2011/12/22 paul perrin <[email protected]>: > FoI was the best thing Blair did (won't argue about whether there were > any others!) > > However Blair has since described it as his worst mistake, MPs are > known to hate it (expenses debacle) > > Main thing I would change is the time limit - most requests are > answered on the last possible day (or just after). So there should be > an *additional* target AVERAGE response time - so theres a max and an > average.
I think one thing that went wrong here was that the legislative drafters almost certainly had in mind CPR 54.5 governing the time limit for judicial review, which states: "... the claim form must be filed – (a) promptly; and (b) in any event not later than 3 months after the grounds to make the claim first arose." And it is drummed into our heads at law school (or it should be) that this means what it says. If you aren't prompt in making your claim then its no good being within the 3 months, you can still be too late. Section 10 FOIA is worded in the same way: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/section/10 "... a public authority must comply with section 1(1) promptly and in any event not later than the twentieth working day following the date of receipt." And I bet the drafters of the legislation thought it was a really good way to draft it. The idea being that public authorities have to respond promptly (say in a day or two depending on the request) but that there should be a 20 day long-stop. That's how the legislation reads to me. But I suspect that civil servants don't read it that way (I know this of some who I have spoken with). They presumably think that time limits are, in general, advisory and the "promptly" just an expression of hope rather than a hard limit. The lack of any private enforceability encourages this view. As a result, 20 days is treated as being a target and, in practice, is overrun an awful lot. I am sure most list members will appreciate that if there was (say) a 10 day target it would probably be overrun about as often. Targets and deadlines can be like that. Work expands to fill the time. A second problem - and one that a 20 day "target" encourages - is the idea that the FOI requires some complex mechanism to deal with. My mother (who does lots of local campaigning) finds going into the council and asking for a document much, much, quicker and less hassle than making an formal FOI request. The law treats the two acts as identical, but there is an institutional problem for public authorities that they cannot think that way. Having a designated FOI officer (or officers or even department) just exacerbates the problem. The result is that a lot more time and effort is spent in answering questions that is strictly required. I suspect that some FOI officers view their job as checking to see if there is an exemption to disclosure rather than seeing what they can disclose. Where we want to be is a situation where anyone working for a public authority who is asked for information will: (1) see if they have it easily to hand and, if so, hand it over; (2) if they don't pass it on to someone else or a ultimately an "FOI officer" as a backstop; (3) only if the document containing the information contains personal data or has been expressly restricted is it necessary to consider exemptions. Even better would be to make all internal filing systems globally readable except where there is an express reason to hide :-). -- Francis Davey _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
