Scottish Information Commissioner Rosemary Agnew has claimed the open data movement could prompt a “paradigm shift” in the publication of information north of the border – but should not be seen as a substitute for Freedom of Information.
Speaking at Holyrood’s annual Freedom of Information conference in Edinburgh, Agnew suggested proactive publication could become more commonplace. As a result, there would be less reliance upon FoI legislation to extract information from government and other public bodies.
However, Agnew made clear that open data cannot replace FoI, as she labelled a government commission set up to review the Freedom of Information Act south of the border a “threat to FoI in the UK”.
Information watchdog pushes back against FoI charges call
Freedom of Information: Civil servants would support charging for requests, CSW study finds
Jeremy Heywood on Freedom Of Information: public doesn't stand for secrecy
She said: “FoI by itself will not give transparency but transparency cannot happen without FoI. That is for two reasons: it gives us a protected right to information but also it incorporates these duties of proactive publication.
“If you read the open data resource pack that was issued, what you will see is we are trying to join this up so that open data is linked very clearly to publication duties under FoISA [Freedom of Information Scotland Act].”
Scotland is jointly developing an action plan for 2016-2018 with the other UK nations under the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative that requires governments to make commitments on promoting transparency.
Agnew said: “What interests me about open data is I think it is a really good opportunity to try and bring about the start of a paradigm shift.
“Instead of focusing on FoI requests all the time, let’s start focusing more and more on the proactive side of the publication.
“Open data will perhaps raise some questions within organisations about what and how you publish that I think will benefit FoI as well.”
Following its publication next spring, the Scottish Government will subsequently publish a more specific document on what actions it intends to take.
A new Scottish statistics website is expected to launch early next year, pulling together datasets from across the Scottish Government, National Records of Scotland and NHS Scotland totalling over one billion records.