public policy

Using the Freedom of Information Act to influence policy

The Freedom of Information Act can be a really powerful tool in the influencing toolkit. It can help you extract information, identify policy weakness, and even generate news stories

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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

Ask me anything!

Got a question about policy or public affairs? I’d love to answer it!

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I’m trying something a little different to mark the new year, and giving you the chance to ask me anything about how to influence policy.

You might want to know more about a particular parliamentary process, or how to build relationships with MP’s researchers. You might have questions about how ministers make decisions, or just want know more about what it’s like to work in policy and public affairs.

To submit your questions, you can either send me a message via this website, or you can email me at hello@thepolicycoach.co.uk

Send me your questions by Friday 27^th January, and I’ll answer as many as I can in a post at the end of the month.

I can’t wait to hear your questions!

If you or your organisation are looking to do more policy influencing work, and would like some 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

Harnessing people’s stories to influence policy

People’s stories can be the most powerful evidence to support your policy influencing work.

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In previous posts, I have talked about the importance of people’s stories as a tool to influencing government policy. While statistics, facts and figures are an important part of the policy influencing toolbox, it is people’s stories which bring it all to life and make the change that you might be seeking more relatable. Afterall, we are hard-wired as humans to communicate through stories.

Throughout my career, I have created opportunities to give a voice to people who are often not heard in the policy making process. Earlier in my career, I was fortunate to play my part in the very first formal channel for older people’s voices in health policy which had an enormous impact on the decisions that government took. More recently, I have been championing opportunities for harder to hear voices to be heard in the policy process.

A couple of readers have been in touch about how to go about harnessing people’s stories to influence policy, so thought that I would dig a bit deeper. In this post, I take a look at some of the different ways that you can amplify people’s voices to support your policy asks, and explore some of the things to think about.

I don’t claim to be an expert on the vital community development work that needs to take place to give a voice to people’s experiences, so this post is not a ‘how to’ guide on good community development – there are others who are far more expert on that than I am. But what I do know is the positive impact that people’s voices can have on policy development, and I hope that what I share will be useful in helping you to harness, and amplify, those voices.

Tip #1: Surveys can be a useful tool

One of the simplest ways to make sure that your policy work is grounded in people’s experiences and voices is to run a survey. There are a variety of methodologies that can be used to run surveys, and they can be a useful tool to gather both attitudinal feedback (e.g. what do you think about a particular issue?) to something a bit more factual (e.g. what do you estimate the cost of X to be?). If you do use a survey as part of your work, it’s important to think carefully about the sample you will survey, and how generalisable your findings might be.

Tip #2: Focus groups can help you dig deeper

While a survey might give you quite ‘static’ information and insights, focus groups can allow you to dig a bit deeper and to begin to explore, for example, some different policy options. As with surveys, you need to think carefully about where you would draw focus group participants from, and how representative their views might be. Focus groups can be particularly effective as a way to sense-check some ideas or proposals, as it will provide some ‘real-world’ feedback.

Tip #3: Interviews give you rich insight

Investing time and energy in conducting more detailed interviews with people can be a really effective way of getting real depth and insight to support your policy influencing work. It gives you the opportunity to ask further questions, to clarify things, and to listen to the person’s story in their own words. When conducting such interviews, do give thought to how to support and protect the person that you are talking to – especially where you might be talking with them about difficult or challenging issues. Be aware of the impact that such a conversation might have on them, and prepare accordingly.

Tip #4: Co-production can be incredibly effective

Co-production refers to a group of people (normally a mix of people with lived experience and professionals) working together to come up with answers or solutions to problems. It can be an incredibly powerful tool in policy development work, and can lead to policy recommendations which are grounded in the reality of people’s lived experience. I’ll return to the power of co-production in a future post.

Tip #5: Think about harder to hear voices

Providing a platform for what are considered to be harder to hear voices can be incredibly powerful. Those are the stories and experiences that are too often overlooked in the development and implementation of policy. When trying to connect with those voices, it’s a good idea to connect with local groups or organisations who are closer to those particular communities. Very often those groups and organisations will be very small, and often volunteer-run or led. If you work with these groups or organisations, don’t forget to pay them for their time and effort.

Tip #6: Deploying people’s voices to influence policy

Having gathered people’s stories and experiences, there are a number of different ways that you can deploy that evidence to support your policy influencing work. Apart from the obvious things like including quotes and examples in policy documents, briefings, and submissions, I’d encourage you to think creatively about how you can platform people’s voices. For example, seeking opportunities for people to give oral evidence at parliamentary enquiries or all-party parliamentary groups, or encouraging your activists and supporters to go and speak to their local politicians.

Tip #7: Stories help persuade politicians

As I have mentioned in previous posts, it’s important not to underestimate the power of stories to influence politicians. Facts and figures are, of course, very important in making a case for change, but it’s people’s stories that bring an issue to life, making it relatable and understandable on a very human level. Stories are, of course, all the more powerful when you provide a platform for people to tell them in their own words.

Tip #8: Case studies and stories are vital for media

As I covered in a previous post, the media can be a powerful policy influencing tool. One of the things that the media will always be looking for are the case studies and stories to illustrate a story. This is often true for both news and features.

