Training for FOIA users

The Campaign for FOI is running training for users of the Act in November in London, more details at:

http://www.cfoi.org.uk/training.html

Comments on FOI costs on IDEA pages

I received the following comments from Lydia Pollard at IDEA:

"I accept your points about the figures being high and the fact that there was no mention of the original research figures on costs. With hindsight I should have mentioned these estimates too. The main aim of giving some costs was to get those authorities currently doing little or nothing to actually do something. Sometimes giving the worst case scenario is the only way to get them to take action.

However on checking the research figures, I have my concerns about whether these are too low and not truly representative either. I note that they are based on marginal costs and assume a minimum rate of enquiries. They also assume that the enquiries will be similar to those already asked of authorities ( actually central government and not necessarily local government) and will not involve any additional overhead and fixed costs.

There is some evidence, even in this country, to suggest that the enquiries may be quite different and involve a lot of additional work. For example,local authorities have already received requests for information about pre-planning discussions ( which has caused some authorities to review their processes) and information about contractors. A large number of authorities have had to employ at least one additional member of staff to deal with FOI and also purchase an electronic records management system which has increased their fixed and overhead costs. Furthermore the costs I quoted were actual costs not marginal costs as I felt these were probably of more interest to local authorities."

Thanks to Lydia for allowing me to publish her comments

More Draft guidance on the Environmental Information Regulations

From DEGRA http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/envinfo/index.htm

Chapter 9: Long-term Record Keeping and Offences

Chapter 10: Monitoring and Reporting

Chapter 7: Refusals*
Chapter 8: Complaints, Reconsideration, and Appeals*
will be added by Oct 1st

International Right to Know Day

Was yesterday....more information:

established by the Freedom of Information Advocates Network (based in Budapest and Sofia, see http://www.foiadvocates.net and http://www.righttoknowday.net ). Advocates in two dozen countries are mounting coordinated activities such as conferences, awards, release of studies, and workshops on September 28.

Plus this at Freedominfo.org:

The freedominfo.org posting today included a sample of 25 news stories from around the world based on records released through the access laws:

* Australians learned about the $500,000 per year on average that each ex-prime minister of Australia costs taxpayers in that country for support of professional activities (and excluding the lifelong pension each receives).

* In Romania, citizens won access to data on wiretaps including how many actually led to criminal convictions.

* Canadians discovered that the Premier of Alberta billed taxpayers for a $2,600 lunch tab and $27 glasses of orange juice.

* An Indian citizen exposed the abuse of government cars by civil servants and officials who used the transport for tourist trips and religious pilgrimages.

* The largest Japanese newspaper, The Yomiuri Shimbun, uncovered huge lobbying expenses by the Japanese liquor merchants association that won repeal of licensing requirements, including direct payments to lawmakers.

* And the Mexican federal agency that is implementing Mexico's new law ordered release of Interior Ministry intelligence that was the basis for Mexico's expelling Cuban diplomats in 2003.

Final chance ! Still places left

ASLIB NORTHERN GROUP FOI seminar

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
Issues, Implications and Solutions Implications and Solutions

2:15pm 6th October 2004
At Liverpool John Moores University

Chair:

Steve Wood
Liverpool John Moores University

Speakers:

Mohamed Hans
CIPFA Procurement and Commissioning Forum

Tim Turner
Data Protection Officer Wigan Council

Heather Brooke
Author of Your Right to Know


Main Lecture Theatre G01
John Foster Building
Liverpool John Moores University
98 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UZ

How to book and more info: aslib.doc

FOI Information for Local Government

IDEA, the Improvement and Development Agency, has created an FOI resource on the IDEA knowledge website, registration required

http://www.idea-knowledge.gov.uk/

Inlcudes some useful case studies,

but contains a poorly qualified statement on costs: "the cost of meeting a single request could be anywhere between £1400 - £4000 depending upon the complexity of the request based on evidence obtained from USA and Canada" no mention of the research carried out for the draft bill that stated: "For the lowest assumption the average marginal cost across Government of answering a written Parliamentary Question has been taken, which is £62 (Treasury figure). It seems reasonable therefore to take this figure as the minimum cost option for this calculation.....For the highest cost assumption the highest average reported cost of replying to a Code request has been taken, which is £350 (Foreign and Commonwealth Office)." Although these figures were based around central gov, the £1400-£4000 seems necessarily high to me present an unfair image of the costs of FOI to local authorities. The data I've found from from Canada indicates an average cost per completed request of $1,148.00
(about £500)

