Who uses freedom of information?
Lazy journalists? Opportunist businesses? Obsessive campaigners? Individuals motivated by little more than idle curiosity?
Well let's not forget government ministers - one of whom has just told me how he has used FOI a couple of times to help pursue local constituency cases. And it worked to his satisfaction on both occasions. It's good to know that someone's finding the law effective.
Actually I have a theory that most freedom of information requests are put in by people who work as FOI officers. This is based on the fact that when I'm discussing one of my FOI requests with an officer dealing with it, half the time they start telling me about the fate of an FOI request which they've put in to another public authority.
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As someone who used to be an FOI Officer I can tell you that the skills I learnt in that job have helped me obtain information from several different public authorities since.
I think the key to it is that once you understand what is actually available to you you're more keen to get hold of it and hence use the act to do so.
Sometimes people did consider trying to catch other departments out (friendly rivalry and all that), but in my own experience everything I have asked for (including from my old department!) has turned up well within the 20 days and with nothing redacted at all!
While going through this blog, I have come to realize that the situation with regards to Right to Information (RTI), which is known as Freedom of Information (FOI) in UK, in India and UK are not very different. While it is true that India is a developing country and UK is among the most developed ones in the world, but what I see is that people in both the countries have to struggle with bureaucracy and red-tapeism in almost equal measures. What is more, not many people seem to be interested or knowledgeable about their rights. Only the special categories that have been enumerated have an interest in these Informations, with the majority of the population sitting idle. This is a situation that always favours the Executive.
Amitabh Thakur, Lucknow