Government could save so much money on answering FOIA requests if awkward buggers just _stopped asking questions_. Trust the Experts, Trust the Science!
The conflation of requests to make the resulting single request "too expensive" is just a dirty, cheap trick.
You might like to examine the FOI requests made by a Dr Matthew Kneale. There appear to have been over 1000. If as you suggest each request costs £600 to process he has cost the NHS the best part of £600,000. Look also at his attempt to get Dr Aseem Malhotra struck off for his (accurate) opinions on Covid vaccination.
1. Why internal communications, contracts, guidelines etc related to the public administration are not publicly available is at odds with basic principles of accountability and transparency that should prevail in a democracy 2. 20 days to answer a query? Can you imagine a private company in a competitive market that would answer customers queries in 20 days? It wouldn’t last long unless constantly bailed out with public money (airlines, banks are an example)
Why does this remind me more and more of the general situation in the late Soviet Union ('before Gorbachev') ...
Government could save so much money on answering FOIA requests if awkward buggers just _stopped asking questions_. Trust the Experts, Trust the Science!
The conflation of requests to make the resulting single request "too expensive" is just a dirty, cheap trick.
You might like to examine the FOI requests made by a Dr Matthew Kneale. There appear to have been over 1000. If as you suggest each request costs £600 to process he has cost the NHS the best part of £600,000. Look also at his attempt to get Dr Aseem Malhotra struck off for his (accurate) opinions on Covid vaccination.
1. Why internal communications, contracts, guidelines etc related to the public administration are not publicly available is at odds with basic principles of accountability and transparency that should prevail in a democracy 2. 20 days to answer a query? Can you imagine a private company in a competitive market that would answer customers queries in 20 days? It wouldn’t last long unless constantly bailed out with public money (airlines, banks are an example)