Perhaps I would talk about this very briefly and then I'd hand over to John again, as he can tell you from inside of government.
I think the importance of a prime minister or a president endorsing freedom of information can't really be overstated. Prime Minister Tony Blair was very tepid on FOI, and he was then followed by Gordon Brown, who made a number of public speeches in favour of it, followed by David Cameron, who has made public statements and speeches in favour of freedom of information.
Of course bureaucracies operate on signals, and these different signals send a kind of positive or negative message throughout the whole of the system about how seriously to treat the issue—how seriously to take it, what sorts of resources to put into it, and what the consequences could be if you don't, for example. These are all very mysterious and kind of difficult to measure, but they definitely exist.
Contrast this with the experience of Ireland, where previous Prime Minister Brian Cowen, who's just left, publicly described most freedom of information requests as a waste of time, and you can imagine what effect that had on hard-pressed FOI officers and people who were trying to decide how to prioritize it.
In terms of the transparency board, it looks to me like a very interesting group of people, and they seem to be doing a very interesting job in pushing forward with innovative ideas; and they've also been very open about how they go about doing it.
But I'd perhaps ask John to comment on this more.