Thread by @theFOIdaily

It's all change for Data Protection as the 'Digital' being extracted from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to be planted in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, although the Secretary of State (Michelle Donelan) is going with it.

Freedom of Information sits under the Cabinet Office, their main involvement being to issue codes of practice and run the so-called 'Clearing House' which acts as a coordination unit for cross-government requests.

The Clearing House was always a source of concern with evidence that the CO's aim was to monitor people who asked awkward questions. The CO is now on the backfoot over the Clearing House following a series of well-targeted articles in Open Democracy and The Times in 2022.

There has been a review, and we currently have promises that the Clearing House will clean up its act and stop monitoring who is making requests - given the CO's appalling #FOI record, I think they'll need to be judged on their actions.

My advice to FOI practitioners generally is to be very wary of coordination. When I worked in the NHS, there was pressure to see what other Trusts were doing with contentious requests and an instinct to follow the herd, even if the consensus answer was obstructive or stupid.

If the applicant has made requests to multiple organisations, guess what, they'll notice if your answer is exactly the same as other organisations and that'll at least be interesting to them. They might want to know more, which means more requests.

My approach is to answer the request on its own terms and don't be seduced by the false reassurance of being part of a group. It's much easier to defend a response, especially if it's a refusal, if it's the result of your own thinking.

Arguments that you genuinely think have merit are much more robust than ones copied from elsewhere. As an applicant, I can always spot something that's cut and pasted from somewhere else, and I'm always tempted to complain if only to get a made-to-measure answer.