Research highlights shortcomings of government’s compliance endeavours

Recent research has found that although central-government departments in the UK are receiving a monthly average of 200 queries under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, only a minority of these are being satisfied efficiently.

According to the study by APR Smartlogik, the majority (66 per cent) of these enquiries are classed as ‘complex’, meaning that they can often take more than eight hours to complete. The average time taken to respond to enquiries is six hours, which equates to a cost of £150 per request, compared with an average cost of four pounds for other queries.

The research found that many consider proactive publication schemes to be of little help. Respondents from both local and central government bodies estimate that the proportion of FOI enquiries that can be referred to a publication scheme is anything between just one and 20 per cent.

Richard Pinder, director, strategy and commerce at APR Smartlogik, believes that this low figure can be attributed directly to the nature of the so-called complex enquiries. Far fewer “carbon-copy” enquiries are being received than originally expected, meaning that the publication schemes are rendered practically useless because complex enquiries are often passed between departments for approval – slowing up the process even more. Part of the problem, too, could be the way in which users search for the information they require – people are having difficulty locating information using normal vocabulary search terms. Pinder argues that although the government has invested large amounts of time and money in developing its content management and electronic-document and record-management solutions, there is still a question mark over the information retrieval capabilities of these disparate systems – something that the government is trying improve. “We are finding that organisations are ‘bolting on’ an additional technology layer to bolster the search and find element,” says Pinder.

“This functionality includes automatic content classification and taxonomy-management software, which increases the intuitiveness of the search engines, helping them to translate non-standard search terms into recognised government subject categories.”

Another interesting result thrown up by the study was the percentage of requests submitted by journalists – just 19 per cent for central government and 23 per cent for local government agencies – which Pinder confirms is much lower than the figure estimated by pundits before the Act came into force. The majority of requests, 50 per cent in central government and a quarter of those at local level are, in fact, submitted by businesses. “I suspect this could be due to some using the information to build commercial databases, as has happened in America,” suggests Pinder. However, the real point of interest, he argues, is that requests for information from the public represent more than half (52 per cent) of those submitted at local government level, which brings into focus the effect that failure to be seen as FOI compliant could have on voting behaviour. “From a reputation point of view, it is clear that public institutions must not be seen as failing to wholeheartedly embrace the most visible aspect of open government,” says Pinder.

The research comes in the wake of wide-ranging debate over how the British government is coping with FOI since its implementation in January 2005. Previous reports from the Henley Management Centre and Ark Group, in 2003, both raised concerns over the readiness of local and national government bodies to answer FOI requests. A constitutional affairs committee enquiry into the implementation of the Act, launched in the same year, also highlighted potential challenges that the British government would need to overcome to be successful, not least disparate data across various departments, and the recognition of the role that law courts would play in the process of understanding the penalties of non-compliance.

A downloadable pdf of the report can be found at: www.aprsmartlogik.com