Freedom of information: sectoral experience

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Freedom of information sectoral experience

• Susan Graham
• University of Edinburgh

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Caveats

• Overview
• Not a scientific survey
• Optional, informal survey
• Not all institutions represented
• Discretion over interpretation
• Institutions have adopted different approaches to
  the definition of an FOI request
• Assignment of requests to categories was at the
  discretion of institutions, so there may be
  variety in practice

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No of requests
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No of requests citing legislation
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Totals (1)
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Totals (2)
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Are requests increasing?
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Common subjects
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Types of applicants
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Estimated time spent responding to requests
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Financial cost to sector of responding to requests

• Indicative cost 42, 231.50 since Jan 2005
• Most of this work is not chargeable or not worth
  charging for
• Based on the following assumptions
• The time each request took was assumed to be in
  the exact midpoint of its category
• e.g. a request taking between 4hrs and 1 days
  work was assumed to take 5 ¾ hrs.
• a request taking more than 5 days is assumed to
  take 10 days
• Time was charged at 15 per hour.
• - the actual cost of many peoples time is
  more than this
• Time spent on reviews and complaints is included
  in our calculations.
• Legal costs are excluded from our calculations