An old gentleman writes....

Apparently 13.1% of FoI requests to ‘Departments of State’ are now made through MySociety’s ‘What do they know?’ website. How on earth did they find out such a statistic I wonder?

Meanwhile, as it’s Friday, it’s time to enjoy how FoI requests are, occasionally, handled in the US. From the Martin Rosenbaum on the BBC FoI blog:

“You’re a poor, lonely, jealous, old man with aspirations of being a writer. You write your lies and uneducated opinions on people and issues from behind the safety of your slobber stained keyboard with the hope that somebody will read them that doesn’t know you and believe that you’re more than the pitiful, broke-down, lizard-looking thing that you are, in my opinion. Get a life old man. On second thought, don’t bother.”

As Martin points out, the Information Commissioner would have something to say about this response if it was supplied in the UK. I’m not a great advocate of copying US custom and practice in all things, but it should be entirely up to elected politicians how they respond to requests like this, surely?

How’s that for a way of summing up the potential of new interactive tools to transform government?

While Babelfish may often be a bit of a joke, sometimes a translation can unlock a bit of value from a sentence and a light goes on in the heads of we foreigners. A translation from Norwegian is very enlightening – as may be a translation from bureaucrat-ese into plain English

Is it the case that government – and democracy – suffers because it it described by bureaucrats rather than it’s users? Is there a case that ‘Open Government’ would be better served by employing a trusted third-party mediator (with a ‘public service’ remit) and asking them to describe government for the rest of us? Surely this would make more sense than the playing-dead version of Freedom of Information that we have at the moment – simply pointing the public at a corporate Document Management System and saying ‘job done’?

Oh, that link (above) to SoSaidThe.Organization is worth a look as well….