Glossary of key terms

Compared to historic means of publishing, internet publishing costs for data which is nearly always already in tabular electronic form (e.g. database) is very low.

The datasets could even be collected in public databases from the outset - hosted services can start public and remain so.

Assembling a dataset takes time and effort and I assume, consequently is of value.  If the community is to be informed all dataset should be open and available for inspection free of charge.  Any suggestion of charging for data smacks of 'I participate, you participate, he participates, we participate, you participate, they profit'

The issue is not should data be freely available as how do we ensure all of the relevant information gets to the appropriate place to enable meaningful interpretation – the danger lies in too much information swamping the question.  Tags may help but additionally we need to push the data to those who have shown an interest in the issue – not expect it to be pulled.  Interest sections – for example hospital discharge might be a general category where dataset would play a part, but the section would attract other published material – for example case study on how hospital discharge process improved.  Does that require a changed mindset – where those with the information input to a section where those with an interest are waiting – I can only imagine the scale but does this lead to a cloud?  Certainly if we are to measure value for money there is a case to suggest that an improvement even of small value that impacts on many, stands alongside any significant benefit for a few.

If the receiver then adds value to the data and publishes an opinion should that be listed in the section to benefit others and enable sharing?  If commercial gain follows would a contribution to the Open Data process be the taxes collected?  If the benefit is realised through Health and Wellbeing Boards or Clinical Commission Groups that would seem to give payback.  No doubt there will be exceptions but lets us at least start the process as a free system and only consider revision if the situation requires it.

For the time and resources used to retrieve the data.

Public services data has already been paid for by the public, and the cost of collection and storage will already have been accounted for. There should be very few cases where supplying the raw dataset in electronic form would have any significant cost at all. Instances where costs may be incurred are:

• Anonymisation of private data where that private data would otherwise not be anonymised (i.e., if the data should already be anonymised in the course of its collection or original use, then it is not reasonable to make a charge upon request)
• Substantial datasets that would cause a significant bandwidth cost (e.g. larger than 50 gigabytes)
• Where datasets are requested in a physical form (e.g., on DVD-R or printed)

In the instance where reproduction of the data incurs a substantial cost (DVD duplication and postage, printing, large bandwidth cost) then an individual charge is not unreasonable. 

However where a processing cost is involved, it's more complicated - current trading funds like Companies House have their prices fixed yearly based on anticipated cost and demand, which vary greatly. Where such a charge would be levied, an appeal process should be available for requestors to make a public interest claim - this would typically be used by academics and researchers.

An organsiation's ability to recover costs from the requestor would not ameliorate the impact on the organisation of dealing with such a request as this goes beyond the simple monetary value.  The burden of proactively publishing datasets not perceived as value for money would still be significant as charging a standard fee is not a practical solution to the organisational staff resource problem.  More often than not with FoI requests it is specialist staff who are required to be taken away from their everyday core activity work in order to produce this information in a meaningful way and these staff cannot be readily or swiftly replaced for a series of short term interruptions on a random basis.  This disruption to core activities cannot be justified where there is no value for money in releasing the data in the first place.

It seems to me to be reasonable to ask for marginal costs to be paid if a commercial use is intended and publication is not seen as otherwise worthwhile by the data owner. There needs, though, to be a right of appeal against costs levied.

The issue of value for money should diminish in time, if this works out. At the heart of this initiative is openness and trust between the taxpayer and those - elected and unelected - custodians of the public purse. There are tremendous opportunities in transparency here, and if we regard the right to data as having been forged by the intrinsic connection between the taxpayer and data custodians, there are surely tremendous opportunities to permit new visualisations of information. Such visualisations might well lead to superior decision making, less obfuscation of facts (heaven forbid that might happen in our democracy!), new business models, new approaches to government and best practice models for both public and private sectors. Therefore let us be careful about who makes the judgement of value for money and where the lines are drawn: not enough openness will stifle this before it gets momentum. A (simple) process by which arbitration of the value lines can be quickly effected is a possibility; a rather more raw 'how much would you pay for this?' might quickly get a market-tested answer to the question also. These might be useful where the answer to data release is 'I don't want that published'; maybe not so useful if the mining of the data really costs a lot.

The first rather angry response makes my point for me! I too have worked in the MoD. I've also worked in the Home Office and a number of the quangos. If the bulk of data, which let's face it, is dull dreay and uncontentious were open there would be no need for FOI and the effort to service the requests. Furthermore, it strikes me surfacing the majority of data to the public could mean 'anoraks' trawling data and exposing useful trends that would otherwise remain undiscovered.

The issue here is that "value for money" is a totally subjective judgement that can be used as a cover up tool.

I work in the MoD and I see how much time we are forced to spend answering FOI requests rather than doing the real job to support the front line forces. In my small team we spend at least 10 man weeks a year providing supporting information to the areas where the FOI request has been received. When the job cuts start to bite we won't be able to drop this workload but we will have less staff to do it. Just how many more billions must the government waste on providing responses to FOI with FOI V2.0 - doesn't Maude grasp the fact that spending even more time on FOI stops us doing the job we are supposed to be doing? Does he really think the FOI replies come out of fresh air? The only way to stop this madness is to automatically charge for every FOI request and use the money to pay for the staff to do that senseless job.

Align it to the 'appropriate limit' within the fees regulations for the FOIA and DPA.