Every year from around April to September, we see an uptick on people sharing links to our Freedom of Information site, WhatDoTheyKnow on Reddit forums. The reason? It’s the peak time for anxieties around university entry.

As we know, universities are generally looking for the brightest of minds. Perhaps that includes those who have enough initiative to source data around things like their entry requirements and shortlisting criteria. 

As public bodies, universities are subject to the Freedom of Information Act, so a lot of this data can be requested; and where people have used WhatDoTheyKnow to do so, the responses are publicly available for other potential students to access in years to come.

So what kind of information are these bright sparks asking for? In a brief analysis, we came across requests which address seven distinct questions for university applicants. 

What A-Level subjects should I take to get into the university course of my choice?

Forward planning never hurts, and for some smart kids this comes into play as early as Year 11. 

“Does a fourth A-level help you get into the Computer Science course at a top-level university?”, asked a student who was about to pick their sixth form subjects.

A response pointed them to this FOI response from the University of Oxford, indicating that passing four A-levels does indeed appear to help for Oxford, while astutely adding that cause does not always align with correlation: “It’s hard to know whether other things impacted the offer rate there, eg are people more likely to do well on the admissions tests if they’re doing four?”.

What GCSE marks do I need to achieve in my exams to enter the university I want?

The anxieties start early, as we see from this post asking “Does Cambridge ever reject people because of slightly weaker GCSEs compared to the applicant pool?” and this one wondering whether a B in Maths GCSE is enough to get into Bath Uni.

The required data was provided here and here, for the prospective students to consult and draw their own conclusions.

How can I access past university entry tests for practice purposes?

One chemistry enthusiast found that old Oxford Uni entry tests were available only to current students on the student portal — not much use for those wanting to practice before the real thing! 

A kind soul was able to point them at this request, giving access to several past papers from 2003 to 2017. That’s just one of many such requests across multiple subjects at several unis: in fact, there have been so many on WhatDoTheyKnow that we’ve created a ‘past exam papers’ section on our categories page.

How do universities decide shortlists?

This Reddit post was subsequently deleted by its author, but from the responses it is clear that it was asking whether the author’s results would be likely to see them shortlisted for interview.

The FOI request provided in the comments is a smart one, referring back to a previous successful request and asking that the same data be provided for the most recent time period.

When do universities send out offer letters?

Once you’ve done all you can on your application, interview and any entrance tests, all that remains is to sit back and wait for the hoped-for offer letter. 

This helpful Redditor, sharing dates from previous years around the Maths with Data Science course at LSE, said, “I thought the following would be worth mentioning for those who have applied, and are agonisingly checking their emails at 8pm; waiting for news that will seemingly never come.”

They shared this request, the response to which provided rich data beyond just the decision dates for each applicant: we can also see predicted grades, country of residence, and their TMUA test scores.

What’s the best way to pick university course modules?

So you’ve been accepted onto the course? The usefulness of FOI doesn’t stop there! In this request, a student about to start their first year studying Maths at Warwick University was wondering which optional course modules to select. 

They were asking which might have the best lecturers or be the most interesting overall; but in a comment, another fresher shared that they had already submitted an FOI request to understand which modules resulted in the highest number of exam/coursework marks — so not only were they able to provide useful extra context, but also to identify themselves as a soon-to-be classmate!

What are the stats around Postgrad waiting lists?

Finally, for those who got onto a uni course and then enjoyed it so much that they went on to apply to a postgraduate degree, there are still more questions to be asked.

Questions like the total number of applications received, the number of applicants placed on a waiting list, and the number who subsequently received an offer.

This kind Redditor gathered together three FOI requests to answer those questions.

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If you’re a student wondering about similar questions to those above, we hope this has been a useful guide to everything you can discover thanks to Freedom of Information. The first step is to search WhatDoTheyKnow to see whether what you need has already been requested — and if the exact information you seek isn’t already on there, check out our handy guide for some basic guidance in making a request yourself.

Requests come thick and fast at this time of year, and we suspect from a younger userbase than is our norm. We don’t mind it at all — in fact, we hope it provides a gateway to using FOI for life, and perhaps exploring all mySociety’s other useful online tools for civic action.

Oh, and if you’re a member of university staff yourself, here’s food for thought: as we’ve demonstrated above, this type of information is very much in demand. You could consider proactively publishing it on your site, so there’s no need for students to make requests at all. WhatDoTheyKnow will also be a useful resource for you — check what students have requested from your uni, and from others, to help understand what type of information people are keen to access.

 

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Image: Chris Boland

Many of us may have wanted to put the Covid pandemic out of our minds once it passed — but those with more medical and scientific understanding would be justified in exploring a little more deeply into how well the UK government and our NHS services handled it. What can we see from the facts and figures around lockdowns, mortality rates and even the efficacy of testing?

One ideal tool for this type of enquiry is Freedom of Information — the right to ask public authorities for recorded information. And the Trust The Evidence project, run by Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, has made very good use of that, thanks to WhatDoTheyKnow. 

Their approach? Small, focused FOI requests lodged via WhatDoTheyKnow (and therefore accessible for everyone to see), followed by deeper analysis and articles both in the media and on their own SubStack, which is supported by an engaged audience.

We asked Tom and Carl to tell us a bit more about how they’ve used FOI and what they have discovered about the UK’s response to the pandemic, as well as other pressing health matters. First of all, how have they come to be working together?

“We’d collaborated for a decade before beginning our research on the evidence surrounding the Covid pandemic in 2020. We’re both medically trained epidemiologists and academics with a background in primary care.”

As you may remember, in the UK, lockdowns and the closure of many businesses and public spaces began in the spring of 2020. “As early as April 2020, we predicted that lockdowns would have devastating effects on both lives and the economy.”

Background knowledge

They weren’t basing that prediction on mere speculation— they had the professional expertise to back it up. Tom is a Senior Associate Tutor at the University of Oxford, a former researcher at the Nordic Cochrane Centre and a former scientific coordinator for producing HTA reports on non-pharmaceuticals for Agenas, the Italian National Agency for Regional Healthcare. 

Carl is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford. He is a clinical epidemiologist with expertise in evidence-based medicine, research methods, and evidence synthesis. He also works as an NHS urgent care GP. 

Nonetheless, their early interventions did not go down well.

“We faced persecution for asking questions. We endured personal attacks and censorship from self-proclaimed experts, influencers, and the very institutions we’d dedicated decades of our careers to. 

“That’s when we decided to launch our own SubStack forum called “Trust the Evidence”, where we focus on examining evidence rather than popular narratives or spin. The goal is to advocate for policies grounded in evidence rather than dogma, ultimately driving meaningful change.”

And where does that evidence come from? 

“Well — this is where Freedom of Information requests become important.”

Advocating for policies based on evidence

“Over the last six years we have either reviewed or made hundreds of FOI requests, and in WhatDoTheyKnow we’ve found information released via other people’s requests, as well as the ability to pursue our own inquiries, openly and with short, sharp questions. We now routinely use FOI to try to understand what’s behind the official narrative and to verify its evidence base. 