Tip #9: Consent matters

However you are planning to capture people’s stories and experiences to support your policy influencing work, it’s vital that you make sure that you have people’s consent. Whether that is consent to use people’s responses to a survey, consent to use quotes from a focus group or interview in a submission or document, or consent to share their story with the media. It’s essential that people agree to how their story might be used.

Tip #10: Don’t make assumptions

In harnessing people’s voices to influence policy, it’s really important that you go in with an open mind. You won’t know what people will want to say, what experiences they want to share, or how their experiences might shape your policy asks until you get started. Be prepared to flex and adapt, and to be genuinely informed by people’s stories.

What other ways can the voice of people’s lived experience help shape your policy influencing work? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Dipping your toe in the water – making a start in the policy influencing space

As an organisation wanting to develop its policy influencing work, where do you start?

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One of the most common questions for any organisation wanting to influence the policy agenda is how on earth do you make a start?

For smaller organisations in particular, it can be quite daunting. Resources are often tight, and there may not be specialist staff capacity to dedicate to the emergent influencing work.

This post is primarily directed at those organisations wanting to do more to influence the policy agenda, but not knowing quite where to start.

Influencing policy, and more importantly knowing the tactics that will be successful, rather than just visible (a topic for a future post), is a highly skilled function in any organisation. Afterall, commercial organisations pay many hundreds of thousands of pounds to ‘expert advisors’ to guide them.

But not every organisation needs to be spending huge sums of money recruiting policy influencing specialists – far from it. Your organisation may not be at the size or scale to realistically expect to need an in-house resource. But that doesn’t mean that your organisation, however small or local, doesn’t have a great deal to offer in the policy development process.

Here are my top tips for organisations keen to enter the policy influencing space, but not quite knowing where to start.

Tip 1: Set realistic ambitions

It’s so important to set realistic ambitions, and to walk before you run. If you’re starting from scratch, you’re unlikely to be out there shaping legislation, publishing policy research, or working with parliamentarians if the only capacity you have is 10% of somebody’s time on top of their (probably very busy) day job. Which leads me on to tip two.

Tip 2: Start small

There are lots of things that you can start to do that will be manageable and achievable, and that will help to build your confidence and experience in influencing policy. Writing letters to ministers and officials on topical issues that are important to your organisation, for example, can be a surprisingly effective way to start in the policy influencing space without huge investment of time or capacity.

Tip 3: Work with others

In a previous post, I talked about how important it is to work with others to influence the policy agenda. This holds true for all organisations seeking to shape the policy agenda, but perhaps even more so for those organisations who are just starting out on their influencing journey. You will know the other organisations who operate in a similar space to you, and probably already have good relationships with them. It’s a great idea to work with them to explore some opportunities for joint influencing work. You might, for example, work together to produce a joint briefing or report, or to host a briefing event for MPs. Working together can help share the workload and help you achieve much more than you could on your own.

Tip 4: You don’t necessarily need to recruit an in-house specialist

There can sometimes be a sense that the first thing that an organisation needs to do to move into the policy influencing space is to recruit an in-house specialist, such as a policy or public affairs officer. If you have the capacity and resources to do so, that is obviously a great thing to be able to do, although the point above still applies that you need to be clear about what your ambitions are. (In a future post, I’ll be taking a look at the skills and competencies that you should be looking out for when recruiting a policy specialist).

But there are lots of different ways that you can build and grow your capacity in policy influencing that don’t start with recruiting to a brand new role. For example, if your ambition is to do more parliamentary work, then a conversation with one of the many public affairs agencies could be a good option – whether you’re looking for one-off support for a specific piece of work (such as an engagement event with parliamentarians), or something a little longer term (such as helping to support an All-Party Parliamentary Group), they will have a range of options available to organisations of different shapes and sizes (and budgets).

Alternatively, you could look to partner with other organisations who are active in your space to pool some resources. That might allow you to do some specific activities or work, or even allow you to have a shared policy influencing role (this works particularly well at a local or regional level).

Tip 5: Aim for some early wins

When your organisation is starting out on its policy influencing journey, it’s going to be important to be able to demonstrate some early wins. This will not only boost your confidence but will also make it easier to make a future business case for investment to be able to go even further. This is where starting small, and having some clear objectives, is vital.

If your organisation is looking to do more policy influencing work, and would like some pro bono advice, I’d be happy to have a chat. Get in touch via the comments box below.

Using evidence to support your case for change

Building a persuasive case for change depends on having the right evidence and presenting it in the right way.

The public policy theory of rational decision making would suggest that politicians and decision makers weigh up the available evidence, and take decisions to achieve the maximum benefit at the lowest possible (not just financial) cost. This implies that they have access to the full range of information needed to make the best possible decision, and that they take a long-term view of change.

In reality, there are a lot of drivers behind policy decision making, including ideology, power, and political expediency, among many others. And in the UK system, most governments struggle to take anything longer than a five-year view.

So, for those of us trying to influence policy, the question becomes one of how we can deploy the best and most persuasive evidence available.

