Media

Freedom of Information (FoI) requests can be a really effective tool for influencing policy. As well as helping to fill gaps in data or information, they can be particularly useful to determine the extent to which national policy might be being implemented locally or regionally. As I have explored in a previous post, so much of the responsibility for policy decision making is devolved away from central government departments. This can make it harder to find out what is happening on the ground, how well a government’s stated objectives for a particular policy are being achieved, or simply whether the policy is even being implemented in the first place.

In this post, I take a look at what Freedom of Information requests are and how you can use them to support your policy influencing work. I’ll explore how to construct a request that will get you the information that you need, and some of the ways that you can use the results.

What is a Freedom of Information Act request?

The Freedom of Information Act (2000) and the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (2002) give citizens the right to request certain information from public authorities. This means that you can ask for information from UK government departments, devolved administrations and other public bodies including councils, schools and colleges, the NHS, the police and fire services, and publicly owned companies, among others. It does not, however, apply to private organisations or companies.

How do you submit a request?

You can submit a Freedom of Information request in a variety of different ways – by letter, email, social media or even by fax (if you still use those!). Some organisations may even have an online form of their website to use to submit a request.

It doesn’t matter how you make your request – it will be treated the same by the organisation receiving it.

There are some basic bits of information that you will need to include however you might be submitting your request. This includes:

Your name
Contact details (a postal or email address)
A description of the information that you are requesting

If you want to receive information in a particular format, you can also ask at this point too. For example, you might want paper or electronic copies, or information in an accessible format such as audio or large print.

Can a request be denied?

Yes, it can. It can be denied if you have asked the wrong organisation for the information that you want (think carefully about which organisation actually has the information that you need). You request can also be turned down if you are seeking personal or certain sensitive information that is not made available to the public (although you should be told if this is the case).

Importantly, a request can be turned down if it would simply cost too much for the organisation to gather the information that you are asking for. The limit for this is set at £450, or £600 if the organisation is a government department, Parliament, the armed forces, the Northern Ireland Assembly or Welsh Government, or if the organisation is based in Scotland. In calculating the cost of gathering the data, it’s worth noting that organisations cost a person’s time at £25 per hour.

If your request is denied, you can ask the organisation to review their decision. If you’re still not satisfied, you can go to the Information Commissioner’s Office (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) or the Scottish Information Commissioner.

However, if your request is turned down, it might be that the way you put your request together was either too vague, or too broad. You might just need to go back and look again at the question that you have asked. It’s well worth taking a bit of time at the beginning of the process to frame your questions appropriately.

How do you structure a request that will get you what you need?

To make sure that your request generates the information that you want and need, it’s worth taking a bit of time to get it right. It’s also worth bearing in mind that frivolous or unfocused requests cost the taxpayer money, so it’s important to make the most efficient and effective use of the Freedom of Information Act.

There are a few tips to making sure that your request gets you what you need:

Do your research first

Make sure that you know which organisation will have the information that you need, and that the information hasn’t already been published or made available. Spending a bit of time researching what has been asked before could save a lot of time and energy, and targeting the right organisation will reduce the chances of your request being turned down at the first hurdle.

Be as specific as possible

Try to be as specific as you can possibly be about the information that you are asking for. Avoid requests that ask for ‘all the information’ on a particular topic (those are likely to be turned down on cost grounds), or which are unclear about what you are asking for. The more specific you can be, the better. It will make your life, and that of the organisation you are requesting the information from, so much easier.

Plan ahead

Allow enough time to get the information that you need. Be prepared that if your initial request is turned down, you might need to try again in a slightly different way.

How long will it take?

When you submit a request, the organisation that you are requesting the information from has 20 working days to respond. It’s worth noting that this doesn’t necessarily mean that you will have the information that you requested within 20 working days. If your request is denied, you will also be informed within this time limit. You may also be told within that 20 working day limit that it will take the organisation longer to gather the information that you have asked for. Be prepared to be patient.

How can FoI requests support policy influencing?

Freedom of Information requests can be a really useful tool to support your policy influencing work. They can help you access information that a public authority might not routinely make publicly available (such as statistics or data), to unpick what information is collected on a particular topic, or to understand how well, or not, a particular policy is being implemented at a local level.