“So, for example, in the winter of 2021-2022 we set out to analyse public authorities’ understanding of PCR testing for SARs-CoV-2 in the UK by looking at FOI requests others had posed in 2020-21 to NHS Health Trusts, laboratories, and government agencies such as Public Health England and the Department of Health and Social Care. 

“We searched WhatDoTheyKnow using specific terms, such as “PCR cycle threshold,” to understand the use of PCR in the UK public sector, and we reviewed 300 FOI requests from more than 150 members of the public who were asking questions about the £37 billion Test And Trace programme. We noticed that, often, members of the public understood and knew more about the topic than those who responded. We found evidence of extensive misuse and misreporting of the tests used.

“So FOI requests showed that members of the public understood the types of tests used, their shortcomings, and the willingness of public bodies to bend the results to fit the general narrative, which supported the government’s introduction of emergency measures without a credible assessment of the threat. 

“We quickly followed up this work with research into several more related areas: Covid benefits fraud; various definitions of Covid deaths; excessive mortality in care homes; the potential harms and benefits of Covid vaccines (Comirnaty regulatory evidence & adverse effects, Vaxzevria and Yellow Card adverse-event data); Hospital-acquired COVID / respiratory-virus infections; Avian-influenza vaccines and procurement and then more broadly into NHS expenditure/accountability; Influenza and NHS winter-crisis evidence.”

A hectic few years

There is clearly an audience for this work. Carl and Tom are closing in on close to 1,400 posts to date, with subscribers from 140 countries having viewed their mailouts more than 11 million times.  

But it doesn’t stop there. “When we consider the sharing and republication of our work, as well as media interest and parliamentary questions, the reach becomes remarkable. The content has been republished in various outlets and cited by multiple news organisations, with translations into several foreign languages.

“This all shows the central role that WhatDoTheyKnow has played and continues to play in our work. Subscribing to WhatDoTheyKnow Pro has made things much easier, as we can send batch requests to multiple authorities at once, building up a national dataset that didn’t previously exist. 

“At present, we are working on summarising the replies to 161 batched FOI requests to NHS bodies regarding Influenza/NHS winter-crisis evidence. We’ll soon follow that up with over 200 requests to NHS bodies for details of their 2026-27 winter plans. 

“It’s been a hectic few years of work! We can only add that FOI and WhatDoTheyKnow are central to what we’re doing.

“We’ve managed to get replies; but also, public bodies often try to evade transparency. We write about that, too — it is all part of the evidence.”

Evidence, rigour and expertise

The ultimate aim? “We present robust evidence. We apply scientific rigour alongside our extensive clinical expertise. This approach ensures that our insights are credible, and also deeply aligned with the societal values that should underpin healthcare. 

“And by bringing diverse voices and perspectives into our discussions, we strive to foster richer conversations that pave the way for safer, more informed healthcare.” 

Many thanks to Tom and Carl for sharing their experiences of using WhatDoTheyKnow. You can subscribe to Trust The Evidence to access their full archive of posts and they say, “we’re happy to see our posts republished with proper acknowledgement.” 

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Image: iMattSmart

Are you one of the many who has watched the BBC’s two-parter Buried with Michael Sheen? If so, you may have experienced increasing levels of outrage as the actor helps to uncover the scandalous dumping of toxic waste across sites in Wales and England — and lays out the effects, only now fully emerging, that this has had on local residents’ health.

Sheen, is, of course, the big draw; the well-loved actor getting the UK to take an interest in a complex, localised topic. But in several scenes, you’ll also have seen Paul Cawthorne, vicar and environmental campaigner: helping to test soil at the contaminated sites; sharing a testimony from one of his parishioners who had been employed to dump the chemicals; and providing background information from more than a decade of investigations.

What you won’t necessarily have realised is that much of that background information has been obtained, over the years, from Freedom of Information requests made on WhatDoTheyKnow — this case stands as an example of how FOI can play a crucial part in bringing malpractice to public attention.

Over a decade of dedicated investigation

Paul’s investigation into the dumping dates back many years, and he has made great use of Freedom of Information to secure the evidence to show that giant chemical company Monsanto was appallingly negligent in the disposal of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), now known to be cancer-causing “forever chemicals”, going back as far as the 70s.

Paul was happy to talk to us and let us know all about the part that FOI and WhatDoTheyKnow have played in his search for the facts — you can see his more than 200 requests for yourself, on the site.

Entering the public consciousness

He’s pleased that the programme has brought the topic that has been absorbing him for so long to the public eye: “For the first few years, everyone just assumed that I was making a fuss about nothing, and now it seems to have suddenly reversed.”

The first sign of that was a call from the TV production company, seeking evidence that they could shape the programme around.

If you’ve watched Buried, you’ll know that much of the programme is based around the meticulous records of whistleblower Douglas Gowan, now deceased. He had been an equally dedicated investigator into the issue, years prior, and Michael Sheen had interviewed him before he died. 

“Michael had read an article in the Ecologist magazine that I contributed to in 2007, and that’s how he came across Douglas Gowan’s story. I managed to source him a briefcase full of Gowan’s papers, the one that we see in the TV programme.

“It had been very securely lodged, after his death. I’m not even allowed to say who with, but we managed to get access to it, and so it’s been quite a detective story, really.”

Don’t ask awkward questions

And that’s not the only dramatic detail: it was also mentioned in the programme that Paul was first alerted to the whole topic by one of his parishioners who had been involved in the dumping, on his deathbed:

“Yes. Well, more accurately, he had only a few months to live. And he asked to see me, so we sat over a pint, and he told me about all this night-time dumping that had been going on in Telford at Stony Hill, and how a driver had got some yellow crystals on his hand, and his hand broke out into an immediate rash. 

“The poor worker, he’d felt very uncomfortable about this dumping, and he’d gone to the site manager and said, ‘What’s going on?’, and the site manager just looked him straight in the eyes and said, ‘You don’t want to go asking questions like that’.”

That was the start of it all, setting Paul off on his tireless campaign for truth. At what point did he realise that Freedom of Information was going to be useful? 

“It’s been a steep learning curve. For the first few years, I very naively wrote to the various regulators, and they sent me their fob-off replies. And of course, there was nothing on the public record about that. 

Putting information into the public arena

“So when I discovered WhatDoTheyKnow, it was a real breakthrough because I realised that if I asked authorities in public, they would realise that their responses were going to go on the public record. So they were less likely to lie to me. And with it being on the public record, future researchers could could follow up on stuff that I may have missed. 

“I mean, it’s such a big subject. I suspect people in 50 years will be doing studies of what I’ve uncovered. Not to be pompous. I’m just being honest about the importance of it all.”

Paul soon realised he could do more on WhatDoTheyKnow than just lodge requests.

“Another benefit is that I can do searches on the relevant terms to see what other people have requested on the same subjects.

“But also, one of the lovely things has been to be able to put an enquiry with one regulator on WhatDoTheyKnow, and then forward that to another regulator to say, ‘You weren’t telling the truth, were you? Because these other people have said something so different’. That kind of-cross referencing has been incredibly valuable. 

