Assessing the performance of freedom of information

How well has the UK FOI Act worked in practice now that it has been in force for 4 years? This article discusses how to measure the performance of FOI regimes. It presents the evidence on the performance of FOI in the UK measured against comparative data from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Irel...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Government information quarterly 2010-10, Vol.27 (4), p.352-359
Main Authors: Hazell, Robert, Worthy, Ben
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access to information
Canada
Evaluation
FOI
Freedom of Information
Ireland
Law
New Zealand
Political Systems
United Kingdom
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:How well has the UK FOI Act worked in practice now that it has been in force for 4 years? This article discusses how to measure the performance of FOI regimes. It presents the evidence on the performance of FOI in the UK measured against comparative data from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Ireland, countries with access to information legislation and similar political systems. On a range of measures, the UK Act is found to have performed reasonably well, but it also suffers from problems common to all FOI regimes. The article concludes with some observations on what makes for a successful FOI regime, and how to measure it.
ISSN:0740-624X
1872-9517
DOI:10.1016/j.giq.2010.03.005