For the past 30 years. FIPA’s advocacy has focused on the timeliness of the freedom of information process. We have been informed by the belief that access delayed is access denied. Unfortunately, little has changed or improved. Governments fail to meet deadlines, civil society and users complain, the next verse is the same as the first. The sheer volume of reports that re-announced government has fallen behind has become a broken record. The new wrinkle is that public bodies are increasingly double billing by charging people to get access to information they already paid for through taxes, and in some cases are actively seeking to reduce access through court cases.
We feel the need to avoid the insanity of repeating the same actions and expecting different results.
What does this mean?
We are defining our FOI research using a multi-disciplinary approach to expand upon the existing body of knowledge. This includes activities that enable FIPA to make both research and experience-based recommendations to decision makers. These are meant to reflect best practice in and about freedom of information aligned to our strategic management plan.
Empower people to gain access to information from public bodies,
Hold organizations accountable for their transparency in decision making.
Deliver results that show value and make meaningful impact from every contribution.
To empower people to be stronger and more confident in their FOI requests, we need to ensure skills and knowledge are shared so individuals can assert their rights. We can achieve this in two ways. We will be working to link proficient requesters with less proficient requestors to develop a community of practice. We’ll also be holding more regular FOI training sessions and online meetings to better support and collaborate with researchers and interested parties. It also means FIPA needs to be an active requestor in the system. To that end, we are getting meta with FOI, by using access requests to inform our research about access rights. We’ve allocated some of our research and education resources under a working title of “An FOI a Day.”
Initial requests are creating results, which are already providing insight and we are now able to begin sharing those. Our access assessments page provides a one stop shop for our findings. Our publicly available structure includes the scope, method, and qualification criteria we consider before submitting a request. This, too, is an evolving document as our research moves forward and will develop further over time.
To hold organizations accountable for their transparency in decision making, we want to “trust but verify”. When the head of a public body claims they are being transparent and improving access, we should be able to see their work. It isn’t enough for a government to say they are being transparent by making information people aren’t looking for freely available. Public bodies need to ensure public interest is paramount and that information the public is seeking is available. Additionally, if public bodies have a category of records or information we understand should or could be accessible, we want to make sure it is.
To deliver results that show value and make meaningful impact from every contribution means managing and distributing results. The results of these activities will be communicated through posts and releases that will show what we’ve learned and done.
With this work underway, we have an initial series of posts that provide some insight into this work.
This is post is a result of our access assessment research. We are getting meta with FOI, by using access requests to inform our research about access rights.
Have an idea for an access request that meets our criteria?