“That approach forced some information out of the Mines Remediation Authority, including the existence of some secret testing that had been done below the Stoney Hill site at Telford, which no one had told me about, so that was brilliant.”

But it hasn’t always been so easy. 

Now you see it…

“A lot of the key lorry manifests from Telford, which was the first site I looked into, went missing. The Environment Agency’s Shrewsbury office had shown me them in person, proving that a lot of the dumping into this site in Telford had been done from the two Monsanto plants at Newport and Ruabon. And then when I asked to see them again, lo and behold, they’d gone missing. 

“They said that they’d sent them to Telford Council, and Telford Council said, ‘We haven’t received them’. So I had two FOI requests, which said mutually contradictory things, and you just feel like locking the two parties in a room and saying come out when you’ve made your minds up!”

The discoveries are still coming. 

“Only two weeks ago, we unearthed a 1,100-page document which shows that Telford Council have known all along how bad the site was, and that the site linings aren’t even non-porous because a cheap load of colliery spoil was used to line the bottom.”

Sometimes, the results of an FOI request have been quite surprising.

“I’d done a request about Cefn Mawr in North Wales — which features in the programme — and the answer came back with the information I’d asked for. 

“But there was more information included, about the American Monsanto court case, and I thought, ‘That didn’t need to be included in the answer’. So, I believe a whistleblower managed to get out to me a piece of information that they knew I was looking for about an American court settlement. That’s somebody very honorable, who knows the significance of that document, and that’s why they’ve given it to me.”

As you can tell, Paul has been extremely meticulous and tenacious in his investigation. The circumstances of the toxic dumps haven’t made the job any easier, either: 

“A lot of it was dumped at night, so isn’t recorded, and a lot of it was dumped in the early 1970s before the Control of Poisonous Waste Act came in, in ’74. 

“So there was no stipulation to do it particularly carefully in most cases, and it’s left a really nasty legacy. A lot of the dumping was done in barrels, and the barrels are now rusting, so the stuff’s leaking out. 

“A whole load of councils seem determined to avoid classifying the sites as contaminated land because they’re worried about obligations that they feel may be put upon them, and unfortunately, they don’t seem to understand that the legislation clearly says that if councils that own some of these sites aren’t able to pay, then the polluter can be approached to pay.”

What happens next?

Perhaps this TV programme will be a turning point, beginning to bring justice to the people and the communities that have suffered such severe health issues? 

“If you see it as a chess match, I’d say that we’ve finished the end of the opening game, and we’re now moving into the middle game. Even this last week there’s been so much happening [We spoke to Paul just over a week after the programme first aired]. A legal firm is recruiting for for a major class action, so I’ve been giving them my contacts, especially people who’ve got cancers. And very sadly, there’s quite a lot of child leukemias turning up near the different sites, as well, which we didn’t include on the TV because it’s a bit heavy and a bit personal. 

“A national newspaper is pursuing the idea of a series of features about things which we just touched on but didn’t have time to develop in this series. 

“Plus we’re preparing for two judicial reviews. One of those is is likely to be a challenge against DEFRA for breaching the Stockholm Convention regarding persistent organic chemicals and pollutants; and the other one is against Caerphilly Council because they’ve issued a report saying that Ty Llwyd Quarry, which featured in the series, isn’t contaminated land — but they haven’t even tested the layby that’s known to have PCB in it, and they haven’t tested the river below the nearest village, Ynysddu, which we know from previous tests that there’s PCB in the bed of the river for at least three miles downstream. So, why aren’t they testing those miles downstream?” 

Hopefully, this important work will continue to have significant outcomes. Many thanks to Paul for taking the time to share his remarkable investigation. If you’d like to help see justice done by the victims of the toxic waste dumping, look out for Paul’s crowdfunder page, coming soon — we’ll drop a link here as soon as it’s live.

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Image: Ilya Yakubovich

Scrutinising governments’ use of AI is turning out to be one of the pressing demands of our time, so we’re very glad to have received funding from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust that allows us to conduct meaningful and sustained work in this area. The project has already kicked off with fact-finding, consultation and exploration, and will culminate in the creation of a service for civil society, journalists, authorities — and individuals affected by AI-based decision-making.

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly used in democratic decision-making from welfare and healthcare to policing, with significant potential for both positive and negative impacts on individuals, society and the environment. 

The effective use of data-driven AI systems in government and the public sector could transform the delivery of public services and support evidence-based policymaking, bringing benefits to citizens, saving costs and driving policy innovation across many domains. 

But a data-driven algorithmic approach also has known risks, including that of reproducing or even amplifying unfair or discriminatory outcomes that are represented in the source data. We want to know how transparent evaluations of AI deployment in government can support both effective use and democratic accountability. 

This is not an abstract question, nor one for a distant future. A recent LGA survey revealed that a significant percentage of local authority respondents are using AI in health and social care — 44% of them in services for adults, and 31% in services for children. Large Language Model (LLM)-based tools are being piloted across diverse applications in government, from social housing and planning to the DWP.

As a new generation of LLM AI systems come into use in which the rules of operation are not explicit, explanations of behaviour are challenging, and training data is not available, the need to both assess and demonstrate the fairness, performance and value of systems through adequate and transparent evaluation of their effectiveness and impact becomes much more important. 

Across the two year span of this project, we’ll work with others to tackle the practical questions of how we collectively evaluate government AI systems and their impact in a way that supports fairness and benefits society as a whole. Based on this, we’ll go on to develop an accessible digital service, fostering transparency and accountability where AI systems are used. 

That last bit is crucial: this is not just a research project. The initial discovery will ensure that the service is designed to be as effective as possible, with primary users being civil society organisations and journalists, alongside public authorities learning from their peers — but it will also be designed with public participation in mind, providing structured pathways for affected individuals. 

We’ve started already. Last week, we shared the outcomes of a roundtable, the first activity in this project, helping us to understand what useful infrastructure already exists for scrutiny, where the gaps are, and where there are shared needs across civil society. 

There’s plenty more to come: watch this space, and do sign up for updates (check “artificial intelligence” as an interest) to receive our newsletter direct to your inbox.

 

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Image: Jamillah Knowles & Digit via Better Images of AI (CC-by 4.0)

Governing Freedom of Information in the UK

Tl;dr: the governance model of the ICO is changing and FOI isn’t well-represented in their new strategy. Here is how it could be made better.

Freedom of Information gives us the power to ask public authorities for information about their work. It has been used to uncover wrongdoing, scrutinise how public money is spent, and give communities the evidence they need to hold public bodies to account. Also, when public servants know that their decisions and records may be subject to public scrutiny, this can encourage better record-keeping and more accountable government in the first place.

Effective Freedom of Information systems require effective oversight. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has substantial legal powers, an experienced FOI team, and a well-established role in resolving complaints and improving public authority practice. However, there are longstanding questions about how FOI is governed within an organisation whose much larger responsibility is data protection. 

The transition to the new Information Commission brings those questions into sharper focus. FOI plays a relatively small part in the proposed corporate strategy; specialist FOI expertise is not obvious within the new governance arrangements and the FOI function continues to depend on government funding at a time of increasing demand.

