Bloggers benefit as Bush signs US Freedom of Information reforms

Posted by Martin Stabe on 2 January 2008 at 13:38
Tags: Blogs, Freedom of Information

In a move welcomed by American journalists, President George W. Bush has signed a bill which expands the US Freedom of Information Act into law.

Among other reforms, the bill adds a 20-day time limit for agencies to respond to requests, much like the UK Freedom of Information Act’s.

Also notable about the bill is that the definition “news media” for the purposes of FOI requests, has been expanded in a way that will benefit bloggers and other non-traditional journalists.

US “representatives of the news media” have long been able to claim a waiver from certain fees applicable under the American FOI act. Under the reforms, known as the OPEN Government Act 2007, this is defined as “any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience.”

Here in the UK, the Government is working on FOI liberalisation proposals of its own. The Ministry of Justice is currently running a public consultation about which public or quasi-public bodies should be added to the list of organisations that must respond to FOI requests. You have until 1 February to present an argument to the consultation.

@Society of Editors: Information Commissioner: Private broadcasters could come under FOI

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 November 2007 at 18:05
Tags: BBC, Freedom of Information, ITV, Society of Editors, Society of Editors

The Information Commissioner has acknowledged that his budget for enforcing the Freedom of Information Act is “drop in the ocean”, and suggested that private broadcasting companies might be considered for inclusion in the list of bodies that must respond to FOI requests.

“I am really really struggling at the moment,” Thomas said. He described his office’s £4.7m annual budget to enforce the Freedom of information Act as “really a drop in the ocean”.

Marketing costs had been cut and the backlog of FOI cases is no longer growing as the office is now able to close cases as quickly as they come in, he said.

Discussing the Government’s recently-announced consultation on what private organsiations might be brought under the Freedom of Information Act, Thomas suggested that private broadcasters might be considered for addition to the list.

This would bring ITV and Sky into line with the BBC and Channel 4, which both have to respond to questions about subjects other than their “journalism, art or literature”.

“I would be really surprised if Network Rail weren’t brought under the Act,” Thomas said.

EDP’s FOI request on offender data stalls

Posted by Martin Stabe on 25 June 2007 at 07:33
Tags: Eastern Daily Press, Freedom of Information

The Eastern Daily Press is having difficulty obtaining documents about the offenders who are removing electronic monitoring tags as Mnistry of Justice stalls on answering its Freedom of Information request. The new Ministry is taking more time to assess the public interest in disclosing the number of offenders who breached their sentences by removing monitoring devices.

The time taken by public authorities in assessing the FOI Act’s public interest test has been a frequent complaint of journalists using the disclosure law. A Liberal Democrat MP’s bill which would have limited the amount of time allowed under such circumstances to 20 extra days recently stalled after being opposed at second reading in the House of Commons.

The EDP story comes as the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Select Committee called on the Government to scrap its proposal to change the FOI fees regulations, a move that many journalists fear would ‘neuter’ the Act.

FOI win may give more details of MPs’ expenses

Posted by Martin Stabe on 15 June 2007 at 12:35
Tags: Freedom of Information, Sunday Telegraph

The Information Commissioner has ruled that more details of MPs’ expenses must be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, in a move that is likely to raise a few eyebrows in Westminster, given the recent failure of David Maclean’s “squalid little bill” to exempt Parliament from FOI.

The decision notice (PDF) states that the total amounts claimed by some MPs under the “additional cost allowance”, which is used to reclaim expenses of running a home closer to Westminster than their constituency, must be disclosed under specific headings including “mortgage costs”, “hotel expenses” and so on.

The decision, made earlier this week, but only released today, followed requests from the various journalists. Ben Leapman of the Sunday Telegraph writes that an appeal by the Commons authorities to the Information Tribunal is likely, however.

Had it passed, the Maclean bill would have blocked precisely this sort or request to the House of Commons.

The Commissioner said that the public has a right to know expenses claimed by MPs in relation to their public duties.

