With every FOI request, there is always that lingering risk that something may go wrong, despite the systems put in place to ensure that information that should be public, is public.

This seems to be the case with Clean Air In London.

A Freedom of Information request filed in January 2009, requesting ?a copy of any minutes, papers, correspondence or other material relating directly to any meeting (including sent subsequent to it) that takes places between Lord Hunt [Environment Minister under the previous Labour Government] and Mayor Johnson?, has still not been completely successful, despite two years of battling.

In fact, two successful appeals, fronted by Simon Birkett, Founder and Director of Clean Air in London, have been ignored by the government, with them arguing that the information was covered by ?legal advice privilege and litigation privilege?, despite the rulings ?by the Information Commissioner’s Office in November 2009 and at an appeal heard by the First-tier Tribunal in May 2010?.

The information is so important because, according to Clean Air in London, ?The sections of the documents which the Government has yet to release are believed to relate to the western extension of the congestion charging zone and air quality?, essentially key in their battle make the Government to recognise its poor response to air quality laws.

The Government is still appealing against the decisions, and it will be interesting to find out, should their appeal be unsuccessful, how long their resistance can last under the gaze of the Freedom of Information Act.

“Data” and “data journalism” are buzz words of the moment and many individuals, organisations and sites are using data in different ways and working out the best ways interesting information can be used and presented.

You know ‘its’ going on, you want to get involved but you have no idea what data you’re looking for or where to start in finding it. That’s where Get the Data comes in. This new Q&A site built by Rufus Pollock allows you to ask questions such as:

• “where to find data relating to a particular issue;
• “how to query Linked Data sources to get just the data set you require;
• “what tools to use to explore a data set in a visual way;
• “how to cleanse data or get it into a format you can work with using third party visualisation or analysis tools.”

The site encourages users to ask questions, respond to others, tag questions with keywords, comment on and vote for the questions of others. Its clear that the aim is to build up a real community amongst users like sites such as Quora and users’ contributions are encouraged with the prospect of earning ‘badges’ for highly voted questions or answers. 

There’s already lots of interesting questions and useful answers on the site such as Is UK Local Government Spending Data from different councils being aggregated in any queryable way?

So if you want to use data but have never done so before or are unsure about where you could find what you’re looking for, log on, post a question and see if someone else can help!

As Ben already mentioned in a previous post, AcademicFOI.com is a great example of how FoI data can be published well. One of the site’s latest reports is the findings of an investigation into workplace bullying and harassment in UK universities and higher education institutions. The results of the 132 FoI requests are published in an Excel document for ease of use.

What’s great about this investigation is that every aspect of the process is very public, very clear and well explained with notes covering key findings, incomplete data and even the threats received by Ian Benson from some institutions who did not want to disclose information.

So, what did the investigation aim to find out? In his FoI request, Ian asked a series of 14 questions related to bullying and harassment in the workplace between 1 January 2007 and 31 December 2009. Interestingly, 132 institutions responded in full and 13 failed to do so. A number of institutions also cited privacy concerns as a reason not to disclose and two uni’s  – Bristol and Salford – claimed it would exceed the 18 hour time limit to address.

From the data received back from universities, the site was able to produce a summary of key findings:

 – 1,957 university staff asked for support or advice due to bullying or harassment during 2007-2009 (true figure likely to be higher do to informal complaints)

 – 998 formal investigations were made into complaints

 – Of those, 764 concluded that no bullying or harassment had taken place and the rest were upheld (23%)

 – Top 3 UK universities Cambridge, Oxford and Imperial had an uphold rate of 54%

 – 41 UK universities had a 0% uphold rate (430 staff sought help, 56 left citing bullying and 169 investigations found no evidence)

The findings also highlight that a total of £1.35million was spent on legal fees and Benson points out that an ‘astonishingly high number of instances where invoices from solicitors were not broken down by reference to specific case’ were found.

Only 20 staff were dismissed out of 234 proven cases.

So many stories can be found within this data; be it an overall look, a regional look or a specific university of choice. Regardless of the subject, the use of FoI and the presentation of findings in this case is exemplary and should be encouraged by other users and sites interested in the public process of investigative reporting.

The site also has two previous reports on employment and tribunal claims and TV interview permission rights which are equally worth a look.