There are different ways these problems could be addressed. The new Information Commission can do more to give FOI strategic clarity, visibility and support within the combined regulator. Parliament can play a stronger role in scrutinising and supporting the FOI function, including how it is resourced. And, more fundamentally, FOI regulation could be separated from data protection altogether.

For an example of the last approach, we can already see this in the UK with the Scottish Information Commissioner (a dedicated regulator for the Scottish FOI system, appointed and funded via the Scottish Parliament).  This arrangement does not need to be exactly replicated, but the new Information Commission needs to show how it can deliver the same kind of strategic clarity and agenda, and build a constructive relationship with Parliament on securing this important constitutional right.

If FOI remains within the new Information Commission, the challenge is to demonstrate how the combined model will deliver those conditions in practice.

What does effective FOI oversight need?

The existence of a legal right to information does not by itself guarantee effective access to information. FOI depends on an effective regulator. 

Our 2022 Improving Oversight of Access to Information report looked at how information rights are regulated across Europe. It found that regulators need sufficient independence and resources to put their powers into practice, specialist knowledge of Access To Information law and practice, and good information about how the wider FOI system is working. This allows them not only to resolve individual complaints, but to identify where problems are occurring and intervene strategically.

The way a regulator is governed matters to its ability to do this. Its institutional purpose needs to be clear, expertise on Access To Information needs to inform its leadership and strategy, and its resources need to reflect the scale of the job it is expected to do. There also needs to be meaningful accountability for whether the regulator itself is delivering an effective FOI system.

These conditions are particularly important when FOI is one function within a much larger regulator. The Information Commission’s data protection responsibilities are substantially larger than its FOI role, with different funding arrangements, professional networks and regulatory priorities. Without deliberate arrangements to protect the strategic position of FOI, there is a risk that it becomes secondary within the priorities, governance and resources of the wider organisation.

This is the challenge facing the new Information Commission. It is not enough for the Commission simply to retain the ICO’s existing FOI responsibilities and powers. The new governance arrangements need to demonstrate how their FOI function will have the expertise and resources necessary for the regulator to use those powers effectively and improve the operation of the UK’s FOI system as a whole.

FOI within the new Information Commission

The new corporate strategy

FOI only plays a small part in the draft corporate strategy, and is not well-represented in the key strategic objectives.  

There is a proposed objective for public authorities to be “transparent and provide public information openly and on time”. The suggested measurement framework also includes FOI compliance and complaints data, alongside qualitative evidence from FOI practitioners. Measuring the health of the wider FOI system is vital: our previous research demonstrates that regulators need to better understand more than just the complaints which eventually arrive with them.

However, considering the strategy more broadly, FOI is not well-represented. In particular, it is not always clear how the Commission’s wider strategic priorities and activities apply to its Access To Information responsibilities.

This may partly reflect the origins of the strategy itself. The Data (Use and Access) Act creates new requirements around the Commission’s strategy for data protection, while FOI legislation does not create an equivalent requirement for a dedicated FOI strategy. The ICO has previously operated with a distinct strategy for its FOI work; this should be revived. 

FOI expertise within the new governance structure

The move from a single Commissioner to a Board creates new opportunities to bring a wider range of expertise into the organisation’s strategic governance. Seven non-executive members have now been appointed to the new Information Commission Board. They bring a range of experience; however, none of the members’  biographies identify specialist experience focused on information rights. FOI expertise is similarly not prominent in the published recruitment material for the new Chair.

It’s not necessarily the case that a seat on the Board needs to be reserved for an FOI specialist, but this does raise a practical question about how the Board will gather specialist Access To Information expertise and maintain strategic oversight of this part of the Commission’s responsibilities. Looking to Scotland, the Commissioner is appointed with a clear FOI remit and is expected to have experience with relevant legal/public sector matters. 

Resources and independence

Funding is another longstanding issue for FOI within the ICO. Unlike much of the ICO’s data protection activity, which is funded through fees, its FOI responsibilities are supported through government grant funding. This creates an unusual relationship in which the resources available to enforce information rights against the government are ultimately determined through the government.

This has previously had practical consequences. In evidence to Parliament in 2021, the then Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham linked resource constraints to the ICO’s ability to take enforcement action, noting that its FOI funding had fallen substantially over the preceding decade. Our comparative research subsequently identified the UK as an example where a regulator has extensive formal powers but their practical ability to deploy them could be constrained by resources.

It is important to recognise that the ICO’s performance on FOI has improved in recent years. However, we must not take this progress for granted – and the ICO is currently warning that at its current funding level increased pressure on the complaints system is increasing the size of the backlog and delays before cases are allocated. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Procedure Committee, Warren Seddon (Director of Freedom of Information and Transparency) – highlighted the increase in volume and impact on response times:

In the last 12 months, we saw our intake increase by 16% in Q1, 38% in Q2, and then 60% in Q3 and Q4. That is in a context where, historically, over two decades of the FOI Act, you see a 20% to 25% increase every five years. We have seen a massive surge in the number of complaints in the system. Although the evidence is not there to pull that apart in detail, I think AI is probably driving that.

[..]In terms of the impact on performance and how the system is working at the funding levels that we are seeing coming in right now, there is a real concern from our perspective about where we will end up. We are projecting at the moment that, by the end of this financial year, it will take about 16 months to allocate a case, which is not good from our perspective.

In a response to an FOI request, the ICO highlighted both the increase in workload and that they have been unable to secure an increase in budget to reflect this:

[D]espite bidding for more resource to recruit more staff at the last Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), this was not successful. We continue to engage with government on this issue, but as a result, we currently anticipate allocation and wait times will continue to grow as approximately 400 excess cases a month are being added to our caseload. 

Improvements to processes and technology may all help the regulator use its existing resources more effectively, but there is a limit to how far operational improvements can compensate for a sustained mismatch between workload and resources.

Responding to the Information Commission strategy

The current consultation on the Information Commission’s corporate strategy provides an immediate opportunity to strengthen the place of FOI within the new organisation.

The draft strategy includes an outcome focused on public authorities being transparent and providing information openly and on time, as well as proposals to use compliance, complaints and practitioner evidence to understand FOI performance.

However, it is less clear how these commitments connect to the wider strategy: how the Commission will use its regulatory powers and resources to achieve this FOI outcome, how progress will be scrutinised, and how the experience of people using FOI will inform its approach.

