The Information Commissioner’s Office is flagging up its part in the ‘open data’ revolution by revealing the sublime to the ridiculous of Freedom of Information during 2012.
And with 37,313 FOI requests to central Government offices in the first three quarters of 2012 – and many more to local councils, NHS bodies, police forces and other authorities – the ICO has certainly been kept busy.
In 2012, we learnt that Roald Dahl and Lucien Freud both turned down the Queen’s honours in their lifetimes and that there were 900 police officers with criminal records. We also found out that there were 43,586,400 fake pound coins in circulation, and that it cost the Foreign Office £10,000 to re-stuff and re-condition a 120-year-old boa constrictor called Albert.
The FOI Act gives individuals the right to ask a public authority for any official documents, for example, minutes of council meetings and details of public spending.
The authority must then provide the information or explain why the information should not be disclosed. If a public authority refuses to release the information individuals can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
ICO deputy commissioner Graham Smith said: “The access to information that the Freedom of Information Act gives us helps us to better understand what public authorities are doing in our name and with our money, something that’s been proven in the information released in 2012.
“We’d expect that 2013 will see even more information become available. Changes are being looked at to upgrade the Freedom of Information Act for the internet age. It means moving on from simply providing the public with information to looking at the way public authorities release it, for instance providing data in formats that make it easier to process and analyse, and giving licenses for others to re-use information to benefit the public.
“If the next 12 months are anything like the last, we can expect to learn even more about how the country is run and how decisions about local services are made.”
