The first set of FOI stats for central govt since the general election has been published today and shows a similar pattern under Labour to the FOI performance of the Conservative govt - which is not surprising.
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In Q3 of 2024 (ie post election), UK govt depts answered 90% of FOI requests on time, compared to 88% in Q3 2023. And the info requested was fully disclosed in 39% of cases in Q3 2024, compared to 41% in Q3 2023. This is well within the normal quarterly fluctuations.
We're used to this pattern, but of course well run systems should be meeting legal deadlines virtually 100% of the time, not be satisfied with 90%. Perhaps this illustrates what Starmer meant by officials being comfortable with the tepid bath of managed decline?
Some of the decline is loss of public sector jobs, not just in IG departments, but in the departments that hold the information and can't or won't prioritise answering requests over delivering services. I'd add that records management, making the information retrievable, is very hard in 0365 world.
I actually don't believe a huge IG department is the best approach - one or two suitably-paid expert employees supporting a network of motivated officers and a lot of support for managing information to begin with should work. But it's incredibly hard to achieve.
One govt organisation not lying comfortably in a tepid bath is the National Archives, whose FOI operation still appears to be drowning in the icy waters of a flood of requests for military personnel records which it can't cope with effectively.
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