Freedom of Information Act 2000: Section 36 Consultation

From a Local Government Associsation alert:

"Section 36(2)(b) of the Freedom of Information Act relates to information which is
exempt if, in the reasonable opinion of a “qualified person”, disclosure under the
Act would, or would be likely to, inhibit the free and frank provision of advice, or the free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation.
For Welsh public authorities, under Section 36(5)(h), the qualified person is the
authority or an officer of the authority, if authorised by the NAW. This applies to all Welsh public authorities except the police and the excluded authorities who fall
within s36

DCA is now seeking views on who the qualified person should be for English public
authorities not falling within the scope of Section 36(5)(a) to (n). Following
discussion with Advisers the overwhelming view was that the “qualified person”
would most appropriately be the Monitoring Officer. We shall be advising DCA of
this very shortly."

You can find a definition of a Monitoring Officer in the 1989 Local Government and Housing Act

US FOIA: example of email requests

From Westport Board of Education

"The Westport Board of Education Monday night will review its e-mail policies following a new round of e-mail exchanges that prompted a local newspaper to file a Freedom of Information Act request for copies of electronic board communications and a board member to boycott a meeting"

See more at Westport Now

Councils shred files to thwart new access laws

September 26, 2004 The Sunday Times

Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Gareth Walsh

Fairly brief article, rehashes some information (e.g from Milton Keynes) previously mentioned on this site

"HUNDREDS of thousands of confidential files are being shredded by Whitehall departments, police authorities and councils as they prepare for new laws designed to encourage more open government."

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE LAUNCHES INQUIRY INTO IMPLEMENTATION OF THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT

Press notice on the House of Commons website

Terms of Reference:
• The state of preparedness for the implementation of Freedom of Information legislation;
• Issues of implementation for central government departments;
• Issues of implementation for local authorities and smaller public bodies;
• The role of the Department for Constitutional Affairs in co-ordinating the implementation of the Act.
Oral evidence sessions will take place in October and November 2004.
Submissions relating to the terms of reference above are invited from relevant interested parties. These should be sent to the Clerk of the Committee, Constitutional Affairs Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 4JA by Friday 15 October 2004. An electronic version in MS Word or Rich Text format should also be submitted, either by e-mail to conaffcom@parliament.uk or on a disk and this should be accompanied by a letter stating clearly who the submission is from, together with relevant contact details. Attention is drawn to the guidance on the submission of evidence which can be found at www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/witguide.htm

Freedom of Information implementation in the UK - potential technology problems

"A recent PublicNet Briefing reports on research on provision of technology in the public sector to support implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FoI). From 2005, FoI requires public sector organisations to provide public access to any of their information on request, unless such information is exempt. ‘A survey by Comino found that only 17 per cent of Local Authorities have set aside budgets to implement new electronic systems that would simplify the search for information. Another survey by ZyLAB has revealed a third of public sector bodies believe their internal information handling systems will struggle to implement the new legislation.’ Organisations may also be unprepared for non-technological aspects, e.g. the cultural shock of exposing all their workings to the public, including financial information and commercial transactions."

Taken from The British Council

Freedom of Information - guidance from JISC for HE and FE

Freedom of Information online guidance documents jointly produced by the JISC Legal InformationService and Dundas & Wilson ( http://www.dundas-wilson.com/ ).

The documents are part of a series which attempt to illustrate how certainmatters relevant to Further and Higher Education are likely to be treatedunder the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (“FOISA”). Althoughthe information is principally aimed at Scottish institutions some of theinformation will be of interest to institutions UK wide.

