10 - The FOI officer

Summary

Introduction

It seems obvious that FOI laws cannot work without administrative support. The quotation that opens the introduction to this book highlights the important role that public employees play in ensuring that FOI laws work in practice. In particular, there are those who oversee the day-to-day management of FOI obligations – the FOI officers. Their job is crucial, since however an organisation chooses to manage its compliance, someone has to establish policies and procedures, provide advice to colleagues, and monitor progress in the handling of requests. FOI cannot function without some sort of central resource to maintain it.

Yet despite their central importance to the delivery of FOI laws, not much has been written about FOI officers. This limits our understanding of how FOI works in practice, and leaves those in this essential role without the support they need to do the job well. This chapter seeks to address this, looking in detail at what an FOI officer is, and indeed what they should be.

What does the FOIA say about FOI officers?

As Chapter 1 demonstrated, the journey to the adoption of the FOIA in the UK was long, with the legislation receiving significant scrutiny. Following its passage, the government allowed over four years for full implementation. As a relatively late adopter of an FOI Act, the UK was also able to benefit from others’ experience. It would be reasonable to expect in these circumstances that thought would have been given to how the legislation would work in practice, and – more to the point for present purposes – who would be responsible for delivering it. Yet the FOIA is silent on its own resource implications. There is no requirement to identify an officer with lead responsibility for FOIA implementation, or who applicants should contact to make their requests.

The preface of the original s. 45 code of practice referred to the need to appoint staff to support FOIA compliance, but even then it was fleeting and of limited application: ‘Larger authorities should ensure that they have a central core of staff with particular expertise in Freedom of Information who can provide expert advice to other members of staff as needed.’ The 2018 version of the code doesn't even go this far.