Colleagues from the ICO’s FOI Directorate share their experiences and involvement in raising awareness of our regulation of access to information legislation.
Supporting public authorities to be open and transparent - 31 July 2024
Around this time last year, I wrote about our new Upstream Regulation team and our focus on supporting public authorities to be open and accountable with the public they serve.
Read the full blog from Deborah Clark, our Upstream Regulation manager
Understanding what information people commonly request from public authorities - 03 June 2024
People can use the WhatDoTheyKnow (WDTK) website to submit Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests to public organisations.
Working with WDTK, we have analysed a sample of more than 150,000 requests made during 2022 and identified common themes in the information that has been asked for.
Read the full blog from Aiden Clarkson, Senior Upstream Regulation Officer - FOI and Transparency
Director’s update: the FOI year in review - 25 April 2024
It’s fair to say that it’s been a heck of a year for the FOI team.
We’ve received more than 8,000 complaints – against a previous high of 6,418 in 2018/19.
Are you clear on clarifying information requests? - 10 January 2024
Public organisations hold a huge amount of information across a wide range of areas. That’s why it’s vital that practitioners understand exactly what people are asking for when dealing with requests under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act or the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR).
What to consider when using online forms to receive information requests - 15 November 2023
As freedom of information (FOI) practitioners, you have a responsibility to help requesters clarify what it is they want from you. You need to support them to submit requests in a way that enables you to provide a comprehensive and timely response.
Read the full blog from Deborah Clark, the ICO's Upstream Regulation Manager.
Director’s update – Delivering more strategic regulation in 12 months than in the lifetime of FOI - 10 August 2023
Just over a year ago, I announced that we had published our new Freedom of Information (FOI) regulatory manual, which set out our approach to more strategic enforcement of FOI in line with our statutory powers. Now, 12 months on, I want to take the opportunity to reflect on what our new way of doing things has helped us to accomplish.
Helping public organisations to get information access right - 20 July 2023
In ICO25, we established our strategic enduring objective to promote openness, transparency and accountability. This also supports the Commissioner’s duty under section 47 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ‘promote the following of good practice by public authorities’ in relation to FOIA and its Codes of Practice.
Read the full blog from Deborah Clark, the ICO's Upstream Regulation Manager.
Director’s Update – celebrating success and challenging ourselves for the future - 28 March 2023
It’s just over a year since my first blog when I said that I wanted to keep you up to date on how we are improving our service, including how we will tackle our backlog of cases.
So as we approach the end of the financial year, I want to take this opportunity to share some good news on where we have got to on the latter, before moving onto what this means for our efforts to improve the service we deliver.
Read the full blog from Warren Seddon, ICO Director of Freedom of Information and Transparency.
New FOI resources to support public authorities - 2 February 2023
We’ve been working hard, following the commitments made in our ICO25 plan, to make improvements to our Freedom of Information (FOI) services. We want to enhance the experience and outcomes for people making FOI requests and also support public authorities to be transparent and accountable about the decisions they make.
We have developed a suite of products to help public bodies improve their compliance with freedom of information law and respond to information requests without delay. That includes resources to assess your compliance proactively, an action plan for improving services that can be easily adapted to different circumstances, and toolkits that can help public authorities comply with their legal duties.
Read the full blog from Deborah Clark, Upstream Regulation Manager.
Director’s Update – Delivering on FOI regulation and ICO25 - 8 November 2022
As I have set out in previous blogs, we are currently running a ‘Better FOI’ transformation programme. This is supporting the work we need to do both to clear our backlog, while also helping us plan for how we will deliver on our wider commitments under ICO25 to promote openness, transparency and accountability.
This is important. We need to deliver a better service so people get access to information quickly when they should have received it already, or give them a clear decision so they know where they stand if we are going to uphold the decision originally made.
Director’s Update – International Day for Universal Access to Information 2022 - 28 September 2022
The ’Director’s Update’ series from ICO Director of FOI and Transparency, Warren Seddon, provides you with a regular update on the FOI work of the ICO and aims to share some of the key learnings to help FOI practitioners and the wider FOI community understand our developing thinking and carry out their roles.
Every year on 28 September we join colleagues across the world to celebrate UNESCO’s International Day for Universal Access to Information. It is an opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of the right to know, which is fundamental to the health of democracies and ensuring trust in the institutions that underpin them. This year’s theme is artificial intelligence, e-Governance and access to information. As public bodies make increasing use of digital solutions to support online services and to help decision making, it is essential that the use of these methods do not result in a lack of transparency.
Director’s Update – Looking at the future of Freedom of Information (FOI) through ICO25 - 12 July 2022
The ’Director’s Update’ series from ICO Director of FOI and Transparency, Warren Seddon, provides you with a regular update on the FOI work of the ICO and aims to share some of the key learnings to help FOI practitioners and the wider FOI community understand our developing thinking and carry out their roles.
Yesterday, we published our landmark report, ‘Behind the screens – maintaining government transparency and data security in the age of messaging apps ’. The report highlights the problems that can occur when public authorities fail to make sure their information management policies and procedures reflect the way they are conducting official business in practice.
Director’s Update: Doing more with less – working with the FOI community to improve future FOI regulation - 20 May 2022
The ’Director’s Update’ series from ICO Director of FOI and Transparency, Warren Seddon, provides you with a regular update on the FOI work of the ICO and aims to share some of the key learnings to help FOI practitioners and the wider FOI community understand our developing thinking and carry out their roles.
The story of our performance regulating the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act is one of doing more with less in real terms. Even before the pandemic we continued to face year-on-year increases in the number of FOI complaints we were receiving against a background of static government funding.
Directors Update - Why Covid-19 has shown the FOI Act has never been more important to UK society - 22 March 2022
The past two years have highlighted how transparency and accountability are fundamental to our democracy - the impact of decisions made by public bodies throughout the pandemic have affected us all in some way.
At the start of the pandemic the ICO made clear, along with our colleagues internationally, that transparency about decision making and good record keeping during this period would be essential and a vital means of maintaining public trust. This remains the case. We also set out how we would take account of the significant pressures some organisations were facing. While being more flexible where appropriate, we continued to make regulatory decisions, uphold the legislation we oversee and provide advice.
Read the full blog from Warren Seddon, ICO Director of Freedom of Information and Transparency.
An update on our FOI and EIR guidance - 10 March 2022
We’ve recently updated our FOI guidance on section 14(1) vexatious requests. The update reflects changes to caselaw in more detail. The guidance provides public authorities with practical advice when deciding if a request is vexatious, and how to handle vexatious requests. Although much of the content remains the same, it covers some new areas, such as:
- the four part test under the Dransfield Court of Appeal decision; and
- the circumstances where burdensome requests may be vexatious in their own right, and how to provide advice and assistance to requesters in these circumstances.
This update is part of a continuing project of reviewing and refreshing our FOI and EIR guidance. All of our updated guidance is in the ‘What’s new’ sections of the guide to FOI and the guide to EIR.