Establishing whether and how a policy might be being implemented locally

In my opinion, one of the most powerful ways to use Freedom of Information Act request is to establish whether and how a particular policy is being implemented locally. As I have described in a previous post, many aspects of public policy are devolved to a more local level, which can make it difficult to establish what is happening on the ground.

If you take a look at the response from government ministers to parliamentary questions you will quite quickly see that the response of ‘that information is not collected centrally’ is quite commonly used where responsibility for the implementation of a particular policy is devolved to other organisations. That is quite common in health and care policy, but also in education and several other aspects of public policy.

That does not, of course, mean that the information isn’t available at all – just that it isn’t collected or collated at a national level. This is a great example of where a Freedom of Information Act request can be used to help fill that gap.

You might decide that a good way to get the information that you need is to ask regional or local public authorities who are more likely to have the information that you need. You might be interested in a national picture (in which case you might want to make the same request of all areas), or a particular local area or region.

Making this kind of ‘mass request’, where you ask a lot of organisations for the same information to build up a national picture, can be a really effective influencing tool. It will help you to hold government to account for the delivery of a particular policy commitment, for example, or help you to evidence a particular issue that might require government action.

If you are planning to deploy this ‘mass request’ approach, there are a few things to bear in mind to maximise your chances of success.

Test your questions first

If you’re asking a large number of organisations for the same information, it’s worth testing that the questions you are asking will generate the information that you need. Before you send a request to all schools, colleges, police authorities or NHS organisations, it’s worth testing your request with a much smaller number. If there are any problems with the way that you are framing your request, you’ll have a chance to correct it before you go out to all of the relevant organisations – saving you, and them, time and money.

Get advice

Most FoI officers will be happy to work with you to make sure that your request is shaped as well as it can be. Afterall, it’s in their interest to have well-crafted requests as much as it is in yours to target the information that you need. While this applies to any FoI request, it’s particularly important if you are planning to deploy a ‘mass request’ technique.

Using FoI information with the media

Freedom of Information Act requests can be a fantastic resource to build a media story on a particular topic. They can help identify gaps, show trends, or highlight deficiencies in public policy. If you have such a capacity within your organisation, it’s worth working closely with your media or communications colleagues to explore whether or not there might be a media story in the information that you gather, although remember that it’s important to use such information responsibly, and to provide context to the information that you gather. As I have explored in a previous post, the media can also be a powerful tool for influencing the policy agenda.

Conclusion

Freedom of Information Act requests can be a really powerful tool in the policy influencing toolkit. They can help you to extract information that might not be made readily available, or to identify weaknesses in the implementation of policy at a local level.

What ways have you used Freedom of Information Act requests to support your policy influencing work? Let me know in the comments section below.

If you or your organisation are looking to do more policy influencing work, and would like some help or advice, I’d be happy to have a chat. Just drop me a line via the ‘Contact’ link above, or email me at hello@thepolicycoach.co.uk

The media can be a powerful policy influencing tool. We’ve all seen the extent to which the political and policy narrative can be forced to follow an agenda set by the media (and vice versa, of course).

Anyone who has studied, or who is currently studying, public policy will be very aware of the power and role of the media as a policy actor in its own right. But that theory often has little to say on some of the practical ways in which you can use the media as a policy influencing tool.

Using the media in this way is not always going to be the best strategy. There are definitely times when the more quiet, behind-the-scenes tactics will be more fruitful. But on occasion, using the media can, for example, help to unblock particularly difficult issues, force the hand of policy makers, or change the narrative entirely.

In this post, I take a look at how valuable the media can be as a policy influencing tool, and offer some tips and tricks based on my experience. When writing this post, I have in mind what you can describe as the ‘traditional’ media. I’ll return to the power of social media as a policy influencing tool in a future post.

Tip 1: Work with the experts

If you are fortunate enough to work in an organisation that has media or communications capacity, get their advice and support in using the media to support your policy influencing work. Media relations and communications more widely is a highly specialist skill, and they will have a huge amount to offer to make sure that you are successful as possible.

