Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Freedom of Information Act review
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jul/17/ministers-to-review...
Tags for Forum Posts: Freedom, information, of
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ed Gorman on
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doesn't matter whether it's right or not, ethically, morally, or whatever, this government has a majority and will push through any and all legiation it wants, and there is nothing anyone can do about it :-/
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Some of our rulers, it seems, have learned nothing at all from the expenses scandal and the damage it did to people's trust in our political system. Nor from Heather Brooke's long battle to overturn what Boyd Tonkin - in The Independent - described as "the entire reeking apple-cart of British institutional secrecy".
Will this "Review" extend our rights to information and the powers of the Information Commissioner? Or are the powers-that-be determined to see how far they can roll-back to bad business as usual? As usual we can hope for the best and prepare to protest at the worst.
In the reeking, secretive, murk at the higher reaches of Haringey Council the F.o.I. Act has been one of the few effective methods we have to find out what's going on.
Michael, what do you suggest people can do to express their views on this to our MPs and elsewhere?
Ed Gorman - defeatism is not the best starting point. Heather Brooke's account of her battle is still inspiring. It has a majority of 12.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Knowing what action to take is difficult. The traditional "write to your MP" may not be the way as I would imagine that there are a number of MPs who see a tightening of information freedoms just what they would like to happen (this in no way includes our own MP). I must admit to being a bit split over this one. I've made FoI requests in the past and valued the route to information I would have found difficult to obtain. On the other hand I've often refrained from making them. This is because I've also had the experience of responding to FoI requests. A number of these were completely frivolous and done mainly to take up vast amounts of time. I've also had to deal with ones where I knew it was a commercial organisation who were getting me to do the work for free rather than paying someone to do it for them (providing every single address in a London borough within 500m of the Crossrail route was a one that sticks in my mind).
One of the most frustrating things though about the FoI process from the information providers point of view is that on a lot of occasions, if someone had just rung me up they would have got the information in a minute or two AND they would have got better information as we would have had the opportunity to talk about what they were after and tweak it so it was of better use to them. Sometimes I would look an information request and think "You're just asking the wrong question"
Having said all that, even in its current form it's too precious to lose. I can only see non-parliamentary action on this as standing any chance of saving the legislation. Perhaps an organisation like Liberty would take up the challenge.
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Thanks, Michael, for that thoughtful response. Food for further thought.
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Thinking about it a bit more I think what I would like to see instead of a freedom of information act (which puts the obligation on us, the public, to hunt downt the data) is a legal requirement for all public bodies and perhaps even corporations over a certain size to publish ALL of their information unless it's personal (that is, it can be used to identify individuals) and any exceptions to that need to be decided in court.
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I just watched Alistair Campbell interviewed on BBC Newsnight about the Volkswagen emissions scandal.
Evan Davis asked him if the problem was spin. Alistair Campbell said that what Volkswagen did was concealing. "They were lying". Suggesting that especially with global corporations, they needed: "to think transparency" . Then saying:
"They have to assume now that every single thing that has happened in the past is going to come out. And they should get it out first."
"And maybe in politics", said Evan Davis.
Earlier today Volkswagen announced they have: "decided to make a clean break and a fresh start".
I don't see our own Tory Government adopting "Think Transparency" as its guiding principle. Nor unfortunately do I expect any change from the spin and PR of our KoberTories. But it might be a sound principle and promise for a future Labour Government. And even a future Haringey Council.
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I went to a conference a few years ago about Open Data (data transparency for want of a better term) where the ex-Government minister Francis Maude was the key speaker. He was urging public bodies to make all their information available. I asked him if that should be extended to corporations and he was adamant that this was impossible because of issues of commercial sensitivity. The VW scandal indicates that there might be far more to hide than just information that would give rivals an advantage over you. (NB - the conference was free and I attended in my own own time)
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Permalink Reply by Betty Careless on
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Completely agree. FOI is incredibly important but there needs to be some kind of fine tuning to ensure requests are in some way legitimate and fair. I worked for a publicly funded body where the sheer number of requests meant we had a staff member working on them two days a week. An awful lot of requests were obviously from journalists who had sent identical requests to loads of organisations without bothering to find out what they actually did or whether the question was relevant. As you say a quick chat on the phone would have been much more efficient for both parties.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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There is a bloke in Canada who uses FoI in the UK to pester any academics here remotely interested in climate change.
If you want to know how much to bid to take over a public service, FoI to see how much it currently costs to run.
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Looks like that at least charging a fee for information has been ruled out
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35693236
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