The Department for Constitutional Affairs has published a FAQ on How to use the Freedom of Information Act, which comes into force on 1/1/05.
Apparently, "almost all public authorities are already required by the Freedom of Information Act to maintain a 'publication scheme' which details all the information that authority will make available without being asked. This is usually available on a public authority's website if they have one."
One quick Google later, and we find the following:
The Ministry of Defence, with alphabetised Classes of Information. Conspiracy paradise?
The Department of Health - also with Classes of Information as required by the Act. Where has all our tax money gone?
The Treasury makes for fascinating reading (not), although I have to say I like the idea of a monthly statement of the Public Finances.
Parliament UK generates and publishes a LOT of material, of course, but they do reserve the right to withold information according to "parliamentary privilege", with no recourse to appeal...
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs may have some interesting stuff themselves but what caught my eye was their link to the Information Asset Register, where you can search [via inforoute] databases, old sets of files, recent electronic files, collections of statistics, research, etc. that have not yet been, or will not be formally published. Diamonds in the dirt?
The Home Office doesn't appear to be quite as forthcoming as I'd hoped, as "[d]ocuments may be edited where, in the view of the Department, particular information should not be disclosed because of confidentiality, unwarranted invasion of privacy, commercial sensitivity or other specified grounds, including the public interest." So, for example, we don't get to see how they worked out their £3billion figure for ID cards and the NIR - and they don't appear to publish their Finance and Accounting data, unlike The Department for Work & Pensions, The Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, DH and the MOD (above).
Of course, it's not just Government departments that have a duty to disclose information, The Medical Research Council, for example, has a pretty comprehensive publication scheme with an equally comprehensive list of exemptions:
"Typically, however, information may be withheld in circumstances where it is subject to exemptions under the Act - in particular:1. Paragraph 21: Where information is reasonably accessible to the applicant by other means;
2. Paragraph 22: Information intended for future publication - where release would result in the premature publication of research;
3. Paragraph 27: International relations;
4. Paragraph 36(2)b: Prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs - where disclosure would, or would be likely to, inhibit the free and frank provision of advice, or the free and frank exchange of views for purposes of deliberation, or would otherwise prejudice, or would be likely otherwise to prejudice, the effective conduct of public affairs;
5. Paragraph 38: Health and Safety - where release might result in the compromising of physical or mental health, or personal security;
6. Paragraph 40: Personal information - which is covered by the Data Protection Act, involving the disclosure of personal information;
7. Paragraph 41: Information provided in confidence - by a third party;
8. Paragraph 43: Commercial interests - where release might result in breach of commercial confidentiality;Under Paragraph 12 of the Act, the Council reserves the right to refuse a request where the cost of researching, extracting or copying the information is disproportionately high."
Roll on New Year...
Postscript: for a Government that supposedly thinks 'joined-up' and wants to be a world leader in e-Government, why is there so much variation between all the websites mentioned above? There are obviously several different CMSs in play, some publishing as HTML, others in ASP, yet more using Cold Fusion - and that's without really trying to 'look under the bonnet'. If they can't even sort out their public-facing interface(s), what hope do they have of implementing, e.g. a 60 million person tracking system?
Posted by lankyphil at July 12, 2004 11:35 PM | TrackBack