Proposals to strengthen the strategy:

• Explain how the corporate strategy applies to the Commission’s FOI work. The inclusion of an outcome on public authority transparency is welcome, but it is not always clear how the wider priorities in the strategy apply to the Commission’s Access To Information responsibilities. The final strategy should make clearer how the FOI outcome connects to regulatory priorities, activities, enforcement and resources.
• Commit to a dedicated FOI strategy. A more detailed Access To Information strategy sitting underneath the corporate strategy could explain how the Commission intends to approach casework, enforcement, systemic intervention, public authority compliance and the wider health of the FOI system.
• Measure the health of the FOI system from both sides. The proposed use of compliance, complaints and practitioner evidence is welcome. This should be complemented by evidence from requesters, alongside measures covering areas such as timeliness, disclosure, internal review and appeals. This would give the Commission a fuller picture of how FOI is working, beyond the cases that eventually reach it.
• Connect FOI ambitions to the resources required to deliver them. The Commission’s commitments on public authority transparency need to be supported by sufficient capacity within its FOI function. The final strategy should make clearer how the Commission will assess the resources required to meet its FOI responsibilities, particularly in the context of changing complaint volumes.
• Explain how FOI will be overseen within the new governance structure. With the move to a Board, the strategy could provide greater clarity about how specialist access-to-information expertise will inform decision-making and how the Board will scrutinise delivery of the Commission’s FOI responsibilities.
• Make engagement with FOI users and civil society more concrete. Continuing structured engagement with requesters, journalists, civil society and practitioners would give the Commission access to different perspectives on how the system is working in practice.

A stronger role for Parliament

Beyond the scope of the consultation, Parliament should play a greater role in supporting the independence and sustainability of FOI oversight.

Freedom of Information is a right created by Parliament, and the Information Commission is responsible for enforcing that right against public authorities, including the government itself. There is a reasonable argument that Parliament should have a stronger role in ensuring that the regulator has the resources it needs.

There are possible models (along the lines of the approach taken for the Electoral Commission) where a parliamentary committee rather than a government department is the sponsor. The ICO would submit an estimate for its FOI work to a parliamentary body, supported by independent audit and scrutiny, before the funding was approved through Parliament. This would help insulate decisions about FOI funding from the government whose compliance the ICO is responsible for regulating. It could also give Parliament a clearer role in scrutinising whether the ICO has the resources it needs, and how effectively those resources are being used.

There are precedents for this kind of arrangement. A number of independent constitutional and scrutiny bodies have funding arrangements involving parliamentary committees rather than conventional departmental sponsorship.

In Scotland, the Information Commission is funded through the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body and is subject to parliamentary scrutiny of both its resources and its performance. The Commissioner appears annually before the relevant parliamentary committee to discuss the office’s annual report and operational performance.

A separate FOI regulator?

One option for creating greater institutional clarity around FOI is to separate out the responsibilities for Access To Information and data protection.

The case for separation reflects the increasingly different scale and focus of the two functions. Data protection has developed into a much larger regulatory field, supported by an international profession and increasingly complex regulatory responsibilities. Within a combined regulator, there is a risk that the smaller FOI function has less influence over institutional strategy, leadership and resources.

A separate regulator would make responsibility for FOI explicit. It could provide a clear institutional purpose, specialist leadership and governance focused specifically on the effective operation of the FOI system. The Scottish Information Commissioner demonstrates some of the practical advantages of this clarity: there is an identifiable regulator with a specific FOI remit and a direct relationship with Parliament around its funding and performance.

Separation may not fix all issues automatically. Our comparative research found advantages to both specialist and combined oversight bodies. A larger combined regulator should, in theory, benefit from shared infrastructure, resources and greater institutional weight, while a separate regulator without sufficient resources or independence would not necessarily provide more effective oversight.

The important question is what institutional arrangements best deliver effective FOI regulation in practice. If responsibility for FOI remains within the Information Commission, the combined model needs to demonstrate how it will provide the strategic clarity, specialist expertise, resources and accountability that separation could provide more directly. Government and Parliament, in turn, need to ensure that the wider funding and governance arrangements make this possible.

Where next?

The creation of the Information Commission is an opportunity to strengthen the governance of FOI. There are actions that can be taken now within the new Commission, including giving FOI greater strategic clarity, making responsibility for it clearer within the new governance structure, and ensuring that its ambitions are matched by the resources needed to deliver them.

There is also a role for Parliament. Regardless of whether FOI continues to sit within a combined regulator or is ultimately separated from data protection, Parliament can play a stronger role in scrutinising the health of the FOI system and ensuring that its regulator has the independence and resources it needs. The government also has a responsibility to ensure that the wider regulatory and funding framework supports effective FOI oversight.

The Scottish Information Commissioner provides a useful example of how governance, funding and accountability can be aligned around a clear FOI purpose. If FOI is to remain within the new Information Commission, it should be clear how the combined model will provide the same kind of strategic clarity and focus, alongside a constructive relationship with Parliament that supports the effective protection of the right to information.

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Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

The EIR is a similar set of rights to those we have under Freedom of Information, but specifically give access to environmental information held by public authorities.

Those who remember reading about the sewagemaps project in our blog post of last April will recall that the discharge of sewage falls firmly under the category of environmental information — and may be interested to see an update from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) celebrating an increased an “open by default” culture from the nation’s water companies:

“All of the water companies we wrote to have now committed to proactively publishing information relating to start and stop times of sewage discharges.”

This follows an intervention to water companies from the ICO, reflecting the national mood around sewage discharges, and is a good example of how their regulatory powers can be applied. 

“All water companies across the UK have a legal obligation to make information about the environment available under the EIR and are required to both respond to requests for environmental information and to make information available proactively.”

That initial ICO post explained that they had issued six water companies with decision notices requiring them to disclose the start and stop time of sewage discharges, and contacted all 12 CEOs of companies responsible for sewage services to “clearly set out our expectations that [discharge data] should be made available to the public.”

Our own blog post on the sewagemaps.co.uk project has been one of our most read and discussed this year, so we know it’s a topic our followers feel passionate about — a sentiment that’s in line with the nation as a whole. So we were keen to know more, and Deborah Clark at the ICO was happy to oblige.

What was the catalyst for this activity around sewage discharges?

“It was sparked by an increase in complaints we received about water companies and a series of decision notices we issued requiring disclosure of the start and stop time of discharges. This May 2024 document was the first of many decisions where we made our position clear that such information needed to be disclosed.”

Warren Seddon, Director of FOI at the ICO, described the steps you had to take in respect to one particular noncompliant water company — what did that entail?

“We specifically directed United Utilities to proactively publish frequently requested information, which includes historic data on sewage discharges, and to include it in its disclosure log. This was the first Practice Recommendation we have issued under the Code of Practice issued under regulation 16 of the EIR.”

And he also mentioned that you’re working with reluctant companies to show them how to achieve best practice in data publication.

“Yes — we asked the other water and sewage companies to publish the data in the interests of transparency. Here’s the relevant extract from the letters we sent:

In addition to providing timely and appropriate responses to requests for such environmental information, I strongly encourage you to proactively disclose appropriate information relating to sewage discharges on a regular, monthly basis. This proactive and timely publication of the information would not only provide this important information to the public more quickly and easily, but would also be more cost effective and efficient than dealing with the alternative of numerous responses to individual requests for the information.

How much power does the ICO have in this regard?

“This positive change was achieved through engagement rather than formal and specific regulatory action. Water companies are not required by law to publish monthly data.

“We are currently looking at what regulatory activity we can do to better support proactive disclosure provision at Regulation 4 of EIR [“The EIR require authorities to proactively make environmental information that they hold available to the public by electronic means”], but this work is at an early stage — so watch this space.”

