Emeritus Prof Christopher May

Just to confirm that Labour's relationship with democracy is (shall we say) uneven:

the Govt. is once again (like previous Govt.s) considering constraining & narrowing the scope of Freedom of Information requests, citing cost as the reason, when its more likely linked to such transparency often presented in the Westminster Village as representing a friction that makes governing more difficult.

Of course, they could just be more open & transparent?

#FreedomOfInformation #politics

h/t FT

Mar 19 at 10:28pmWeb
Show threadohir4d ago

@ChrisMayLA6
The situation at the table is now quite clear. We don’t need a new hand; we need a whole new deck.

All over the world.

Show threadRaymondPierreL34d ago
@ChrisMayLA6
We’ve just been through that exercise in #Australia. The facts did not support the govt’s assertions. And, I am glad to say, the legislation was defeated in the Senate.
#AusPol #FOI
Show threadnick 🇦🇺4d ago
@ChrisMayLA6 Someone should do an FOI request on the budgeting data and modeling used to make that assertion.
Show threadTiggy4d ago

@ChrisMayLA6

As a new statistician I heard a senior saying he'd answered a PQ with 100% when the question wanted a split between men and women but missed a comma.
We'd already entered the new stage of being helpful so newer staff were shocked.
We could ask the office to check what a MP really wanted if it wasn't clear.
When FoI came in we all worked hard to meet the date targets.
In my last two years, the last dept I worked in banned us from checking if questions werent clear.
Since then things have got a lot worse.

Show threadTom Stoneham4d ago

@ChrisMayLA6
The perfect storm of arrogant paternalism, authoritarian managerialism, and simplistic efficiency drives.

As you note, if you start from making everything open and transparent unless there is good reason not to, FOI requests disappear.

Show threadDan Hatton4d ago

@ChrisMayLA6

Having worked in climate-adjacent research for a while, I'm aware that there absolutely are such things as vexatious and frivolous FoI requests, and that they are a real problem, but I don't suppose those are the ones the government will attempt to limit.

(Also, quite a lot of FoI requests are submitted by employees inside the responder organisations, trying to get the management information they need to do their jobs properly, which indicates a whole other problem.)

Show threadEmeritus Prof Christopher May4d ago

@only_ohm

The second type of issue is extraordinary - I was sort of vaguely aware of this, but I wonder what the extent as a proportion of all it is... any idea?

Show threadDan Hatton4d ago
@ChrisMayLA6 TBF, it might be more or less unique to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where lots of people's job roles include membership of the governing bodies, and they often have to resort to FoI requests to wring out the info they need effectively to hold the executive to account.
Show threadDan Hatton4d ago
@ChrisMayLA6 Although I can imagine that non-executive directors of some Quangos sometimes find themselves needing to take the same approach.