Back in June I posted about the regime's efforts to use "high costs" to limit the public's right to freedom of information, via a consultant's report which claimed that handling OIA requests costs $185 million a year. The numbers were bogus, of course - based on an Australian estimate, which is four time higher than the actual measured cost of handling requests at police - but of course Ministry of Justice's fancy consultants haven't corrected that in their followup report. Instead, they've doubled down, claiming that the true costs are two to three times higher than their initial estimate. Like I said, you hire consultants to deliver the answers you want, and TBL has just handed Goldsmith a huge number - half a billion dollars! - with which to attack our democracy.
Ministry of Justice's proposed response to this is all about weakening the OIA: limiting the definition of "official information" and the agencies covered; expanding withholding grounds; increasing charges; more refusals for "substantial collation and research"; giving agencies the ability to declare requesters (rather than specific requests) "vexatious”. Plus of course their regular demands like impunity for government doxxing. Most of which misses the point. Because while the consultants report does talk about repeated and complex requests as one cost driver, the overwhelming thrust is that the reason the OIA costs so much is that public sector agencies are just a bit shit. Some examples:
- Most agencies are terrible at information management, meaning they can't find anything and have to talk to subject matter experts, which takes a lot of time and distracts them from doing other things;
- Staff training is "highly variable" and documentation of OIA policies is often poor, meaning everything takes longer and costs more than it needs to, and wheels are constantly reinvented;
- Workflow management is mostly manual, which means poor coordination and tracking (unmentioned: requests falling through the cracks or being delayed because someone is sick or has gone on holiday);
- Risk-aversion, review, and executive-level sign off adds more expense and delay. The report frames this as wanting to avoid the time and expense of complaints to the Ombudsman (which agencies should be wanting to avoid, by making clearly lawful decisions), but a huge amount of it is just political arse-covering.
Tackling that stuff, through systematised training, common workflow and tracking software, and improvement of information management would go a long way towards lowering overall costs. But that would all cost money up front. And unfortunately the regime seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with planned cuts at the National Archives likely to lead to worse information management across the public sector.
There are some other useful suggestions - increased proactive release, assessing OIA withholding grounds when documents are created (allowing staff to assess risk early and not use as much SME time), standard legislated pathways for release of common types of information, greater resourcing. But you know that this government at least is going to ignore those suggestions. Instead, they'll be focusing on Ministry of Justice's proposals to limit the OIA rather than actually improve things. Still, at least the really radical ideas, like requiring RealMe to make a request, or ongoing tracking and surveillance of requesters (sorry, "systemic requester profiling") so they can be refused, didn't make it into the advice to the Minister. Meaning they'll probably be popped in at the committee stage of any resulting legislation in order to avoid consultation and scrutiny.
There will supposedly be "consultation" on any changes - brief, and after Cabinet has made its decisions, of course. But the entire process will be managed by Ministry of Justice. This is inappropriate. The OIA is constitutional legislation. It was drafted by a full government inquiry (the Danks Committee). Reviews have typically been conducted by neutral, independent bodies - the Law Commission in 1997 and 2012, and the Ombudsman in 2015 and 2019. By contrast, a Ministry is both institutionally captured, and the servant of the government of the day - a body totally inappropriate to be considering changes of this scope to constitutional law. If the government wants to fuck around with the fundamentals of transparency - the definition of "official information", the scope of the Act, withholding and refusal grounds - or tilt the playing field towards charging and providing less information - then that is something which needs an independent eye. The regime's indicated "reforms" and proposed pathway is a recipe for deceased social licence and trust in government - the very opposite of what transparency legislation is meant to do.