Do you have any further advice for people who are frustrated by the sewage discharges they’re seeing in local rivers and beaches? What can they do, or should they be hopeful for change in the future as a result of this increased transparency from the water companies?

“Water companies are a lot more transparent now than they were a few years ago. We will continue to take an interest in this space and we’re involved in an EIR forum for water companies where we encourage proactive publication so this increased transparency should continue. 

“At the ICO we’re concerned only with information rights, so that’s where we’re able to give advice; as a start, where possible check publication schemes and disclosure logs for relevant published information before making a request.”

Thanks very much to Deborah for taking the time to talk to us. If you’re interested in obtaining environmental information from public bodies, you should know that you can submit EIRs as well as FOI requests on WhatDoTheyKnow – there’s more about that here.

 

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Image: Mark McNeill

The effects of AI are making themselves known across every sector, and Freedom of Information is no exception. 

AI has lowered the bar to making contact, in every place where citizens interact with public authorities, from making pothole reports to submitting FOI requests. 

On the face of it, this is a good thing for individuals — after all, mySociety was founded on the principle that digital processes should make it easier for people to interact with government — but this sudden and disruptive uptick in communication has created an increased burden for those authorities*.

At FOI Fest, Scottish FOI Commissioner David Hamilton told us that they’re experiencing unprecedented levels of requests, due to a number of factors, but certainly in part because people are using AI — and as he explained, these requests bring their own specific types of challenges.

Now the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office, the ICO, has addressed this new reality by including advice around using AI in their wider guidelines for making an effective request (which also, we’re glad to see, point people towards WhatDoTheyKnow).

What’s the problem?

Generative AI tends to add more complex and unnecessary wording, can provide inaccurate information and will sometimes ‘hallucinate’ (provide inaccurate information). All of these factors mean that authorities are having to spend more time corresponding with request-makers to pin down what they meant to ask for.

While it need not be, FOI can already sometimes be a long process, and this only adds to the time taken (when an authority needs to ask for clarification, it restarts the clock on the 20 working days within which they are required to provide a response).

Plus, if you end up needing to make a complaint about the way your request has been handled, the ICO notes that complex and inaccurate requests make it much harder for them to help you.

What you need to know

The commissioners’ offices are not saying that AI should never be used to write an FOI request or appeal; simply that if you do so, you should proceed with due caution. They suggest:

• Checking that AI hasn’t changed the scope of what you have asked for, and that you are asking for precisely — and only — the information you require.
• Ensuring that your request is clear, concise and focused. 
• Checking the facts: don’t assume AI “knows” which law applies or which authority is the suitable recipient for your request.
• Ensuring the tone is appropriate. 

In many ways, this is the same advice we’d apply for request-makers who are using their own brains, as well. Either way, it’s always worth getting it right, and making things as easy for yourself, and our public authorities, as possible.

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 *Although, NB that the jury is still out on whether AI is the direct cause of this: see, for example, this story from Australia.

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Image [amended to include ‘Make an FOI request’ button]: Zulfugar Karimov

This week I travelled to The Hague to take part in ATI Day 2026, organised by our friends SPOON and hosted by the Dutch Advisory Board on Public Access and Information Management (ACOI). We heard from a range of campaigners, journalists, lawyers and researchers working on access to information from across Europe and beyond, including colleagues from Poland, Hungary, India, France, Belgium, Canada, Scotland and the Netherlands.

The day was organised in advance of the Dutch government’s review of the Open Government Act (known as “Woo”). We were there to bring different answers to the question “What makes oversight of Freedom of Information laws effective?”. Our friends at SPOON, like many of us, are worried about the possibility of backsliding as part of the review process.

By bringing together practitioners from countries with very different systems directly into contact with the ACOI, we aimed to highlight practical lessons that could help strengthen the Dutch system. Rather than asking whether oversight bodies are needed (definitely yes!), the discussion focused on how they should be designed to make sure the right to information works in practice, not just theory.

Strong laws are only part of the picture

Although each country has a different legal system, the conversations throughout the day revealed remarkably similar challenges. Courts are often expensive and slow, ombudspeople are cheap or free but non-binding, information commissioners are effective but under-resourced. 

Marzena from Citizens Network Watchdog Poland explained that in Poland there is no dedicated information commissioner. Instead, requesters can only take cases to court. While this route is relatively inexpensive compared to legal routes in other countries, we heard that cases routinely take many months to resolve, and even a successful judgment does not necessarily mean the information is released. 

India has a network of information commissioners, but the transparency-averse government delays appointing commissioners in order to create significant backlogs and frustrate the system. In some states, commission offices sit empty while appeals continue to accumulate. Satark Nagrik Sangathan has published fantastic reports detailing this. 

At the European Union level, investigative journalist Alexander Fanta described another familiar dilemma: the European Ombudsman can investigate complaints and issue recommendations, but these are not binding. Going to court is possible, but often prohibitively slow and expensive. One recent transparency case from Client Earth reportedly cost around €20,000!

Our friends at FragDenStaat explained that there’s an imbalance in data-related legislation in Germany. Whilst there are significant statutory powers relating to data protection, the powers available to protect and uphold Freedom of Information are much weaker. One recent case relating to a rejected FOI request was successfully resolved using GDPR regulations rather than freedom of information law because those powers were stronger.

Beyond the law

In a quick 10 minute session, Toby Mendel of the Centre for Law and Democracy outlined six characteristics of effective oversight bodies. An oversight body, he argued, should be:

• independent from government
• specialised in access to information
• able to make binding decisions
• able to move beyond mediation to adjudication where necessary
• an accessible alternative to lengthy court proceedings
• responsible not only for appeals, but also for promoting the law through guidance, training and proactive publication.

Considering our own set up in the UK, I think the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has a number of strengths: it is largely independent of government, can issue legally binding decisions, provides an accessible alternative to the courts, and invests heavily in guidance and support for both requesters and public authorities.

At the same time, the conversations in The Hague were a reminder that good institutional design is only part of the picture. An oversight body also needs the capacity to resolve complaints promptly and promote a culture of openness across the public sector. Like many regulators, the ICO operates under resource constraints, and delays in resolving complaints can undermine confidence in the system, even where the underlying legal framework is strong.

The ICO itself has recognised the challenges of maintaining timeliness while responding to an increasingly broad and complex regulatory workload. Looking across the different international models, the UK has much to value and recognise, but as we’ve written about in the past, we need to accept that effective oversight requires ongoing investment as well as good legislation.

Strengthening our systems

Perhaps the strongest theme of the day was that no single institutional model has solved the problem, and we all have work to do. Carole from the Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland encouraged us not to settle – her work advancing the Freedom of Information Reform (Scotland) Bill to strengthen their existing system was really inspiring.

It was encouraging to hear our hosts at ACOI reflected openly on areas where the Dutch system could be strengthened, including having greater investigative powers and binding decisions. I hope the day can serve as an example to decision makers in the Dutch government that strong ATI laws combined with effective oversight systems help support thriving democracies rather than diminish them. 

