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Freedom of Information? Only if it's good news

Freedom of Information?  Only if it's good news
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Freedom of Information? Only if it's good news

Finance | Tania Mason | 16 Sep 2009

The Office of the Third Sector picked an interesting choice of words to accompany its disclosure of assessment reports for its 11 most highly-funded strategic partners.

After initially refusing Charity News Alert’s request to see the reports under the Freedom of Information Act, claiming that the public benefit in keeping them secret outweighed the public benefit in making them public, the OTS changed its mind.

One day after we ran the story on last week’s news alert announcing that the request had been refused, the OTS suddenly furnished us with the documents. 

It gave no reason for the volte face, but the accompanying letter from OTS deputy director Helen Stephenson offers a clue as to the motive.  “Having considered the information held,” she wrote, “the review has found that the public interest falls in favour of releasing the reports.”

The crucial line here is: “Having considered the information held.”  The reports are, almost without exception, favourable to the strategic partners.  Could it be that it dawned on the OTS that this could only be a positive news story, and so thought it might as well let us see the reports after all?

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Tania Mason

Tania Mason is group editor at Civil Society Media. She has been a journalist for 20-odd years and has specialised in the charity sector since 2003.

Follow Tania on Twitter @taniamason

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