We continue with exploratory work that will help shape what the FOI Network will become, and how it will best serve specific types of those who use Freedom Of Information. Last week, in our second workshop of three, we convened journalists and specialist users to help us understand what the barriers are to their use of FOI, and how the Network will be best positioned to help.

More than 20 people joined us, from a range of organisations and specialities. 

A group brainstorming session surfaced the challenges and obstacles that attendees face when using FOI in their work. From these, we pulled out four priority themes; then we further discussed how best to mitigate these challenges; and what an FOI network could do to help.

Themes and conclusions

Passive pushback

The phrase “passive pushback” describes a culture within authorities not of active hostility, but in which FOI requests are not processed promptly, and where transparency is neither celebrated nor prioritised. 

Participants talked about different kinds of delays and obstructions, and strategies they’d attempted to get around this, including formal approaches such as referring to relevant ICO decision notices, or working with lawyers so correspondence included their letterhead. 

Could an FOI Network support, incentivise or celebrate a culture of openness and compliance within authorities? The group discussed the importance of both carrots and sticks (or shame and envy), rewarding and highlighting good practice; and potentially putting out comparative FOI statistics to make performance more visible and easy to benchmark. 

Active pushback

Active pushback covers more explicitly obstructive behaviour, including the use of rules and processes to slow down the progress of a request (for example, the use of public interest exemptions which may later be reconsidered and overturned), and coordination between authorities (where the intention is rarely to ensure everyone is being correctly open, but more likely to be working against the spirit of the ‘applicant blind’ principle that is written into the FOI Act). 

Participants shared the methods they’d attempted in the face of such stonewalling, including complaints to the ICO, “meta requests” asking authorities about their coordination mechanisms, and naming and shaming authorities for obstruction. 

As a network, we can provide peer support and resources around such tactics, and useful responses. 

But there is also an important advocacy angle, where building evidence and lobbying to change ICO/OSIC enforcement strategies can be an important collective rather than individual counter to obstructive approaches. 

A State of FOI report could cover both the positive “culture of openness” stories, but also dig more into patterns in obstructive responses. 

Writing/managing good requests

One important issue that came up in conversation was that it is a skill to write and manage FOI requests well — one that takes time to learn. It requires both an understanding of when legal approaches are helpful, but also a sense of what is possible through Freedom of Information (where a focus on specific information that already exists is required). 

Building this expertise can be a problem if FOI skills are not already well embedded in your organisation, and you are starting effectively from scratch. 

Here, community and training would be helpful. As a newcomer takes time to build up accumulated wisdom, peer support and mentor programmes could be helpful in walking through concrete examples of where FOI can and can’t be helpful. 

Going beyond that, we discussed the concept of training products and services that could help support increasing specialist use. These might include a custom newsletter featuring FOI tricks and tips, not aimed at first time users, but for journalists and specialists. The network already includes several organisations and individuals who could provide such training and expertise — and a willing audience. Here, the value of the network would be in joining people up, rather than trying to do everything itself.

The role of technology was also discussed. It can help with the challenge of managing requests  — one peron mentioned (unprompted!) WhatDoTheyKnow Pro as helpful for tracking and extracting data. 

Some are using AI to help them refine their requests, and we discussed the potential ways we could make AI assistance lean more towards “sharper, easier to process” requests, and away from the problems, already observed, of for example where AI hallucinates ICO notices and inserts them into correspondence. Here a network could help disseminate a ‘skill’ to bring more specialist knowledge towards shaping the AI’s actions; and a network that was also inclusive of FOI practitioners could help refine that from both sides. 

Understanding/using appeal processes

The final challenges we discussed were around understanding and using the appeal processes that are built in to the FOI system, noting that there’s a strong difference between Scottish FOI and the rest of the UK: legal appeals to OSIC are rare (and only possible on points of law). 

We again talked about the value of peer support; as well as building collections in response to common pushbacks. It was acknowledged, though, that taking things to tribunal is hard, and that one can be outgunned by the representation of the public authorities. 

Here it’s important that network activity is not just support for individuals, but lobbying and campaigning for improvements to the overall appeal system. 

This might be through pressing for improved data and information such as ICO timescales, and the tribunal returning to publishing current and upcoming cases; but also through lobbying for greater funding for regulators to be able to run an effective and timely system of appeal. 

Takeaways

Thanks to all who took part in the conversation, which has helped shape our understanding of what is useful activity to support journalists and specialist users.

Practical peer support for those in smaller organisations might be especially important — but dealing properly with the issues raised also involves wider campaigning activity around making sure the overall system is functional to be able to engage with. 

 —

In our third workshop, we move to a focus on those working in public authorities, where we want to explore more of these questions around supporting a culture of openness, and also our common interest in improving the quality and clarity of requests. If you are an Information Officer or practitioner, please do join.

 —

Image: GuerillaBuzz