Stronger together

Ultimately, the day was a reminder of the value of international networks like the ATI Network. Bringing practitioners together creates space to learn from each other’s successes and setbacks, and hopefully collaborate together in future. Beyond the work of our own organisations, international attention matters to those in power. Knowing that colleagues across Europe and beyond are following developments, celebrating progress and raising concerns when transparency comes under pressure can strengthen domestic advocacy. By continuing to learn from one another, we stand a much better chance of making the right to information work not just on paper, but in practice.

If you want to help us to do more of this work, please consider donating.

Back in May, I gave evidence as part of a panel to the UK Parliament’s procedure committee investigation into parliamentary written questions (WQ), with a focus on the overlap with FOI. 

You can watch the video, or read our written evidence and the transcript of our oral evidence, but in this blog post I’m going to dive into how this issue interacts with issues in the wider FOI/complaints system. 

Why are WQs worse at getting good responses?

We’ve written about the differences between FOI and WQ before, and the basic thing the committee is digging around is that despite on paper they are mostly equivalent regimes, FOI is sometimes more effective at getting information. In theory, this shouldn’t happen. WQs are allowed to take up slightly more official time to answer, and should be answered sooner.

In practice though, FOI can get information released that was denied through WQs — which fits into a general complaint about insubstantial responses to WQs, and gives external validation to the idea that the system is falling short. 

Our theory on this is that it follows back from a key difference between the two regimes. FOI has an appeal system: you can ask for an internal review, and then appeal to the relevant information commissioner and the courts. Additionally FOI and WQs are dealt with by different teams, so while both make decisions based on FOI rules, one has a better sense of external feedback through appeals, and the other does not.

Our pitch as a solution to this is it should be possible to convert a WQ to an FOI after first refusal to access the appeal mechanism. This both gives an immediate point of appeal to parliamentarians, but also grounds the parliamentary affairs team in the practical experience of FOI in the wider ecosystem. 

The FOI appeal system is in trouble

However, tying the WQ process to the FOI appeal system raises the issue that all is not well in how appeals are working at the moment. 

Our research on FOI across Europe really brought home to me the importance of the appeal system as something that keeps the wider system working: the commissioner should not be fixing problems everywhere, but regular and timely decisions and interventions help bring practice at public authorities into sync. In the absence of this, there is little to constrain bad actors in delaying or obstructing a request. 

That’s the theory — but the practice can still present significant obstacles. As Democracy for Sale’s Jenna Corderoy told the committee: 

Unfortunately, though, I want to draw attention to the current FOI appeal system; it is a long and drawn-out process. If you are requesting an internal review, you are looking at 20 to 40 working days to get a response. If you are unhappy and go to the ICO, you are looking at a long time to get a case officer to conduct an assessment of the handling of your request. By the time it goes to the tribunal, you are looking at about a year into the process. In theory, it is good to have an appeal system, but it can unfortunately take a long time, and it takes the sting out of the newsworthiness of your original request.

And this is getting worse, not better. As we heard from both information commissioners at FOI Fest (an FOI conference we ran with the wider FOI Network), the appeals system is under significant strain at the moment, with a massive increase in appeals, likely due to AI. This is not unique to FOI: Martin Rosenbaum has found that there is an increase in volume across ombudsman and complaints processes.

Warren Seddon (ICO)’s evidence to the committee showed the problems this leads to for timeliness of responses:

In the last 12 months, we saw our intake increase by 16% in Q1, 38% in Q2, and then 60% in Q3 and Q4. That is in a context where, historically, over two decades of the FOI Act, you see a 20% to 25% increase every five years. We have seen a massive surge in the number of complaints in the system. Although the evidence is not there to pull that apart in detail, I think AI is probably driving that.

[..]In terms of the impact on performance and how the system is working at the funding levels that we are seeing coming in right now, there is a real concern from our perspective about where we will end up. We are projecting at the moment that, by the end of this financial year, it will take about 16 months to allocate a case, which is not good from our perspective.

A general increase in FOI is distributed over a lot of different authorities, but an increase in complaints means that high intensity casework is channelled in higher quantities to the commissioner’s office. The end result at the moment is an increase (and expected continued increase) in waiting time for cases to be assigned. This causes much wider problems through the system because authorities that want to drag their feet have a realistic understanding that the ICO is going to take a long time to overrule them.

Dealing with increased complaints

We’ve published our thoughts about dealing with AI-driven demand, and for FOI we think this should be a spur towards greater publication of response, converting what can currently be private benefit into a public benefit that helps reduce other requests, but also makes the act of answering a request far more socially valuable because the information is more widely available. 

But this is less the case for the complaints part of the process, which is more resource intensive than answering a request. In some cases, there may be efficiencies to be made, or triage to remove AI-generated complaints that are based on hallucinated ideas of the law. But in general, these complaints are not necessarily illegitimate, and can represent an increase in valid complaints made because the barrier to entry has been lowered. 

Seddon’s evidence brought up that the ICO’s FOI budget for the year (which is set by the government) was, in real terms, a decrease on last year,  which with an increased case load can only lead to more delays.

There isn’t a clever solution to this one — but there is a boring one. Our information commissioners, ombudsman and complaints systems need more money to process an increase in complaints. In the absence of this, the wider public systems they maintain will not have the anchoring of an effective complaint system. There are costs and benefits to AI, and sometimes we’re going to need to pay more as a society to maintain and improve these chokepoints in our redress systems. 

Taking an interest in wider FOI

So to bring this back to Parliament, one of the things we’d like is that Parliament pay attention to FOI. It’s not just a constitutionally good thing, but is part of the information environment of Parliament itself.

MPs make use of FOI themselves: Ben Worthy discussed how FOI and WQs represented different tools that can be used by legislators:

They spoke of using PQs as a very quick and convenient way to obtain some information—one interview described it as a ready-made press release—whereas Freedom of Information lent itself more towards long-term investigative work, digging deeper into an issue or building a national picture. 

But FOI is also part of the wider information environment, leading to both informed public and parliamentary discussion. MPs regularly highlight information released by FOI by journalists, academics and constituents as part of their contributions to debates. 

Along these lines, there were some interesting questions to the Cabinet Office witnesses around how performance data is gathered and judged. It’d be great to see more recognition from Parliament about FOI’s role in supporting public discourse, and how they can support that.

Cost limits

This evidence session also provided an opportunity to get some more information on the record about floated changes to FOI cost limits. Cat Smith (Committee Chair) brought up, unprompted, that the written questions cost limit is currently pegged to 140% of the FOI cost limit, so there is awareness that the two systems are linked. 

Jenna Corderoy pointed out that reduced cost limits would have a negative impact for users of FOI; t that AI shouldn’t be used “as an excuse to reduce cost limits” and that “any reductions on limits are most likely to have a serious impact on the ability to access information that is in the public interest.”. 

I made a point about the potential for improved AI search technologies to make it easier to discover information (not just for FOI, but for the government to better understand itself). 

This also saw the first public comment from ICO on this floated change, with the view that the current limit is broadly working fine:

Warren Seddon: The cost limit has not changed. There has been a bit of debate about it in the past, but it broadly works as it stands. It is well used; if you look at the central Government statistics, around a quarter of refusals are due to the cost limit, so it is in play a lot, and we see it a lot in the complaints that we get.