Freedom of Information and Intellectual Property Rights -http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/foidundaswilsonipr.htm
Freedom of Information and the Public Interest Test -http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/foidundaswilsonpublicint.htm
Freedom of Information and Contracts/Procurement -http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/foidundaswilsoncontracts.htm

Repeated and Vexatious requests nuder FOIA

Some discussions about these issues on the JISCmail list serv this week, my comments:

If thinking about classing a request as "repeated" it is important to remember that the Act states:
14 (2) Where a public authority has previously complied with a request for information which was made by any person, it is not obliged to comply with a subsequent identical or substantially similar request from that person unless a reasonable interval has elapsed between compliance with the previous request and the making of the current request

On the issue of Vexatious requests I believe that Maurice Frankel has also stated before that the number of cases classed as vexatious should be low.

This is also backed by overseas experience: "The Australian Freedom of Information Act allows the rejection of repeated requests for information that the applicant has been advised is for sale or for information to which access has previously been refused. Commenting on the merits of provisions allowing an agency to reject a "vexatious" request, the ALRC stated that "[i]n the twelve years of operation of the Act, few requests could properly be classified as vexatious." It observed that while there was a high level of support for such a provision, "vexatiousness" was a vague concept"http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/gospubs/tbm_121/atip1_e.asp

Some further brief comment on FOI fees

by Martin Kettle from the Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1309190,00.html

Blair to drop fees for access to data

The Guardian 21st Sept

Yet more twists and turns in the fees debate, will post more information when I get it, I'll try and contact the DCA. The key is whether the £600 free limit will be set for all public authorities. If you have any information related to fees: drop me a line to: steve_wood62@hotmail.com

"Tony Blair has agreed to scrap most of the fees levied for making use of the Freedom of Information Act, as part of an effort to regain disillusioned liberal voters at the election."

"It is expected that Lord Falconer, the constitutional affairs secretary, will announce that charges for applications for information under the Freedom of Information Act will not be levied so long as the cost of gathering the information does not exceed £600."

Planning information


Document available from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister:

Making the planning system accessible to everyone: Good-practice guidance on access to and charging for planning information

Useful for Local Authorities assessing the impact of FOI on planning requests

Still places left

ASLIB NORTHERN GROUP FOI seminar

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
Issues, Implications and Solutions Implications and Solutions

2:15pm 6th October 2004
At Liverpool John Moores University

Chair:

Steve Wood
Liverpool John Moores University

Speakers:

Mohamed Hans
CIPFA Procurement and Commissioning Forum

Tim Turner
Data Protection Officer Wigan Council

Heather Brooke
Author of Your Right to Know


Main Lecture Theatre G01
John Foster Building
Liverpool John Moores University
98 Mount Pleasant, Liverpool L3 5UZ

How to book and more info: aslib.doc

"The Times" and "The Register" publishes letters in response

Some letters have been published on "The Register" website in response to the article earlier this week on FOI and small business

A letter from Heather Brooke to "The Times" has also been published

Back issues of Freedom of Information Review

Back issues of Freedom of Information Review from 2001-2003 are now
available on-line at

http://review.foi.net

Freedom of Information Review was begun in 1986 and has been edited since 1992 by Rick Snell, Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Tasmania.
The journal publishes:

-critical articles on FOI law
-international developments in FOI
-details of FOI decisions in Australia
-selected reading lists

The Freedom of Information Review is published six times a year by the Legal Service Bulletin Co-operative Ltd.

National Union of Journalists FOI course

Heather Brooke is running several courses for the NUJ on FOI

Details: NUJ website

House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee

Met on the 14th Spetember to investigate the implmentation of FOI:

Parliament website

Will link to the transcript when available

FOI in the news

JOURNALISTS 'ignorant' on vital tool of the trade
HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk

BRIEF encounters
Telegraph.co.uk
"There are equally alarming signs that government departments and local authorities may not be ready to implement the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in January - despite having five years to get ready. Announcing an urgent inquiry yesterday by the Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee, the chairman, Alan Beith, said it would consider "whether there has been sufficient time given for that preparation and whether support from central government has been effective and timely".