Here are my top tips for using evidence to support your policy influencing work.

Tip 1: Demonstrate the need for change

Before you can hope to demonstrate why your proposals are the best way forward, you first need to show what problem it is that you’re trying to solve. Depending on the nature of the issue, you will need to use different types of evidence to make your case. If it’s about public expenditure, for example, you’re going to need to focus on financial and economic evidence. If it’s about the impact of a problem to people’s lives, then you’ll probably want to focus more on case studies and stories. In reality, you’re going to need a mix of evidence to be able to demonstrate that this is a problem that needs to be solved.

Tip 2: Be realistic about costs and benefits

Over the years, I have seen so many attempts to influence policy fall at the first hurdle by brandishing around outlandish and unrealistic estimates of cost or benefit. There is a huge temptation to put your biggest and scariest numbers front and centre, but there are risks involved in that. It might lead people to question the robustness of your analysis. It might also make the issue or problem that you’re trying to solve appear just too big and too complicated for any government to feel able to tackle. Break things down in to manageable and realistic chunks, and don’t make unrealistic claims about the benefits (financial or otherwise) of any particular course of action. Which brings me to tip three.

Tip 3: Economic evidence

It’s tempting to assume that economic or financial evidence is the most powerful and persuasive. Don’t get me wrong, it does play a really important role, but it’s not always the most important thing. We can all think of many examples of policy decisions that have been taken by governments that seem to have taken scant regard to the financial implications. It’s really important to think about who it is that you are trying to persuade. If your target of influence is HM Treasury, then focusing on the economic or financial evidence is obviously going to be key. If, however, you’re trying to raise awareness of a particular issue or problem, stories are likely to be just as powerful.

Tip 4: Don’t underestimate the power of people’s voices

As I mentioned in a previous post, real life stories and case studies can be among the most powerful forms of evidence. In the search for the best evidence to support your case for change, it’s all too easy to forget the importance of people’s voices. If a picture paints a thousand words, a story paints a novel. If you’re trying to build a case for change, being able to articulate both the problem that you’re trying to solve and the impact that your recommended solution will have on people is key.

Tip 5: Demonstrate how popular your proposals are

There are a number of different ways that you can do this. You might want to show cross party support (such as the endorsement or support of an All-Party Parliamentary Group). You could also think about public (voter) polling to test out the popularity of your suggestions. Two notes of caution on public polling however. Firstly, a lot depends on how you phrase the question. Working with a reputable polling company means you will be able to make sure that your results are genuinely representative of the sample you want to test. Secondly, being able to demonstrate public support for a suggestion is not, on its own, sufficient. Just because an issue may be popular with the public, it doesn’t mean that it’ll be politically achievable in policy terms. Think of the popularity of issues like the reintroduction of the death penalty for the most serious of crimes, the nationalisation of rail, or the decriminalisation of assisted dying, and you’ll see what I mean.

Tip 6: ‘Unpublished’ and ‘grey’ literature is perfectly OK

There can be a certain snobbishness among some parts of the academic community to so-called ‘unpublished’, or ‘grey’ literature (both terms that I really dislike). The subtext of this is often that such data or evidence is somehow ‘not as good’ as the published and peer-reviewed studies that appear in journals. In policy influencing terms, this is quite a naïve position to take, and demonstrates a lack of understanding in how decisions are made. This is not to denigrate academic research – it plays an absolutely vital role (a topic I may return to in a future post). What I have learnt over the years is that politicians and decision makers frequently don’t make decisions based only on the best available published literature (and are even not averse on occasion to making decisions that appear to go against the weight of published evidence!). They are just as likely to use academic evidence retrospectively to justify the decisions that they make. With this in mind, so-called unpublished data and evidence definitely has a role to play in the policy influencing toolbox.

Tip 7: Use evidence from other countries

It’s a good idea to draw on what works from other countries around the world. Are there countries or systems that have already implemented some of the ideas that you are proposing? What has their experience been, and what evidence now exists? Don’t forget that we have four countries within the UK, so there is likely to be learning close to home too.

Tip 8: Cite your sources

Citing your sources helps to build confidence in what you’re saying. How you cite your sources will depend on what it is that you are producing. For example, written evidence to a select committee will need a more rigorous approach to citation than, for example, a simple policy briefing.

Tip 9: What have you got that’s new?

If part of your strategy to influence is to utilise media coverage, the first question that your communications colleagues are likely to ask is ‘what have you got that’s new?’. If you’re trying to get a hook for a media story, it’s hard to beat the power of new evidence or data, especially if it’s combined with people’s stories and case studies.

Tip 10: Use the emotive language sparingly

When you are presenting a case for change, there is definitely a role for emotion. Afterall, you’re trying to fix a problem that matters to you and your stakeholders. However, in contextualising your evidence and data, use the emotive language quite sparingly. Not everything is an ‘outrage’ or a ‘crisis’. How you frame your evidence and data is just as important as the evidence and data itself. Afterall, you’re trying to win people over to your way of thinking.

What is your experience of using evidence to support your influencing work? What evidence do you think it the most persuasive? Let me know in the comments below.