Introduction
The annual JISC infoNet, Universities UK and GuildHE Information Legislation & Management survey for 2007 attracted 107 responses, over twice as many as in previous years. Though the figures portray a generally healthy picture of institutional openness and accountability there does also appear to be some cause for concern for managers and practitioners when it comes to future compliance with the legislation and regulation governing access to information.
As expected, the numbers of requests being received under the Freedom of Information & Data Protection Acts and the Environmental Information Regulations continues their gradual, year-on-year increase, with the average number of Subject Access Requests received under data protection legislation increasing from an average of 1 per month in 2006 to 1.7 last year, and with FOI requests up from 3.2 to 3.6 per institution each month during the same period. If the experience from the other countries which have implemented FOI regimes in recent years proves to be an accurate guide, we can expect the average number of requests to continue to rise for another 7 years or so before reaching their 'natural level'. This would still leave the numbers for the sector far lower than for other branches of the public sector, but there are already indications that even these modest increases are beginning to bite.
For example, in 2006 no FOI or EIR requests were reported as taking longer than 5 days of actual active time to complete, but for 2007 this figure had risen to 12%. When it comes to Data Protection Subject Access Requests the trend is even starker with a huge increase from the 16% recorded as taking 5 or more days to answer in 2006 to 51% in 2007. Though, interestingly, despite the increased length of time that Subject Access Requests are taking, it seems as though institutions are still just as capable of completing them within the allotted 40 days as in previous years, unlike the situation for FOI which saw a rise from the 3.5% of requests which institutions, without legitimate extensions, had failed to complete within 20 working days in 2005 and 2006 to 4.8% in 2007.
Some of this may be due to increases in the breadth and complexity of the requests being received, something it is impossible to either confirm or deny from the survey figures, but the data which is available seems to suggest other possible causes. Potentially the most worrying of these is the continued rise in the number of institutions reporting the time taken to locate and access information as taking either a 'long', 'very long' or 'extremely long' time to complete. In 2005 this figure stood at 55%, before rising to 67% in 2006 and a worrying 78% last year. Other processes also exhibiting similar signs of pressure, albeit to a lesser extent, are those relating to the reviewing of information requested and the consideration of which exemptions may apply. Given that the number of institutions choosing to allocate specific staff to dealing with information legislation and management has increased markedly since 2005 (with the number of institutions devoting 0.5FTE or more to FOI increasing from 40% to 77% and from 46% to 80% to records management) it would seem as though the underlying issues may relate more to institutional culture, systems and processes than to lack of resource.
When it comes to who is asking the questions, what they are asking and when they are asking it, the figures for 2007 are broadly in line with previous years. Once again, journalists by far and away top the list as the most frequent user of the FOI Act with the months of July and October continuing from 2006 as the busiest of the year. Interestingly, for the first time 'management and administration issues' have been comprehensively eclipsed as the most popular topic by requests relating to student admissions, with a doubling of requests in this category from the figures for 2006.
Despite the increasing issues which institutions may be facing when completing requests, this is not yet impacting on other areas of the level of service being offered to requestors. The vast majority still receive their information in its entirety, on time and free of charge and as a result the number of complaints received remains gratifyingly low. The concern must be, however, how long these standards can be maintained if some of these underlying trends continue in future years.
