I thought folks might be interested in a new report in the United States on FOIA implementation, released by my colleagues over at CREW and OpenTheGovernment.org. While it does not get into ROI, it may have some relevance to the ongoing conversation....
Summary: The analysis by CREW and OpenTheGovernment.org also reveals critical flaws in the government’s FOIA data that make it difficult, if not impossible, to assess key areas of progress on the FOIA front. In particular, the data on the FOIA dashboard, FOIA.gov, created by the Department of Justice, contains multiple errors and often differs from the data found in annual agency FOIA reports. Moreover, DOJ’s collection of FOIA data across the government is not standardized and omits key information, such as data that would help assess the utility of the newly created FOIA ombudsman, the Office of Government Information Services. Report (PDF): http://crew.3cdn.net/5911487fbaaa8cb0f8_9xm6bgari.pdf (FYI, the only report that I've seen that goes into ROI for FOIA was from Ireland in 2010, and it's available here: http://www.tascnet.ie/upload/file/An%20Economic%20Argument.pdf. If you know of more, I'd love to see it.) Daniel Daniel Schuman Director | Advisory Committee on Transparency<http://transparencycaucus.org/> Policy Counsel | The Sunlight Foundation <http://sunlightfoundation.com/> o: 202-742-1520 x 273 | c: 202-713-5795 | @danielschuman <http://www.facebook.com/sunlightfoundation><http://twitter.com/sunfoundation><http://www.youtube.com/sunlightfoundation><http://sunlightfoundation.com/join/><http://blog.sunlightfoundation.com/feed/rss/> On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 10:50 AM, paul perrin <[email protected]> wrote: > The only stupid question is the one you don't ask. > > If someone asked a fire-authority how much they spent on planning for > alien landings and the response was £1,000,000 who would be > complaining about the FoI act ? > > Asking for MP's expenses receipts was seen as 'fishing','a waste of > money', 'invasion of privacy' etc... but *after* it was complied with, > we saw that it was 100% justified and useful. > > Saying 'we spend nothing' or 'we do nothing' etc takes seconds and > costs pennies. > > If the public are only allowed to ask questions that are expected to > get reasonable, rational, sensible answers, then the public sector > will have no concerns about being irrational in what they do and on > what they spend our money - we will not be allowed to ask them about > it. It will exclude the information about which we most need to > know... > > - Have you seen the publication of all council spending over £500 ? > The descriptions of the transactions make this 100% useless. But by > bringing in specific rules, (as I understand it) the FoI can no longer > be applied to these items of expenditure - thanks for less than > nothing! > > _______________________________________________ > 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/dschuman%40sunlightfoundation.com >
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