Impact case study database

The UK Freedom of Information Act (2000) and its sister legislation in Scotland (2002) secured the public right of access to information held by public authorities, setting out specific guidelines for requesting and reporting such information, and replacing voluntary and often unreliable ad hoc practices. Despite the strong belief of FOI’s supporters and promoters that it enhances decision-making and improves accountability, FOI has been intensely and publicly criticised as expensive, an unnecessary drain on resources, and potentially perverse in encouraging public bodies to be less, not more open. Tony Blair in his memoirs described himself as a ‘naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop’ for introducing FOI legislation, while David Cameron created a Commission in the expectation that it would expose the failures of FOI. Worthy’s research has contributed to the evidence base to counter these arguments, while also supporting initiatives to

strengthen the commitment of central, devolved and local governments to promote openness in ways which facilitate accountability and potentially improve trust in effective government.

**1. Strengthening FOI Legislation and Practice Across the Devolved Governments ** Between 2013 and 2018 Worthy worked on behalf of the Open Government Partnership, as the UK’s Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM) The Open Government Partnership is an international initiative comprising civil societies, local and national government representatives and businesses formed ‘to secure commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance’. Formed in 2011, it now covers 78 countries, representing a population of around 2,000,000,000 people (OGP, ‘About us’). Each country appoints an individual as the IRM who assesses their own government’s openness commitments and reports on how far these commitments have been implemented.

As the UK’s IRM, Worthy’s first report for the Open Government Partnership in 2015 (1) had a significant impact on the UK’s commitment to openness. The Cabinet Office accepted his recommendation to increase engagement with devolved governments. This led to the devolved administrations publishing their own commitments for the first time as part of the UK’s National Action Plan in December 2016. Worthy’s recommendation was vital in securing these commitments from the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland and Welsh Assemblies to strengthen FOI and ratify open governance practices (2).

Worthy’s recommendation that the devolved bodies should be specifically included in the Government’s national UK action plan directly led them to make separate commitments under the subsequent plan – a first and a highly important step in strengthening openness practices. As a result of these changes, the devolved governments have continued to publish action plans; Scotland is currently preparing its second action plan, while Wales and Northern Ireland are currently preparing new versions of their plans. The central UK and devolved government action plans commit their respective governments to clear, robust FOI policies, legislation and practice, further protecting and embedding FOI and open governance across the UK.

2. The development of FOI in the UK Independent CommissionIn 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron set up an Independent Commission on FOI to investigate potential reforms to FOI legislation. FOI defenders within and outside Parliament believed that this was intended to pave the way for the restriction of FOI. David Davis MP called it a ‘stitch-up’ ( Daily Politics, BBC Parliament, 8 September 2015), while Labour MP Tom Watson told Buzzfeed News that ‘In announcing the commission, the government are really saying they’re going to water down the act’ (17 July 2015).

In the event, the changes recommended by the report were minimal (3). They were (as BBC News commented at the time) ‘swayed by the evidence about how FOI actually works in practice’ ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-35550967). Worthy made a substantial contribution to this evidence, making representations through a meeting with the chair and providing written evidence drawing on his research (specifically REF3, as well as earlier research done at the UCL’s Constitution Unit with Hazell and Glover) (4).

Scottish ParliamentThe Scottish Parliament’s Public Audit and Post-Legislative Scrutiny Committee conducted an inquiry into the operation of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act, publishing a report in 2020 (5) which heavily cited Worthy’s oral and written evidence, which in turn drew directly on his research [specifically REF3 and REF5]. Arguments and findings taken up by the Committee included the effect of greater openness on organisational culture (paragraph 49), the need to update practices of proactive disclosure to take advantage of new technology (paragraphs 109, 136), and the anchoring effect of deadlines (paragraph 223). Worthy’s evidence influenced the report’s recommendations that the law should be amended to cover more types of information (such as electronic communications) and that there should be a new statutory duty to publish certain types of information.

Open DataIn their 2014 report on the progress of the Government’s Open Data agenda (6), the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) cited Worthy’s evidence, based on his 2013 paper [REF3] and his research for REF4, to describe the lack of an overall strategy and clear accountability mechanisms from the government on Open Data. In particular, the report described how the Government’s vision of lay citizens - so-called ‘armchair auditors’ - holding their local authorities to account had failed, taking their account directly from Worthy’s evidence to argue that the qualities and skills needed for a normal citizen to properly scrutinise local government are too rare for ‘armchair auditors’ to provide a realistic level of scrutiny (paragraphs 49, 54). PASC recommended that the Government should adopt a star-rating system for engagement of the public in holding the government to account, which departments should use for measuring engagement with their data releases and reporting to Parliament.

Parish CouncilsWorthy’s 2017 research on parish councils showed that requests for information labelled as FOI requests were significantly more likely to receive a response than requests that did not mention FOI [REF5]. The head of the UK Campaign for Freedom of Information described the Parish Council project as an ‘elegant concept’ with ‘valuable results’, while Toby Mendel, head of civil rights campaign group Article 19, called it ‘immensely valuable’. Activists from Italy and Canada praised the results and Paul Gibbons – one of the foremost public commentators on FOI practice - commended Worthy’s work in one assessment as ‘helpful...in understanding the peculiar challenges that FOI presents within the lowest tier of government, [providing] important lessons about FOI and government in general’ (7). ‘The study has now been replicated in the Netherlands and Slovakia, with similar results. Worthy was a co-author of the Dutch study. One by-product of the UK study was that a number of parishes responded by publishing organisation charts, either online or on local noticeboards, and reviewing how open they are in their public meetings (8).