In a press release about the decision, the ICO said: “The Information Commissioner does not believe it is necessary to disclose the full itemised details of expenditure on the running of a MP’s private household. To do so would invade the privacy of MPs and their families.”

Meanwhile, another private members bill is worth keeping an eye on: tabled by Lib Dem MP Tom Brake, the Freedom of Information (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill would actually strengthen the FOI Act. The Campaign for Freedmom of Information’s blog has full details, and Robert Verkaik wrote it up in the Indy this morning.

Update: More context on this decision from Martin Rosenbaum at the BBC

Update 2.10pm: Heather Brooke is not impressed with the ICO’s “regulation by press release” and says the decision resulted from an appeal that she had filed with the ICO. It certainly seems as though she’s been scooped on the decision affecting her own request because of the way it was released — by registered mail to her and by e-mail and RSS to the rest of the media. Martin Rosenbaum has had similar experiences.

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MPs bid to stall bill to exempt Parliament from FOI requests

Posted by Martin Stabe on 19 April 2007 at 16:51
Tags: Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill, a private members bill that would exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act, will have its final reading in the House of Commons tomorrow morning.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, who recently used the Act to force the House to disclose his fellow MPs’ travel expenses, has vowed to use fillibustering tactics to ensure that the bill runs out of time before passing.

And it looks like he’s been busy. Baker, along with a cross-party alliance featuring fellow Lib Dem Simon Hughes, Tory Richard Shepherd, Labour’s Mark Fisher and Plaid Cymru’s Hywel Williams — has tabled a long list of amendments to the bill.

Another amendment apparently aimed at undermining the thrust of the bill has been tabled by Labour MP Andrew Dismore, who is attempting to insert a clause to ensure that the bill does not prevent the disclosure of MPs’ expenses.

US wants stronger FOI Act for bloggers

Posted by Martin Stabe on 19 March 2007 at 13:40
Tags: Freedom of Information

While the British Government is planning to make changes to the UK Freedom of Information Act’s fees regimes that would eviscerate the law’s utility for journalists, the US Congress is working on a bill that would strengthen its American equivalent — particularly for independent journalists and bloggers.

The British government is planning to impose a fees regime that takes no account of the public interest in any given FOI request, is cracking down on those pesky “serial requesters” — many of whom as journalists — that make extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act.

American FOI policy, by contrast, actively encourages journalists’ requests on the grounds that they are likely to seek disclosures that are in the public interest. “Members of the news media” have access to a preferential fees regime — and have the option to request a complete waiver of fees for requests made in the public interest.

In recent years, however, this approach has irked freelances and bloggers who have had difficulty accessing the privileded status of a journalistic FOI requestor. But now the US House of Representagievs has passed a bill would stengthen the US FOI Act in several ways, including a provision that would bar agencies from rejecting bloggers’ request for the fee waiver on the grounds that they have no affiliation with a mainstream news outlet.

The bill, known as the Freedom of Information Amendments of 2007, will now be considered by the Senate, where former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry has already pledged his support.

That’s quite a contrast to the British legislation with a similar name. The Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill 2007 is a backbencher’s attempt to reduce the effectiveness of the UK FOIA by exempting Parliament from its provisions altogether.

Update 20/3: BBC FOI specialist Martin Rosenbaum has more on this over at Open Secrets. He points out that under the proposed changes in the UK, individual bloggers would actually have more access to FOI than institutionally-accredited journalists.

182 responses to the Freedom of Information consultation

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 March 2007 at 20:46
Tags: BBC, Crown Copyright, Ethics, Freedom of Information, Guardian, Investigations, Journalism, Mashups, NUJ, foi, foia

The Government has received 182 responses to its consultation on the Freedom of Information Act fees regime.

We know about five of these so far. One submission is Press Gazette’s petition, signed by more than 1,250 journalists who oppose the Government’s plans. Another is the Guardian’s strongly-worded defence of journalists’ use of FOI. The BBC has also made its opposition plain.