Interestingly the Cabinet Office witnesses, when given the chance, did not talk a lot about AI-induced demand as a reason to lock down: 

Chair: In your incoming FOI requests, do you see a lot of evidence that AI is playing a role in the input?

Clare Brunton: I do not think so. I asked that question of Eirian before this session. Obviously it is hard to tell because you cannot always tell what is being written by AI, but when you look at the trends of FOIs, there has not been a huge uptick as AI comes in. It has been quite a steady growth. I am sure some of that is AI, but actually it has been a fairly steady growth over the last 20 years or so anyway. We have not noticed any spikes.

Eirian Walsh Atkins: As the earlier panel said, where people are using AI is at the more complex end of FOI, in the complaint stages and in litigation to help them with those slightly trickier processes. I do not think that AI is being used significantly in initial requests to the Cabinet Office.

So this panel provided no strong evidence or opinions that cost limits would solve current problems of FOI, while focusing in on the issue of the complaints system, where a key issue is under-funding of the ICO (and equivalent ombudsman processes).

Better governance need better information

Fundamentally, Freedom of Information has been a massive success that has made the information environment (in public and in parliament) richer. It provides a benchmark to assess that the Parliamentary written questions system is not keeping pace with legal right to information that the Act gives us all. 

But at the same time, it’s not good enough. Both active pushback from government and wider shifts in technology and how public services are run risk making it a less effective and useful system. 

It’s great to see MPs asking questions about FOI, and we hope it’s followed up with more attention paid to this vital constitutional system.

 

Header image: Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

For the the third in our series of discovery workshops, we invited people working with FOI in public authorities to discuss how a network might support them — and we had more than 50 attendees joining us from a range of organisations and specialities. 

Discussion was lively and informative, with many expressing a thirst for community and knowledge-sharing in their roles.

We began with a group brainstorming session to discuss the challenges and obstacles people were facing in their work with FOI. 

From this, we pulled out the four major groupings below, so that smaller breakout groups could discuss what attempts had been made previously to mitigate these challenges, how effective these had been, and what an FOI Network could do to help.

Volume/complexity of requests

The increasing volume of FOI requests being received (a challenge which overlaps with that of the lack of resources, below) came up as a common issue, especially in conjunction with the increasing use of AI to generate requests. 

Here, there are two concerns: that AI is leading to more complex (if not necessarily more effective) requests; and that there is potential for a deliberate, malicious use of AI-generated FOI requests that might overwhelm an authority without their necessarily being aware of it. 

AI-generated/assisted requests are hard to formally recognise (although many are developing a ‘gut feeling’ around them), but also not inherently illegitimate. The group discussed tactics such as asking for clarification or ID, to flush out potentially inauthentic requests if suspected. A participant from the ICO also shared their recent AI guidance.

What could an FOI Network contribute here? Convening people was seen as useful in helping to understand patterns and themes between authorities, and shared approaches. This might take the form of directly organised networking activity, or supporting and promoting the informal networks that already exist. 

Building centralised resources might also help in creating tools for assessing thresholds of vexatiousness, while also providing better assistance to requesters on what good and bad degrees of complexity looks like in an FOI request. 

Locating information

Finding the information that is being requested is at the very heart of what an FOI officer does  — and can present a sizable challenge, especially where data is not collected or stored consistently. 

Discussion touched on issues around record keeping, proactive publication, resource and support from colleagues in sourcing/collecting  information: while the officer is the entry point for requests for information, they most likely hold little of it themselves. 

The amount of resource, support and priority is given to record keeping and FOI across the organisation affects how effective an officer can be. 

Information can only be easily accessed if it is stored well: some participants talked about requests for data that is not currently centrally held, but which requesters argue should be, leading to antagonistic interactions, despite the Information Officer not being to blame. 

Participants talked both about resourcing conflicts where other priorities were legitimately higher (eg “The information holders are clinical staff (NHS) and trying to get them to answer FOI requests when they are busy with patients is not reasonable”); but also situations where requests not taken seriously by senior teams, or other departments were slow to engage with them. 

As such, a key challenge for information officers is navigating both the formal and relational structures of their organisation, and a key challenge for an FOI Network is finding ways to support this role in developing a culture of transparency and good record keeping practice.

Part of this fits with our theory that good FOI statistics are an important factor in empowering information officers — because this visibility would make FOI performance between organisations more salient, and so a greater concern for senior decision-makers. 

Lack of resources

This group discussed the lack of resources, staffing and slashed funding — including elsewhere in the organisation, where diminished budgets can remove the institutional knowledge and capacity to effectively find information.

This was another area where there was great enthusiasm for better connections between officers across organisations, especially for the small, isolated teams. This would allow all to benefit from the knowledge of a wider group. 

For a longer-term fix to the lack of resources, a united network could lobby to central government. This isn’t just about “more money”, but the effective production of centralised resources that would help everyone (eg software, tools and licences). 

It was noted that redaction was a problem that was significantly time consuming, and available redaction tools (like Adobe Pro) were expensive and had limited licences. 

Proactive publication was also identified as a resourcing issue: in repeated requests for hot topics; but also in that publishing information can lead to more requests asking for specifics. 

From our point of view running WhatDoTheyKnow, this should still mean a greater public benefit from the information provided (people who wouldn’t ask for it have access to it), but does caution against an easy “publish more, request numbers decrease” approach — which does not align with the experience of practitioners. 

Working with requesters

This group discussed complaints resulting from a requester not knowing how to navigate the FOI system or complaints processes, and thoughts on more effective communication. A lack of requester awareness that the FOI route is not the same as the complaint route was identified, as well as public confusion between FOI and data subject rights. 

There is recognition that the requester doesn’t always know what information is available, which can lead to complex initial requests. But there was also a reported increase in adversarial/angry complaints, with a perception from request-makers that information was being denied when in didn’t exist. Where people are making requests across multiple authorities, getting refusals from some but not from others, can lead to this impression, while actually just reflecting differences in what data is collected. 

Better information and signposting about how to make a good FOI request was considered helpful, but within limits. Improved web forms can be helpful, but are not the only route in. At the same time, from a volume and overload point of view, a concern that greater awareness of the act might lead to more requests. This makes it important to define what we’re after as a network that can reconcile both a civil society “it’s good if more people are aware of and use their rights” with the practicalities of make that right real, which includes understanding of capacity.

In general, a lot of the potential in this area is around helping those making, and those answering requests to understand each other, or at least understanding more about how things work behind the scenes. 

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Finally, there was a more general discussion about forms a network can take, including the difficulty of convening both requesters and practitioners. Creating spaces for authority-side practitioners to talk helps with the smooth functioning of the FOI Act; these spaces would be more hesitant if always shared with civil society groups (and vice versa). 

We want to find ways to bridge these groups, while recognising that both individually can be constructive.  We need a set of layered discussions about how to make FOI work in practice, that can manage both communities of practice, also bridging both sides — recognising where common frustrations and collective goals can be served through better communication and coordination. This is inherently going to be complex, but will be so worthwhile to explore. 

 

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Illustration: Alghozy