“I appreciate that Scottish public authorities had only a short
period in which to prepare their organisations for the Act coming
into force, but the duty to respond within 20 working days is not
particularly onerous in most cases,” said Dunion, who published the
Annual Report of the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC)
yesterday.
“I hope to see a radical improvement in this area in 2006,” he
added.
But the Annual Report, the second from the SIC and the first
since the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FOISA) came into
force on 1st January 2005, is largely positive, revealing that the
Scottish public has enthusiastically embraced freedom of
information.
While local authorities are not obliged to keep records of the
number of FOI requests they receive, the SIC logs all the appeals
that result from those requests.
According to the Report, the SIC has received twice as many
appeals as expected – 571, of which 240 were disposed of in 2005,
79% of these within four months.
In contrast to the widely held belief that only journalists were
making use of the Act, the report reveals that 55% of all appeals
were from ordinary members of the public. Twenty percent were from
solicitors and only 7% were from journalists.
The Commissioner issued 90 decisions in the first year of the
Act's operation. Of these, 31% were in favour of the applicant, 36%
in favour of the public authority and 33% partially in favour of
both parties. No enforcement notices have been issued so far.
According to the Report, public awareness of FOISA has also
risen in the last year, with 72% of people having heard, or
thinking that they had heard, of the Act, as compared to 44% in
September 2004.
This is partly due to promotional activities by the SIC’s
Office, but also to media use of the Act at local and national
levels, said the Commissioner.
“The hard part has been done and the Act is in full use,” he
said. “I would hope that we can build on that so that we have a
society where information is provided, and received, as part of the
mature exchange of a modern democracy.”
But the Commissioner warned people to take care when making an
FOI request.
“People should be aware that dashing off an e-mail with a
request causes the whole might of the Act to come into effect, with
obligations on authorities,” he said. “This is not to discourage
use of the legislation but, there is a difference between a well
defined request, compared to insisting on all material held on a
particular subject. Unwanted information which is then discarded
has been provided at a real cost to the authority.”
He also warned against making ill-considered changes to the Act.
The Scottish Executive announced a review of the legislation in
December, to identify areas that may need fine-tuning.
“It is only to be expected that some aspects of the new regime
will be unwieldy and uncomfortable,” said Dunion. “Whilst it is
right to keep these under review and address them, we must also
guard against changes which detract from the stated intent of the
legislation, to provide a right to information and to bring about a
shift in culture towards more transparency and accountability.”
According to reports, the Scottish Executive is considering
bringing in a new system of charges for FOI requests, which are
generally dealt with at little or no charge at present.
Such a move has been criticised in the light of a similar
approach taken by the Irish Government, which introduced a flat £10
charge for requests. Following this, according to The Herald
newspaper, the number of requests made by members of the public
dropped by 75%.
