MPs are about to review the first five years of the operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. We’d like to encourage users of mySociety’s Freedom of Information website WhatDoTheyKnow.com to share their views and experiences with the MPs who are to carry out the review.
The review is being conducted by the House of Commons’ Justice Select Committee.
The committee is currently inviting people to make submissions to it. The deadline for submissions is Friday 3 February 2012.
A memorandum from the Ministry of Justice has been prepared to brief the committee, that document notes, in paragraph 67:
Very little research has been published detailing the views of requesters of information.
Particularly in-light of this we thought it would be worthwhile alerting our users to this review; if we could encourage our users to make submissions to the committee that might help ensure they receive balanced evidence: from outside, as well as within, the public sector.
While the committee is interested in any comments on the act’s operation, specific questions the committee has asked for comment on are:
- Does the Freedom of Information Act work effectively?
- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Freedom of Information Act?
- Is the Freedom of Information Act operating in the way that it was intended to?
Responses can be emailed to: justicecommemo@parliament.uk
Details of how responses should be formatted and technical details relating to submission are available on the webpage announcing the call for submissions.
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January 29th, 2012 at 11:16am
It would be great if those who do submit evidence comment on the bodies receiving public funding (or fulfilling a public function) that are not yet covered. see here: http://www.addtofoi.co.uk/ for more details.
February 3rd, 2012 at 5:58pm
WhatDoTheyKnow has submitted evidence to the committee in advance of its review.
We have asked for permission to publish what we have submitted.
Hopefully we’ll be able to either link to a copy the committee publishes, or publish our submission ourselves, shortly.
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Richard – WhatDoTheyKnow.com volunteer
February 10th, 2012 at 12:46am
Hi Richard, have you got any updates on when the committee will be publishing the review? I’d be interested in finding out more on this.
February 10th, 2012 at 1:00am
An evidence session is to be held on at 10:30 on 21 February.
Details of all those giving oral evidence have been published on the Justice Committee webpage as:
We don’t know the committee’s plans for taking further evidence, how many sessions there will be etc.
Personally I’d expect the committee to have sessions with the Information Commissioner, representatives of central and local government, and others. It’s anyone’s guess as to how long the process will take and in what format its findings will be released.
The best place to stay up to date is via the committee’s webpages at:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-archive/justice/
February 15th, 2012 at 8:27am
Written evidence has been published here:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmjust/writev/foi/foi.pdf
WhatDoTheyKnow’s is #81, starting on page 330.
Comments welcomed!