James Graham (London, Unlock Democracy): The Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill, commented on many times below, is dead. Not a single member of the House of Lords would sponsor it. This clearly shows the importance of having a bicameral Parliament, although the fact that not a single peer would sponsor the bill appears to have rather more to do with the threatening noises emanating from our 'feral' media than the innate good sense of unelected politicians. The Freedom of Information Act is still very young, having only been in force for 30 months. It is not surprising that it is experiencing some growing pains. We may have had a change in the law, but the British government's culture of jealously guarding its secrets has still not been transformed.
One possible way to change that culture may be found in another aspect of the open government debate. For a while now, the Technology Guardian has been running its "Free Our Data" campaign. They are calling for Government to make Public Sector Information (PSI) (for example the geographical data collected by the Ordnance Survey at taxpayers' expense) to be made freely available to the public. Why? Because it is becoming clear that this data has enormous economic and social benefits.
MySociety's Tom Steinberg and the National Consumer Council's Ed Mayo have now written an independent review on behalf of the Cabinet Office, calling for a similar approach, which appears to be getting a sympathetic hearing. In the long run this could be tremendously significant important to Freedom of Information campaigners. If we can sell government on the economic and social benefits of open government, how long will it be before the political benefits become equally undeniable?
Meanwhile, while government and politicians have still to be convinced about the value of sharing PSI, they appear to quite happy for literally hundreds of thousands people to have access to our personal data. The risks should be obvious to anyone. One can only wonder why the self-appointed guardians of our privacy who backed the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill allowed the legislation for such sweeping powers to be simply waved through Parliament.