'POLICE should open up to cut fear of crime' - SoE chief
HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk

FOI article in the Economist

Freedom of information: What do you know?
The Economist, The Economist, p 22 11 September, 2004
Why nobody wants to talk about the Freedom of Information Act


Full article (Subscription required)

Interesting quote from Richard Thomas: "......But he does not want to launch a big publicity campaign yet for fear of overwhelming the public authorities--and himself--when the act comes into force. "We don't want to encourage casual fishing just for the fun of it," he says. " We prefer to get off to a slow start. We expect some particularly challenging cases in the first six months

Connected Cumbria FOI Seminar

Freedom of Information and Information Management

The Connected Cumbria Partnership, a partnership addressing the e-Government agenda, is sponsoring a seminar to develop a better understanding of the issues surrounding the Freedom of Information Act and Information Management.

Wednesday 22 September 2004 at Rheged, Penrith, Cumbria

http://www.diagonal-solutions.co.uk/cumbriaseminar.htm

Scottish Ministers’ Code of Practice

Scottish Ministers’ Code of Practice on the Discharge of Functions by Public Authorities Under the Freedom of Information (SCOTLAND) Act 2002 has been published:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/government/sedfpa-00.asp

Data freedom is a bind, say firms

The Times business section

"LAWS to give people the right to demand information from businesses that work with hospitals, schools and other public-sector bodies have been criticised by small business lobby groups.
The Federation for Small Businesses (FSB) argues that small and medium-sized enterprises are ill-informed and unprepared for the changes in information laws that come into force next year"

Article shows poor understanding of the FOIA by the FSB: incorretcly states :"Mr Bettison is concerned that many businesses will be unaware of their right to charge a fee to people who apply for information, to cover administration costs, and will waste valuable resources satisfying the demands of “Mr Angry characters” with a grudge". This gives a misleading impression that all businesses dealing with public authorities are covered by the Act rather than information held about them.

I'm writing to the Times and FSB to point out the misconception this presents

This article by "The Register" entitled "Freedom of Information means grief for small biz" also makes similar confused statements

New Minister for FOI?

Lord Filkin has been removed from his position at DCA in the latest Govt reshuffle, I'm presuming that Baroness Ashton of Upholland will now take on responsibility for FOI. A rather worrying development given Lord Filkin's commitment to FOI and the closeness of Jan05 and the unresolved fees issue.See her biog at http://www.dca.gov.uk/dept/ministers/ashton.htm

Andrew has emailed and has pointed out that "There has been an inordinately long list of ministers moved/sacked who have dealt with FOI since 1997: David Clark, Mike O'Brien, Michael Wills, Yvette Cooper, Derry Irvine, Geoff Filkin"

The Constitution Unit presents: “Three Months to FoI:
A Practitioner’s Half-Day Preparatory Workshop”

Wednesday, October 6 and Tuesday, October 19, 2004
12:30 4:30 p.m.

The Augustana Centre (Central London)

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 will be implemented across the UK on January 1, 2005. That's less than four months away! Are you and your organisation ready? If in doubt, sign up for this half-day workshop on FoI led by the Constitution Unit, which has been running training sessions on FoI for over five years.

The half-day event consists of three workshops over the course of one afternoon. Each workshop is led by an experienced facilitator and focuses on a theme central to successful implementation of FoI:
· Training public sector staff in preparation for FoI implementation
· Working with media requests for information
· Understanding the key features of the FOI Act which relate to commercial information and why this is a sensitive area

www.promarta.co.uk/foi. Further information is available by emailing foi@promarta.co.uk or calling 0870 141 7164.

The same programme will be held on 6 and 19 October.

Further documents on fees

I have some further documents relating to the Fees working group from May:

Annex C.doc
Final Paper by the Fees Working Group.doc

More explictly confirms the information from the other documents I have, though these positions could have changed since May:

"The Fees Working Group recommends that the Fees Regulations to be made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 provide for a variable hourly rate charging scheme but set a maximum hourly rate for all public authorities.

The Group considers that authorities should be able to set their own level of subsidy but that a minimum of 1 hour free should be provided for in the Regulations.

The Group proposes that the appropriate limit for bodies outside central government and agencies should be twenty times the hourly rate established under charging schemes and that it should be set at £600 for central government and agencies.

