In his autobiography, Tony Blair’s greatest ‘mea culpa’ came not in relation to the Iraq War or a failure to narrow the gap between rich and poor, but in exasperation at his government’s passing of the Freedom of Information Act.

He claimed that the Act, despite its high-minded ambition, had only served to benefit pesky journalists and not the public.

‘It’s like saying to someone who is hitting you over the head with a stick, ‘Hey, try this instead,’ and handing them a mallet,’ he complained.

The former prime minister isn’t the only self-confessed FOI hater to have emerged, either. Writing in PR Week, Luke Blair claimed FOI  may have cost the public £350million – and was making ‘us slaves to the bureaucracy needed to administer it.’

Fortunately, both Blairs appear to be on the wrong side of the argument. Government ministers are making more not fewer demands for public transparency – as spending databases are released and data logs filled. But all this doesn’t get the FOI Act off the hook. Some local authorities are fuming about the decision to force all councils to publish spending data – with one council leader claiming the resulting FOIs will cost a fortune to administer. Another local authority wanted to charge journalists for filing FOI requests.

But these attacks are all aimed at damaging public access to publicly owned information because the system we use is broken.

Bibliotic

The best analogy I can make for how we run FOI at the moment is to liken it to a library where the books are behind a counter, rather than on shelves in public view. At this library, it’s the staff who have to find the books – staff who aren’t full-time librarians and who don’t have a proper system for finding those books. When they finally discover what you’ve asked for, they have to sit down and read the book, cover to cover, because the library doesn’t want you to see all its tomes, but hasn’t quite worked out which ones or why.

Lo and behold, the system is just as irritating and time consuming for those who are asking for the books: You have to put your request in writing, justifying why you want to read a book and then wait for weeks to find out what you’ll get. You might, if you’re lucky, receive the book you’ve asked for – or a different book, or half a book, or no book at all.

Is it really any surprise that the only people prepared to use the system are those with time on their hands, a vested  interest or an axe to grind? While ordinary people might brave the bureaucracy once or twice, it largely remains the preserve of the mad, the bad and the professionally inquisitive.

Armchair auditors?

I’m quite sure if I was one of those people charged with running along the corridors, I’d be inclined to see the whole thing as a terrible waste of time, effort and money, too. And, in some ways, this is a persuasive argument. Spending millions on a system to serve the interests of a few is difficult to justify at the best of times. Now, in the middle of a financial crisis, it could look more like extreme folly.

But that criticism – of a vast sum spent on a lucky few – might be just as appropriately applied to the way that we once ‘chose’ to run MPs’ expenses. If it wasn’t for the Freedom of Information Act – and the energy and application of Heather Brooke – that system would still be running, almost certainly without our knowledge. In fact, that’s the problem with those who complain about FOI. They do so in full possession of the act’s flaws, but with little knowledge of its benefits – because its inadequacies are preventing us from seeing just how valuable it might be.

In particular, those inadequacies will make it much less likely that the government’s dream of ‘an army of armchair auditors’ can materialise. This matters particularly when – as in the case of local spending data – you’ll find out almost nothing about the spending unless you file an FOI request. So what’s the answer?

Drum roll…

While data releases are great, what we really need is a clear statement on what the right to public information means. To me it means that any member of the public should have unfettered access to information that matters to them – so they can make better decisions about public services. That means getting the library books out on the shelves, not behind the counter.