FOI campaigner Heather Brooke’s submission is posted on her blog. It’s a forcefully-worded piece which is notable for introducing two very practical arguments to a debate that is usually dominated by abstract polemics about the public’s “right to know”.

First, Brooke assaults the Government’s frequent claim that Freedom of Information Act introduces a net cost to the public purse and the economy as a whole. Instead, she makes a strong case that FOI — combined with a more liberal system for the re-use of public-sector information — would boost the economy by fostering a stronger private-sector information industry like the one in the United States. More transparency would also save the Treasury money in the long run by making public record-keeping more efficient and exposing waste.

Second, and perhaps more interesting to readers here, she argues that a strong Freedom of Information regime would improve British journalism overall, by encouraging “responsible, informative journalism, leading to an informed and civically engaged electorate”.

First, Freedom of Information means more accurate, factually-based reporting, including analytical computer-assisted investigative journalism:

The polemical style of much British journalism is due in large part to the difficulty obtaining official information. It is noteworthy that the UK lacks any organisation devoted to computer-assisted reporting – a type of investigative journalism that is well developed in the US and Scandinavia where freedom of information laws are much stronger and well-developed. I have worked with several organisations to try and build up this type of analytical journalism in the UK but the difficulties are enormous. …

Regular readers will know that I completely agree with her about this.

Brooke also makes the interesting argument that greater access to legitimate sources of information would reduce the need for journalists to resort to dubious or illegal methods for obtaining data:

If the government wants to encourage legitimate reporting techniques then it needs to provide an efficient and timely mechanism to make this type of reporting cost effective. This mechanism should be the Freedom of Information Act. In the US, the federal FOIA combined with strong state FOI and public records laws means there is no demand for an information black market. Having worked as a journalist in the US for eight years, I never once came across a reporter who had used a private detective to gather information. There was simply no need. All the information needed was available in the public domain.

By contrast in the UK, trying to access information legitimately couldn’t be more time-consuming and difficult. Obstacles are constantly put in one’s way and everything the government does encourages the creation of an information black market economy. Now we are going to jail reporters who access information illegitimately, but a more effective solution to this problem would be to create incentives to use legitimate information gathering tools. The main way of doing this would be to make the FOIA more effective.

The NUJ made similar noises about encouraging investigative journalism through Freedom of Information in a Parliamentary committee on media regulation this week. Its own 10-page response to the consultation has also been submitted.

I look forward to seeing the other 178 submissions. I hope I don’t need to file a request …

Networked journalism: distributed FoI requests

Posted by Martin Stabe on 11 November 2006 at 13:02
Tags: Freedom of Information, Journalism, Networked Journalism

The Guardian’s “Bad Science” columnist, Ben Goldacre, is attempting a small experiment in distributed investigative journalism. Having had a Freedom of Information Act to Durham County Council rebuffed on cost grounds, he is calling on his readers to obtain the data piecemeal through lots of smaller, individual requests.

It’s a nice idea, especially since the government plans to make it easier to reject journalists’ FoI requests on cost grounds.

There’s just one small problem: The Government anticipated this tactic when preparing the legislation. Section (12)(4)(b) of the Freedom of Information Act allows public bodies to treat multiple requests that are made “by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign” as though they were a single request. I fear, therefore, that the avalanche of requests the column is likely to generate will be rejected in much the same way as Goldacre’s original request.
Let’s hope nobody at Durham County Council read Goldacre’s column before the requests start pouring in!

The case also nicely illustrates the danger of the government’s proposals to change the FOI fees regime. If the government has its way, the power to aggregate requests in this way would be extended to multiple requests o on multiple topics made by people from the same organisation, making it much easier to reject requests on cost grounds.
The same exemption that I suspect will scupper Goldacre’s plan could in future be used to prevent all the reporters at the Northern Echo from using the FOIA to ask questions of Durham Council more than once or twice a quarter.

