The current public perception of both FOI and Data Protection is dire. If
people have heard of either one, it's in a negative context. Data Protection
is caricatured as legislation which helps Ian Huntley and kills old people
(the press is still peddling this line, most recently in the Independent
last month), while FOI currently looks like a tool to blind the public from
the truth.

There are fair criticisms to be made of both pieces of legislation. When a
judge described Data Protection as cumbersome and inelegant, he was spot on.
Meanwhile, FOI hasn't been seen to deliver. There has been really good stuff
based on requests in the Guardian and the Telegraph, which is very good for
FOI's public image, but it hasn't hit the public consciousness like the
refusal to disclose the Attorney General's advice. Asking big questions is
valid - I've requested information about ID Cards and Human Rights, even
though I expected to be rebuffed - but this kind of thing should be backed
up by an analytical style of request, written with exemptions in mind.
Without some major public interest successes, FOI will look like a subsidy
for the press and a dream come true for private sector marketing
departments. Whether or not you agree with their campaign, the authors of
the Spy FOI blog (http://www.spy.org.uk/foia/) show a genuine attempt to ask
questions that are subtle and harder to resist. For requesters, I think this
is the way to go.

I believe the debate is polarised - you have the media on one side, very
suspicious of FOI and downright hostile to Data Protection, and you have the
public sector on the other, accused of secrecy and conspiracy, facing new
legislation with no certain knowledge of the costs or long-term
implications. The public seem to me to be caught in the middle, and until
the FOI traffic is dominated by the average punter and the subjects that
concern them, we'll be stuck debating the principles.

Tim Turner
Data Protection / FOI Officer
Wigan Council

> ----------
> From:         Lawrence Serewicz[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Reply To:     [log in to unmask]
> Sent:         06 April 2005 11:15
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: [data-protection] FOI - a cheap research tool for
> journalists?
>
> Mr. Lord makes my point directly. We in the UK have been living as
> subjects, not as citizens.**  Even the Labour government accepts this
> point because its strategy for democratic renewal, through the
> Local:Vision 10 year strategy for local government, stresses the need to
> engage citizens in the democratic process.
>
>  I, for one, find it disheartening that my fellow citizens do not see how
> important the act is in making the government accountable to the people. I
> fear that the people, including those who work for the government, have
> been conditioned to accept that a situation pre-FOIA is an acceptable way
> for a government to operate.  I grant that the culture of secrecy grew up
> as a result of WWII, but it is time to reassert the balance between the
> citizen and the government.
>
> The FOIA is in its early stages and how we react to it will shape its
> development and the people's perceptions to it. If we are to develop a
> culture whereby we expect, as a matter of RIGHT, that the government is
> accountable to the people, then we need to stress how important the FOIA
> is to that culture.
>
> I would hope that the public would have the same enthusiasm for the FOIA
> as they did for resisting detention without judicial review.
>
> As for money being spent unwisely, I think that people would value their
> ability to find out how the money is being spent, something that was very
> hard to do in the pre-FOI world, than worry about the cost of having that
> right.  Elections cost a lot of money, but no one complains about their
> downside.
>
> I do not know which would be worse, that bureaucrats would treat the
> public in this manner or that the public would accept this treatment.
>
> **"Moreover, studies of political attitudes have always shown that the
> notion of being a "subject" persisted much longer in Britain than in other
> democracies."
> Jerold Waltman "Citizenship and Civic Republicanism in Contemporary
> Britain" (The Midwest Quarterly, Vol. 40, 1998)
>
> Lawrence W. Serewicz
>
>
>
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