Always read the footnotes
Always read the footnotes, even to the appendices - this is good advice for readers of company accounts, academic textbooks and independent reports from economics consultancies which have been commissioned by the government.
Last week the Department for Constitutional Affairs released it had commissioned from the consultancy about the cost of FOI.
Having read this report more throroughly than I could initially, I can now say how I have been struck by the way it contains numerous assumptions about cost which seem to be entirely arbitrary and have important consequences for their calculations.
This includes for example assessing ministerial and private office time at £300 per hour, without providing any justification or comparison figures (page 58).
However the most startling example is the decision to double a major element in the cost (the time spent on consideration and internal discussion) on the basis that they only recorded the time spent on this by some officials. There is absolutely no justification provided as to why doubling the estimated cost is the right way to compensate for their failure to measure the time spent by other officials.
On the face of it this is a completely arbitrary assumption, yet it has major consequences for the report's cost calculations, increasing them by several million pounds (it is impossible to say exactly how much without further details of their methodology).
However, this assumption is only revealed when you read footnote 40 to annexe 1 and footnote 44 to annexe 2. These footnotes are on pages 58 and 64 of a 65-page report, a long way after the promiment and crucial figures that they affect so much.
I will be making some more comments about this report over the next few days.
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Thanks for publishing this, Martin. I'm glad somebody is taking the time to go over these matters.
Having never previously thought about the costs involved in FoI, it strikes me that in terms of government spending, the costs I read in this report are comparatively low. That is, not the £300/hour(!) part, but the overall running costs.
As it's the public that pays for it in the end and having seen how many thousands are handed over to consultants every day for all sorts of silly projects, e.g. ID cards, I'm happy to see my money go into something as worthwhile (as necessary) as FoI. Even more so if the amounts mentioned in the report are exaggerated!
Anyway, hopefully we'll at least get a public consultation as recommended in the initial report.