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@Society of Editors: The public’s right to know

Posted by Martin Stabe on 6 November 2006 at 16:49
Tags: Freedom of Information, Journalism, Society of Editors

The panel, chaired by Fiona Armstrong of ITV Border, is Alistair Bonnington, a lawyer for BBC Scotland; the Scottish Information Commissioner Kevin Dunion; Sir Christopher Meyer of the Press Complaints Commission; and Caroline Kean, a partner at media law firm Wiggin.

Lord Falconer, who was originally scheduled to appear on this panel and who has proposed some restrictions on Freedom of Information, might have been irked by what Dunion, the Scottish information commissioner, had to say.

It is a myth, Dunnion said, that the costs of FOI implementation are out of proportion.

It is also a fallacy, he said, that journalists are not expected to make heavy use of the Act. He notes that in the United States, journalists are priveleged in making FOI requests because their fees are waived on the grounds that their requests will be published in the public interest.

Around 10 per cent of requests under the UK Act are from journalists; in Scotland nearly 50 per cent of requests to some public bodies (including the police services) in Scotland appear to come from journalists. In Ireland the media share is being reduced as the public at large is becoming more accustomed to making requests, he said.

A third myth, he said, was that journalists are making frivilous requests. “That was a hand in the sweetie jar phase in the early days of the act”, he says. His impression now is that it is being used very well. The Evening Times did serious research into crime statistics in Glasgow, for example.

Sir Christopher Meyer agrees, saying that he can understand why Lord Falconer did not turn up. The Government, he said is talking the talk, but failing to walk the walk on Freedom of Information. It is far too early, the PCC chairman says, to talk about changing the FOI Act.

(As expected, he also announced interest in regulating newspapers’ online multimedia content.)

An MP blogs about Freedom of Information changes

Posted by Martin Stabe on 4 November 2006 at 17:10
Tags: Freedom of Information, Journalism

Labour MP Tom Watson has posted on his blog about the government’s proposed changes to the Freedom of Information Act fee regime. Unfortunately, Watson seems to have swallowed the government’s line highlighting the number of silly requests it has received for things like “the total amount spent on Ferrero Rocher chocolates in UK embassies”.
But Watson seems to be missing the point. This is a very important debate, not about the odd silly request about chocolates, but about a proposal that could significantly limit legitimate, public-interest FOI requests.

Many journalists who use the FOI Act in a serious way fear that these proposals could make it very difficult for them to use the act effectively to hold government to account.

The plan to allow public bodies to “aggregate” multiple unrelated requests from multiple individuals could mean reporters in big news organisations like the BBC — or local papers that generally only ask questions of a handful of local public bodies — would be limited to a single question per month or forced into silly games like filing requests in their friends’ names.

The government is framing this debate as being about the cost of FOIA implementation, but that also seems somewhat dubious.
As Steve Wood of the UK FOIA Blog has pointed out, the government’s £35m annual cost estimate is actually far lower than the £125m it said it expected to spend when the current fee regulations were drafted in 1999.

So the government appears to have been happy to pay up to £125m per year on FOI in 1999, but is suddenly concerned about an actual cost of £35m? And if cost is the real issue, why has it adopted a proposal that would apparently save a mere £900,000?
Fourteen senior journalists from the Sunday Telegraph wrote to Lord Falconer last week outlining these and other concerns about the proposal. Others — like the BBC’s Martin Rosenbaum, the Guardian’s Rob Evans and David Leigh, and freelance Heather Brooke — have disputed various assumptions and conclusions made by the report into FOI costs produced for the government by Frontier Economics.

Meanwhile, in a Kafkaesque twist, the Department for Constitutional Affairs has denied an FOI request — submitted by Maurice Frankel of the Campaign for Freedom of Information — for some of the data underlying the Frontier Economics report.
More than 100 MPs signed an early day motion encouraging the government not to introduce up-front fees for FOI requests, a plan that ultimately wasn’t included in the government proposals. Hopefully more MPs will start asking questions just as probing as the bloggers, campaigners and journalists.