"Several public authorities have failed to meet the requirement to reduce the time they take to respond to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, the Information Commissioner’s Office has announced.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) monitored the performance of 33 public authorities for a period of three months, following concerns about delays in their responses to FOI requests. The Commissioner has particular concerns about delays at the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence and Birmingham City Council.
Four other authorities – the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, the London Borough of Islington, Wolverhampton City Council and Westminster City Council – have been asked to sign undertakings to improve their performance in this area.
The ICO has sent letters to the Home Office, the Metropolitan Police Service, NHS North West, the London Borough of Croydon, the Scotland Office and the London Borough of Newham to put on record that, while all of them are now meeting the required standard, the monitoring has revealed some areas of concern.
Eighteen public authorities have hit one or more of the following performance markers: the ICO has received six or more complaints concerning delay within a six month period; it appears that an authority has exceeded the time for compliance by a significant margin on one occasion or more; for authorities that publish data on timeliness, it appears that less than 85% of requests are responded to within the appropriate timescales."
There are various ways of looking at the data quoted and one aspect is to ask the question whether "less than 85%" represents a problem, as suggested in the performance marker. If it is, how far "less" than 85% is the actual number and perhaps more crucially, for those authorities that don't publish data, is there better practice or poorer practice in those?We're also interested in the learning to be had from those organisations who achieve 85% response within timescales, and also from those with less 85% success, yet who therefore still make the vast majority of their responses within appropriate timescales.
Taken from an appreciative perspective, whilst we would always encourage the highest levels of performance, what the quote fails to mention or explore is the obvious effective practice being achieved, even in authorities where the level of achievement is less than 85%. What can we learn from what's working? What more can be done to encourage achievement at that level and better.
Finally, what of those organisations that don't publish any figures? Are they achieving lower than 85% or better? And, could the ICO highlight the learning to be had from those oganisations doing well in this area of operation.
Balanced learning; learning from success as well as highlighting relative 'failure'.
