Monday, July 31, 2006
Lord Falcolner To The Rescue
The Sunday Times reports here on confidential cabinet paper talking about the Freedom of Information Act. Apparently Lord Falcolner is to commission a "costs benefits analysis" in order to get a “solid evidence base” to change the charging basis making requests far more expensive thus allowing many more requests to be refused on costs grounds.
The article says: "He says the changes would add to the man hours taken by officials to read documents — potentially hundreds of pages — and consider and consult on whether to release them. And he is ready to allow officials to “aggregate” requests when calculating the costs."
Well I say given the Act exists and given that officials are involved in the creation of the documents, why not just have the document classified as suitable for release or not, when it is created. This would save all these extra man hours, I can't see this being adpoted because (I quote again):
"Falconer says that these measures alone would allow “the most difficult requests (generally received from determined and experienced requesters) to be refused on cost grounds”. "
Which is what I suspect he's really after, wanting to refuse the request especially on something like cost grounds.
Apparently he's also considering introducing a flat fee for all standard type requests he even admits that: "“It is likely individual flat fees will cost more to collect than they bring in, but their deterrent effect...". So he's really after a deterrent effect after all even though the fees will cost more to adminster than they'll bring in. I suppose it'll be up to the taxpayer to make up the difference.
He seems to think that the lessening requests will lead to an overall saving, but a simple implementation of the system I describe above would solve both problems. Significantly the problem it wont prevent is: "Since it came into force in January last year, disclosures under the act have led to several embarrassing scandals." Yes well if you want to solve that one Lord Falconer, just tell your colleagues in government to stop behaving as they do; a bit of personal responsibility and moral fibre would go a long way with your lot I can tell you.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
The article says: "He says the changes would add to the man hours taken by officials to read documents — potentially hundreds of pages — and consider and consult on whether to release them. And he is ready to allow officials to “aggregate” requests when calculating the costs."
Well I say given the Act exists and given that officials are involved in the creation of the documents, why not just have the document classified as suitable for release or not, when it is created. This would save all these extra man hours, I can't see this being adpoted because (I quote again):
"Falconer says that these measures alone would allow “the most difficult requests (generally received from determined and experienced requesters) to be refused on cost grounds”. "
Which is what I suspect he's really after, wanting to refuse the request especially on something like cost grounds.
Apparently he's also considering introducing a flat fee for all standard type requests he even admits that: "“It is likely individual flat fees will cost more to collect than they bring in, but their deterrent effect...". So he's really after a deterrent effect after all even though the fees will cost more to adminster than they'll bring in. I suppose it'll be up to the taxpayer to make up the difference.
He seems to think that the lessening requests will lead to an overall saving, but a simple implementation of the system I describe above would solve both problems. Significantly the problem it wont prevent is: "Since it came into force in January last year, disclosures under the act have led to several embarrassing scandals." Yes well if you want to solve that one Lord Falconer, just tell your colleagues in government to stop behaving as they do; a bit of personal responsibility and moral fibre would go a long way with your lot I can tell you.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
