A dysfunctional watchdog

The reality of any right depends on how well it is enforced. But as The Post points out this morning, our right to official information isn't being enforced very well at all:

More than a quarter of complaints about access to official information languish for more than a year, as the OIA watchdog fails to keep up with high complaint numbers.

[...]

In 2023/24, the Office of the Ombudsman completed just 37% of OIA complaints within three months. Four out of 10 complaints took longer than six months ‒ similar to when Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier took over in 2015, promising to fix the “bugbear“ of long waits for resolution.

On average, OIA complaints took 244 days to complete, while Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act (LGOIMA) complaints took 261 days.

And as the article points out, its actually worse than that because the Ombudsman is juking its stats, trying to get people to abandon their complaints (I can confirm that strategy), then counting them as "completed". And this accounts for a quarter of all "completed" complaints.

This matters. Many OIA requests are time-sensitive - seeking information while an issue is still in the news (rather than merely being a historical curiosity), or in order to participate in government consultations and select committee processes. The denial of information thwarts that. And the failure of the Ombudsman to enforce the Act and investigate and make decisions on complaints in a timely fashion thwarts it still further. Their juking the stats to make the situation appear better than it is is simply icing on the cake.

How do we fix this problem? Better resourcing and better triaging of complaints to focus on the right to participation is part of the solution. But ultimately, the Ombudsman is a mediator, not an enforcer, predicated on an utterly outdated and colonial model of government where everyone is a good chap who will be reasonable if another chap tells them to. Our government structure hasn't worked like that for decades, if it ever did; nowdays that model seems positively prehistoric, and completely unsuitable.

We know how to properly enforce rights; through the courts. And that means replacing the Ombudsman with a UK-style Information Commissioner, with appeal rights through the judiciary, and decisions enforceable by court order. The problem is, why would Ministers, who currently get to laugh while their pathetic "watchdog" dithers and "recommends", vote for that?