. Moves are afoot to make submitting FoI requests a little more difficult. It’s too burdensome, it’s alleged, and costs too much (never mind that it might actually save public money if inappropriate or wasteful spending is exposed). It could have a chilling effect on advice given by civil servants to ministers, claimed Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Michael Gove (not so, said the Justice Select Committee in 2012, existing provisions in the Act can protect full and frank advice). It’s used by journalists to ‘generate stories’, complained the leader of the Commons Chris Grayling. It’s clear such story generation must be curtailed. Journalists and others must be prevented from digging the dirt. The Government has started an ‘independent’ commission about the future of the FoI Act which has called for evidence. Responses are via the Ministry of Justice whose boss has said he wants to ‘revisit’ the FoI Act. It's unclear, then, just how independent the commission will be. As Private Eye points out (number 1405, 13 November 2015), ‘the mood music is not encouraging’. The Eye notes how two ‘former cabinet ministers with little interest in the full truth emerging – Lord (Michael) Howard and Jack Straw’ have been appointed to the commission but no campaigner for more openness. Gove has admitted that Straw has ‘been very clear about the defects in the way in which the Act has operated.’ Not very ‘independent’ then. It’s important, therefore, for those who believe in transparency to respond to the commission’s call for evidence. 38 Degrees has made this easier by putting the questions into plain English and compiled them in an easy-to-complete survey. But you’ll need to hurry. Time is short. You’ve only got to the end of Friday 20 November.
Comments
We in Bucks have had huge success using FOIs in exposing lies, deceits, etc.
My last FoI request about costs, no. of pupils etc about 'free' schools was refused until I appealed and went to the Information Commissioner's Office. The final answer, which apparently needed extra time to prepare, referred me to 7 different web links. When I looked at the different lists it would take a huge amount of time to combine the lists. Some had the URN for the school, some had one name for the school but a variation on another list. The upshot was that sorting the lists into one could only be done after considerable work to standardise the way in which the school was recorded.
I am left with the feeling that either the Department is completely incompetent and is not monitoring 'free' schools, or that they are using any trick they can to avoid answering.
My recollection of the MPs' expenses scandal is that it wasn't freedom of information laws but a mole angry at the under funding of the troops in Afghanistan who exposed the appalling misuse of public money.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6229051/MPs-expe...
Nevertheless, you use the act effectively!
Jane - I have used FOI requests direct to a school. They and the LA involved tried to pull the defence that to reveal the information would damage their competitive edge and breach company confidentiality. Like you I appealed/complained to the ICO who ordered that the data be sent to me.
I strongly recommend that people complete the 38 Degrees survey (which is a direct link to the government consultation) and also advertise it to their friends and colleagues.
Interestingly, Labour appear to be cherry picking what to support and what to attack regarding government proposals to substantially dilute the scope and rigour of the FOIA. That is to say, they have attacked plans to exempt Universities from the Act.
However, what I don't think is generally understood is the sheer volume of FOI requests coming in to public bodies and the amount of work involved in responding to them. The same question may be asked by multiple journalists in slightly different ways even on the same topic requiring bespoke answers which take time (and therefore public money) to produce. It is frustrating to see journalists scatter-gunning FOI requests for example to every single local authority which lead to significant workload. Sometimes the questions are trivial eg how much money have you spent on exorcism, Christmas decorations etc - the story might not even be published or be a couple of column inches hidden within the paper. Public bodies are not staffed to a level where they can easily absorb this sort of workload - given that they are being told to cut back office functions and automate everything. The other major source of FOI requests is from students seeking an easy and cheap route to undertaking research.
I don't think that lazy journalism or research was really the intention of FOI and if it is going to continue in it's current form it needs to be resourced to ensure appropriate levels of transparency and challenge can be sustained.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1167/flowchart_of_r...
However, the spirit of the Act is to provide information. A request under FOI Act immediately means the requester needs clarification and wants information to verify the facts before issuing a challenge.
We can all agree on democratic, accountable Governance.
Therefore, the information giver has a duty to transparency to supply data and their analyses on behalf of the requester.
If they do not, then they want to hide something!
But in the example you give the LA could just have directed the questioner to the DfE School Performance Tables for the last three years. These can easily be searched under LA, primary schools and/or secondary schools, school characteristics. This shows the number of roll in each school in the area in the year concerned. If the questioner also wanted info re, say, FSM, FSM6, EAL and SEN pupils, then this info is also contained in the same Performance Tables together with test and exam results.
If a member of the public asks for information, you only have to provide information you already have in recorded form. You do not have to create new information or find the answer to a question .........
- which seems to back up what Guest is saying.
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-freedom-of-information/wha...
Barry - what you say reflects my experience of making requests. Also like others there have been several occasions when I've had to refer a refusal to the ICO and twiddle my thumbs while they (a) decided whether the public body's refusal was legitimate, and if so (b) for the ICO case officer to take the body on and get the information. On more than one occasion the ICO department has advised the body involved that they would refer it the tribunal (including their costs if the body lost). I suspect that Janet and others on here can attest to similar experiences.
Datasets
18. The term “dataset” is defined in subsection 11(5) of FOIA. This definition contains a number of elements.
- Not the product of analysis or interpretation
25. The term “factual information” is then qualified by two further criteria; firstly,
(b) is factual information which—
(i) is not the product of analysis or interpretation other than calculation …
26. This suggests that the definition is limited to ‘raw’ data that has been produced or obtained by the public authority, rather than value-added data that has been produced by analysis or interpretation.
28. Furthermore, the phrase “other than calculation” means that, for example, if expenditure data has been collected at the level of sections within the departments of a public authority, and it is then added up to show expenditure by department and by the authority as a whole, or even to show the percentage of the total expenditure by each department, this does not take it out of the definition, since totals and percentages are produced by calculation and they are inherent in the data itself.
29. However, it is likely that a table in a report proposing how resources should be allocated to departments in future years, based on the authority’s policies and priorities, would not be factual information because it is produced by analysis and interpretation, rather than simply recording and making calculations with factual data. The analysis and interpretation depend on factors that are not inherent in the data itself.
- Official statistics
32. The second qualification to the term “factual information” concerns official statistics:
(ii) is not an official statistic (within the meaning given by section 6(1) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007) …
33. Official statistics, as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, are not datasets within the meaning of the dataset amendments to FOIA. However, the underlying raw data used to produce official statistics could fall within the definition of a dataset, assuming that the other criteria were satisfied.
Materially altered
34. The final part of the definition is that “all or most of the information in the collection”,
(c) remains presented in a way that (except for the purpose of forming part of the collection) has not been organised, adapted or otherwise materially altered since it was obtained or recorded.
Add new comment