The Group considered that all activities pertaining to the disclosure of the information could be charged for with the exception of consideration against the exemptions

The Group recommends that EIR charges are made on a similar basis to those for FOI."

Presumably final documents have been passed to Ministers for a final decision before the SI is laid in October, clearly there will not be much time for comment if a draft is published and then laid in Parliament. My main criticism would be that we would have benefited from the Scottish Consultation approach (see Scottish Exec website)

Right to Information Drive Takes Off in India

NEW DELHI, Sept 6 (OneWorld) - "Civil society groups in India have launched a public campaign to ensure a proposed Right to Information Act 2004 giving people access to information from closed government departments, introduces a real culture of glasnost in the country."

One World South Asia

Local Authority Access to Information - a consultation

Consultation on Local Authority Access to Information –Proposed Amendments to
Exemptions in Schedule 12a of the Local Government Act 1972

Consultation period 6 September to 29 October 2004

Download paper (PDF)

CIPFA Better Governance Forum Presents:

Information Management Workshops -
Control your Information before it control's you!
4th October 2004 (Central London), 11th October 2004 (York), 13th October 2004 (Birmingham)

More Information @ http://www.ipf.co.uk/Governance/events/default.asp


Regards

Mohamed

Irish FOIA: decisions published

Some new decisions have been published on the Irish Information Commissioner's website. They take the form of letters. They include a request for identity of the maker of an FOI request to the Midland Health Board:

"On 14 March 2003, a request under the FOI Act was made to the Midland Health Board (the Board) for details, for 2001, in relation to the prescription of the drug class "statins" by GPs in the GMS scheme for the region. Following notification by the Board to the GPs concerned of its decision, one of these GPs (Dr X) requested "full information about the identity and details of the requester" that had submitted the request of 14 March 2003"

......The Commissioner directed that the first requester's request (an e-mail) be released to Dr X, subject to the deletion of particular portions of that e-mail which were not covered by the scope of Dr X's request." (this was "subject to the withholding by the Board (a) of all details concerning the person who made the request on behalf of the first requester and (b) the deletion of the points numbered 1. - 4. in the record.)"

Read more at: http://www.oic.gov.ie/new.htm

My New Book

I have co-written a new book that will be published in November that may be of interest to readers working in the Information Management field. Authored with Dave Chaffey, entitled: Business Information Management:Improving Performance Using Information Systems, published by FT Prentice Hall

Cover image

Steve

Freedom of Information in Local Authorities Strategies for Successful Implementation

Tuesday 16th November 2004
Earls Court, Hospitality Rooms, London SW5

Keynote Speakers:

Lord Geoff Filkin CBE
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State,
Department for Constitutional Affairs

Richard Thomas
The Information Commissioner

More info at www.neilstewartassociates.com/sa187

Pentagon censors video on openness

Pentagon edits open-records tape
Historic clips blocked, raising fears of censorship
By TED BRIDIS
Houston Chronicle

The training video, The People's Right to Know , included historic clips copyrighted by organizations that would not give permission to release them. Among the footage:

•The 1996 Olympics.
•The exploration of Titanic wreckage in 1986.
•Hank Aaron hitting his 714th home run in 1974.


The Pentagon censored some footage in public versions of a Humphrey Bogart-themed videotape that cost $70,500 to produce and was intended to teach government employees to respond to citizens' requests for information.

Parts of the training video, The People's Right to Know, were blacked out and replaced with the message, "copyrighted material removed for public viewing." Defense Department officials said they did so because they worried the government did not have legal rights to some historical footage that was included.

FOIA and RM Guidance for HE and FE

From the JISC website:

Andrew Okey - draft documents - Freedom of Information and Data Protection
Examples of documents which may be used internally by an institution for the purpose of assisting with compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. (6 July 2004)

"Essential information for All Staff" - JISC Legal have prepared a document which is an example of Freedom of Information guidance which can be adapted by institutions for their own internal use.
(6 July 2004)

The JISC RM training package will also be of interest

Ireland FOIA

The Sixth annual report on the Irish FOIA has been published. Over 18,400 requests were made last year.

New Guidance on the IC website

Exemption guidance: The economy (section 29) (PDF)