Introduction

Compliance with FOI laws is more than an exercise in legal analysis. More than anything else it is a logistical challenge, which requires organisational and attitudinal change. As discussed in Chapter 10, public authorities need an FOI officer or team to oversee the day-to-day administration of FOI. They need to be supported while they put in place an infrastructure of policies, procedures and training, as explored in Chapter 11. With all of this in place, an authority is ready to receive and process a request for information.

This in itself is not as straightforward as it might at first appear. The request has to be received, and not blocked by spam filters. The person who receives it has to know what it is, what to do with it, log its receipt, calculate a time limit by which it must be answered, and identify in which department there is likely to be someone able to answer it. That person must understand the question asked and identify, locate and extract the information requested. This has to be done while ensuring that the services they are primarily responsible for delivering are not disrupted.

Potential consequences of disclosing the information sought in an FOI request have to be considered. Anyone who might be affected by the disclosure should normally be consulted. Where appropriate, the relevant legal justification for refusal of some or all of the information has to be identified. If the information takes the form of a copy of a document, and only some of its content can be disclosed, parts of it will need to be blanked out. A response needs to be drafted specifying which information is being refused and explaining why; this might need the approval of someone with the appropriate authority. The approved response then has to be sent to the correct address, and a record kept of what was sent and when. All of this assumes that the information can be found, is located in one discrete unit of the authority, and that it is clear what can and cannot be disclosed.

If FOI deadlines are to be met, FOI officers have to ensure that a standard workflow is established taking each request from receipt to response, that they can negotiate objections and resistance, and that lessons are learnt when these various procedures do not go to plan.