Freedom of Information Act

Martin Stabe London has 73 fires each day – and 161 false alarms

February 13, 2013 2:21 pm by Martin Stabe

The London Fire Brigade has published its incident data for the past four years in the London Data Store, the capital’s open data repository.

The data, originally obtained by the Financial Times under the Freedom of Information Act and published last week in our London Fire Brigade response times map, is being released as open data because of widespread interest in the potential impact of fire station closures.

The London Fire Authority is defying mayor Boris Johnson’s order to put the proposed cuts to public consultation. The £45m cut in the brigade’s budget over two years, would see 12 fire stations, 18 engines and 520 jobs go. Read more

Posted in Data, Freedom of Information Act, UK |

Chris Cook Getting around the official statistics

December 14, 2012 3:16 pm by Chris Cook

Last week, I went to Wolverhampton where I spoke at a local debate, organised by the university and Pat McFadden, the local MP, about the local authority’s school. I was the warm-up act for Lord Adonis, former schools minister, setting the scene about the city’s education system before his talk on lessons on school improvement.

It was interesting event – and the city is clearly considering its future and the role of education within it. There is – judging by my inbox – serious and deep interest in improving schools in the city. One of the things I sought to do was set out Wolvo’s position in relation to the rest of the country – and what statistics about the city tell us.

Here is my presentation: Read more

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Posted in Damned lies and statistics, Data, Data Points, Education, Freedom of Information Act, On the records, Politics, polling and psephology, UK |
From FT.com: UK Politics & Policy August 1, 2012

The coalition’s drive to open access to official data was welcome, but  more needed to be done to make information comprehensible, according to a report by the House of Commons’ public accounts committee, which monitors the effectiveness of public spending.

Official willingness to publish data was not enough, the committee said, since the information provided could be rather impenetrable. Some of the data are published as very large files that cannot be opened using a conventional home computer. Other files are difficult to interpret or can be only understood with the aid of large glossaries.

“It is simply not good enough to dump large quantities of raw data into the public domain, “ said Margaret Hodge, who chairs the committee. “[Data] must be accessible, relevant and easy for us all to understand. Otherwise the public cannot use them.”

 Read more

Posted in Freedom of Information Act, On the records, Open Data, UK |
From Westminster blog May 7, 2012

The House of Lords authorities are refusing to hand over officials’ estimates of how much it will cost taxpayers to replace the chamber with a mostly elected senate, prompting anger from Tory politicians.

Officials have rejected a freedom of information request by the Financial Times, saying that the relevant information was produced “solely” for the joint committee on Lords reform. “A decision was taken by them not to publish it as part of their report,” they said in their response.

David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden, said there was a “clear-cut case” for the cost estimates to be put in the public domain.

 Read more

Posted in Freedom of Information Act |

Chris Cook How do you define ‘official’?

February 13, 2012 5:36 pm by Chris Cook

A fortnight ago, MPs caught a fleeting glimpse of a process that has, to this point, taken place discreetly: the Information Commissioner’s Office investigation into the office of Michael Gove over suspected breaches of the Freedom of Information Act.

A transcript is now available for Mr Gove’s appearance before the education select committee, when he answered questions on the topic. He said the DfE had not released data from one document in response to FoI requests because it was political.

The law is straightforward: only government data is covered by the FoI Act. Party political or private business is never captured, even if it is sent via a government email address. Official business, however it is transmitted, is always covered.

In circumstances where there is a mix of party, personal and government business, official data is released and the remainder is redacted. So the whole text would need to be party political and not official for the document not to be covered by the act.

We have published it below. Read more

Posted in Education, Freedom of Information Act, UK |