Cost-benefit analysis?
There has been a hostile reaction to the government's proposals, announced yesterday, to cut back on the use of freedom of information.
The government also published a review of the cost of FOI. I was reassured to see from Table 5 that, according to the review's estimates, the BBC has submitted more requests than any other media organisation. Given that the BBC employs far more journalists than any other media outlet in the UK, anything else would have been strange and disconcerting. Other large media users of FOI, according to this review, are next the Guardian, and then the Evening Standard, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times.
However the review doesn't draw attention to the benefits of FOI, and ways in which FOI may sometimes save public money as well as making the public better informed. To see some of the benefits, the BBC collects some examples of the information we have put into the public domain through FOI. The Guardian also collates its FOI-based stories on its website.
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