Harrow to make all data public in FOI revolution
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Harrow Council legal head Hugh Peart is considering plans to revolutionise the way the authority discloses data under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI).
Peart wants the authority to begin publishing all information that would be disclosed under an FOI request on the council’s website, with the move having gained backing from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The act requires all public authorities to have mandatory publication schemes in place, but the level of information they publish varies depending on the council.
Harrow has seen a 160 per cent increase in the number of FOI requests over the past two years, and Peart believes the move would almost eliminate the cost burden of dealing with FOI requests.
It is estimated that local authorities collectively spend £34m handling requests each year.
“The default model for most councils is that we won’t give anything away unless we have to,” said Peart. “I want to turn the whole edifice on its head. I want us to move away from the defensive position of keeping everything to ourselves. I want to say that everything’s public except for a few obvious areas.”
ICO policy delivery chief Steve Wood said he supports the idea, but warned of potential data privacy breaches.
He told The Lawyer: “Harrow Council is an exciting example of a public authority showing what you can do when you think of the FOI as an opportunity, not a burden.”
Readers' comments (3)
Anonymous | 8-Feb-2011 4:07 pm
I fail to see how this is particularly revolutionary. This is the starting point for all FOI requests - information is available unless its exempt. Most authorities are, incrementally, moving to this position using disclosure logs - at the same time as the government encourages transparency (albeit in a rather chaotic form) through the demands of the DCLG.
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Anonymous | 8-Feb-2011 5:23 pm
As someone who deals with FOI day in day out in a large local authority this entirely misses the point. Most FOI requests, and all of those that take time are not about 'data'. They are about decsion making, internal communications, why is the council closing this library, who decided it was a good idea to use recycled paper that jams photocopiers, what were the benefits to the Council of Cllr Jones trip to Latvia. Increaed publishing of data will not dent those enquiries and will probably cause more enquiries about the data. We too have seen a 100% increase in 12 months and almost all of that was BECAUSE OF the transparency agenda.
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Anonymous | 9-Feb-2011 1:54 am
The issue is not about transparency. It is about making the FOI process work properly. So much more could and should be published regularly through the council's publicaton scheme.
What is pure poppycock is that the requests are about things that cannot or are not published. It is just silly to say that the majority of requests are for "non-data" issue. Instead, they are about the core things that should be published or that there should be material published relating to them so that they can be handled appropriately.
Transparency will change the focus of FOI as FOI will always be here because there are the tough choices around what can or should be released or disclosed. In the future the arguments about exemptions will be narrower as more information is published and there will be less talk of missed deadlines.
Harrow are brave and setting a new trail that others will follow.
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