´óÏó´«Ã½

Normal service to be resumed in a week or so.

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I attended a conference yesterday about FOI, where Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, revealed his to make the Attorney General disclose more of the background to his legal advice on the Iraq war.

The conference was organised by the at University College, London, and copies of the presentations should be on their website, now or soon. But worthy as they are, these official papers won't tell you the most significant facts to emerge:

* A Cabinet Office official revealed that the material most frequently downloaded from their FOI disclosures log was the moving tale of Humphrey the former Downing St cat (so whoever said the public are more interested in issues than in personalities?)

* Alex Allan, the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA), is a reader of this blog.

* Important though he is, he is not one of 'the ten most important people in government', who apparently are the staff of the DCA's FOI Central Clearing House, which advises other departments on what and what not to disclose in sensitive, potentially embarrassing, high profile cases - like stuff about cats, maybe.

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The impact of FOI is uneven. While it's sometimes surprising what still remains secret, it's also surprising what some authorities will now actually release in this new era of openness.

Take this for example. The Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police has given the ´óÏó´«Ã½ documents from their personal protection file for the former prime minister James Callaghan, who died last year.

This document reveals how officers were concerned about the 'highly unsatisfactory' alarm system at his farm in Sussex. Problems included that it was frequently set off by the pigs.

Matters were so bad that one day a terrible thing happened - a Jehovah's Witness managed to make it through the gate, reach the house and talk to Callaghan personally before the officers meant to be guarding him cottoned on to this threat to his security.

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More on the DCA's FOI .

One side-effect of FOI is how it brings to notice some of the more obscure further reaches of the British state. Bodies brought within FOI in 2005 include the Independent Groundwater Complaints Administrator, the Poisons Board (Northern Ireland), and the verderers of the New Forest. So for everything you wanted to know about verderers, but were afraid to ask, now's the time.

Another interesting detail is the Ministry of Defence is much more likely to dismiss requests for information as 'vexatious' than any other government department. But what we don't know is whether vexatious people are particularly keen to pick on the MoD, or whether it is just more easily vexed.

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The Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) has today published its first on freedom of information.

And very interesting it is too. I took a particular interest in Appendix C, which officially announces the membership of a Freedom of Information User Group to advise the DCA.

That's because last October the DCA invited me to be on this group. And then a few weeks later a rather embarrassed civil servant from the DCA phoned me up to say that, on reflection, they had decided to dis-invite me. One representative of the media was enough for their purposes, and they preferred someone else.

Which is fine by me - especially as that was seven months ago, and the Group hasn't yet met, so I don't think I'm missing very much.

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Until today, when I've been puzzling over the size of my gas and electricity bills, I've never really thought of blaming a dodgy meter, but now I wonder ...

Because it turns out that the mantle of secrecy covers the reliability of gas and electricity meters.

The gas and electricity regulator OFGEM says it can't release all the data it has about the accuracy of meters, because some manufacturers haven't given their consent. And today the Information Commissioner has issued a saying OFGEM is legally correct.

You can see some OFGEM has released, but what they say they can't tell you is who makes the inaccurate meters.

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Remember Patricia Hewitt being heckled by nurses at their conference last month?

One neonatal nurse from South Tyneside challenged the health secretary about the level of staffing on night shifts, adding 'If you would like to come and work a night shift, Patricia, please contact me afterwards'.

She replied 'Of course I'll do that, and it won't be the first one either.'

So the obvious question is - what were the previous night shifts she did? The Department of Health has released this information to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ under the Freedom of Information Act.

It turns out that in May 2005 she visited Ipswich Hospital from 9.00 pm until 10.30 pm. And in April 2006 she visited an ambulance control centre in Manchester from 9.45 pm until 11.00 pm.

It's not quite the 13-hour night shifts I used to do when I worked on Radio 4's Today programme, but I suppose at least I didn't have to work my way through the ministerial red boxes once I got home afterwards.

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When you come to the front page you’ll see the latest entries, the most recent at the top. Scroll down for previous entries.

On the right hand side there’s a calendar. When any date is blue, that means there was an entry on that day. Click on the date and the page will display that day's items.

Underneath each entry are two words - "permalink" and "comments".
• "Permalink" means "permanent link", and is useful if you want to bookmark a particular entry or send it by email to someone else.
• "Comments" means just that. Click on it, and you can add your comments to that particular entry.

Clicking on an entry's headline takes you to that item's own page, where it is printed in full with all the comments on it. If you want to go back to the main index page, you can click either the words "Open Secrets" at the top of the page, or on the word "MAIN" which you'll find on a beige bar. On that bar you might also see the words "PREVIOUS" and "NEXT" - these take you directly to other entries in chronological order.

We are aiming to publish as many comments as possible, though unfortunately we can't guarantee to publish every one. Comments will only be published after we've had a chance to read them first.

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I’m a ´óÏó´«Ã½ journalist who specialises in freedom of information (FOI). I’ve always enjoyed reading other people’s documents, so it’s the kind of journalism which I like.

FOI is the law which enables public access to government information. I train and advise other ´óÏó´«Ã½ journalists on how to exploit it, and I’ve made plenty of use myself by putting in requests for information to pursue stories.

I’ve been interested in FOI for some time. In 2004 I spent a sabbatical term at Oxford University researching how journalists in Ireland and Sweden used FOI in their own countries. See .

I’m based in the ´óÏó´«Ã½â€™s Political Programmes department at Westminster. When I’m not doing FOI work, I oversee some of our weekly and special political output for Radio 4 and the World Service. I also produce political radio documentaries myself. Their topics have ranged from the nature of British identity and exposing dirty tricks in election campaigning to the political impact of alternative comedy in the 1980s.

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Psstt! Wanna know a secret?

Well, I hope you’ll learn the occasional secret in these pages from time to time, but also more than that.

This blog is about freedom of information, or FOI as we know it in the trade. FOI laws which came into force in 2005 give everyone the right to see information held by the government or public authorities, unless there’s a good reason (supposedly) for not releasing it. It even applies to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ – partly, anyway. If you want to know more about FOI, click .

It’s a valuable tool for journalists, who have been able to get all sorts of information that was previously kept secret. You can see some of the stories the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has obtained through FOI .

FOI can be fascinating for what it reveals about the workings of the public sector, from the dramatically important to the surprisingly bizarre. I write about some of the things that we – or others – have found out, and some of the things that we haven’t found out too. Using FOI can also be an exasperating or entertertaining business, and some of that experience is reflected in this blog as well.

It’s also your chance – to comment on what I’m saying or doing, to tell me the subjects you think we should be chasing, or to report on your own experience of FOI.

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