Tip 2: Boil complex issues down to their very essence

As policy and public affairs professionals, we have an innate tendency to want to explore complex issues from all angles. This can sometimes mean that we find it difficult to distil such complexity down. However complicated the issue might be, you’re going to need to be able to describe it in just a few well-chosen words. Think of it in terms of summarising a 20 page piece of policy analysis down to a single sentence, and you will get the idea. Your media or communications colleagues will help (and challenge you!) with this. It can be a bit of an uncomfortable process on occasion. Which leads on to tip three.

Tip 3: Be clear on what needs to change

In all policy influencing work, it’s vital to be clear about what it is that needs to change. For example, what it is that you need government to do (or not to do), or who it is in the system that needs to do something differently (as discussed in a previous post). This is also true when deploying the media as an influencing tool.

Tip 4: Have something new to say and some new evidence

If you’re trying to get your issue in to the news agenda, then you’re going to need to have something new to say. That might be a new report, some new statistics, or a unique angle. Being clear about the policy outcomes that you are hoping to achieve will help you structure something that is fresh and unique which is much more likely to be picked up. You can also use some of your other policy influencing activities as a hook for media work – such as a forthcoming debate in Parliament, or on the back of the publication of a report by an All-Party Parliamentary Group, for instance.

Tip 5: Use case studies

As I have discussed previously, you should never underestimate the power of a good case study. This is also the case when using the media as a policy influencing tool. Case studies, particularly those that bring a human dimension to an issue, are critical for the media.

Tip 6: Integrate it with other influencing tactics

It’s a really good idea to link any media work on a policy issue with other policy influencing tactics. For example, you might want to follow up with a letter to a Minister, or think about how to connect and engage with parliamentarians. I was once trying to persuade policy decision makers to support a particular piece of work that we wanted to do, but were coming up against something of a brick wall. A well-placed piece on the front page of one of the most influential broadsheets (as much by luck as design) unsurprisingly resulted in a face to face meeting with the key decision maker which got us where we needed to be.

Tip 7: Recognise the risk

There is, of course, no way of knowing how the issue that you are raising might ultimately be framed or how any quote might be used. You will rely on the skill and expertise of your media and communications colleagues on this, but ultimately it’s beyond anyone’s direct control. This is important to recognise. I recall one example of this when we were engaged in particularly sensitive negotiations with the government which had reached a critical point. It was that moment that a newspaper that we had been talking to informally about the issue decided to run a story using an old quote from me which had the potential to cut right across those negotiations. It required some late-night contact with the Minister’s private office to calm potentially troubled waters. I can assure you that was quite a restless night!

Tip 8: Think about the outlet you’re talking to

How your issue might be framed in a piece will vary according to the world view of the outlet that you are talking to. The Spectator or The Telegraph will frame things quite differently to The Guardian or The Independent. It much the same way that framing your policy influencing agenda needs to take in to account the different perspectives of political parties, the same is true when using the media as an influencing tool. Think carefully about how to frame your message.

I would add at this point that you should also not disregard tabloids. Journalists working on tabloids are among the sharpest in the business – it takes enormous skill to be able to take difficult and complex issues and present them in a very accessible way for their readership.

Tip 9: Don’t underestimate the power of the informal chat

Informal conversations with journalists are incredibly important. Not only does it allow you to get a feel for their appetite and interest in an issue, it also gives you an insight in to the angle that they are likely to take. Importantly, it also allows you to describe some of the background and inevitable complexity to an issue.

Tip 10: Listen to the experts

For the final tip, I return to where I started this list – largely to emphasise just how important it is. Listen to your media and communications colleagues – they are the experts in how best to work with the media, and will be best placed to help guide you.

What is your experience of using the media as a policy influencing tool? If you work in media or communications, what would your advice be to those seeking to influence policy?

If you or your organisation are looking to do more policy influencing work, and would like some pro bono advice, I’d be happy to have a chat. Just drop me a line via the ‘Contact’ link above, or email me at hello@thepolicycoach.co.uk

Tag: Media

Using the Freedom of Information Act to influence policy

Using the media as a policy influencing tool