The 4th annual JISC infoNet, Guild HE and Universities UK Information Legislation & Management Survey attracted 70 responses.
As anticipated the number of requests being made under the Freedom of Information & Data Protection Acts and the Environmental Information Regulations has continued the general upward trend witnessed in previous years. In particular, Freedom of Information requests have seen a marked increase with an average monthly number of requests received per institution of 5.4 in 2008 compared with 3.6 in 2007. This represents a noteworthy rate of increase of some 50% between 2007 and 2008, compared with just 14% for previous years. The volume of Data Protection Data requests has also continued to increase, albeit at a slower rate, with each institution receiving an average of 2.0 requests per month in 2008 compared with 1.7 in 2007.
FOI requests in relation to 'IT provision and use', 'Admissions' and 'Management and administration' saw an increase in 2008, perhaps a reflection of current public concern regarding data security and the effect of the recession on student intake and management of institutions. The profile of requesters has remained fairly consistent with previous years, apart from a particularly noteworthy (and from many institutions' perspective, worrying) increase of over 50% in the number of requests from 'Commercial organisations' now coming second only to the number of requests being made by 'Journalists'. This tends to confirm the anecdotal evidence which emerged throughout 2008 regarding a noticeable increase in the number of 'round robin' requests sent to all (or a high proportion of) institutions by commercial organisations for obtaining commercial intelligence (another potential reason for the high number of requests received relating to 'IT provision and use' noted earlier).
Exemption s.21 'Information accessible to applicant by other means' has seen an increase in its application by almost two fold, suggesting that the sector is reaping the benefits of placing a great deal of information routinely into the public domain via their websites and other outlets. There was also an increase in the application of exemption s.23 'Information supplied by, or relating to, bodies dealing with security matters', no doubt a reflection of the current security climate and the increasingly prominent position that the university sector finds itself in in relation to terrorism and questions of national security.
Although there has been an increase in the number of FOI & EIR requests being received this has not affected the ability of institutions to complete the requests within the 20 day period, in fact the figures do seem to suggest that, if anything, institutions are getting more effective at answering requests - perhaps alleviating some of the concerns noted in the introduction to the results for 2007 regarding what impact a continued rise in request numbers would have in the future without a corresponding improvement in information management and request handling. Evidence to support this assertion comes in the form of a drop in the percentage of FOI & EIR requests that were not completed within the 20 day period and a 13% shift in the total elapsed time taken to complete an FOI or EIR request from between 10 and 20 days down to between 1 and 10 days since 2007.
Further evidence of process improvements within institutions can be surmised through the fact that the percentage of institutions who feel that requests take either a 'long', 'very long or 'extremely long' time to complete has remained at (an albeit high) 78%, despite the increase in the volume of requests received. Plus, institutions are noting that they are experiencing a quicker turnover in the identification of relevant information sources and the application of exemptions stages of the process. Such process improvements may in part be due to an increase in the FTE resource devoted to information legislation and management issues which continued its upward trend during 2008.
The figures for 2008 seem to suggest that this was something of a landmark year with regards to the university sector and information legislation. It was a year which saw an unprecedented level of interest in information held by institutions; but also witnessed a sector largely ready and able to meet these demands as a result of increased expenditure and experience, which hopefully bodes well for its resilience into the future.
For further information please contact
Steve Bailey, Senior Adviser, JISC infoNet - steve.bailey@northumbria.ac.uk
