Information & Ethics committee  I'll pass it over to John to correct me, but before the election David Cameron had set himself out to be quite an enthusiast for open data and transparency. So enthusiasm for this issue predated the possibility of a coalition. In fact it was rather interesting that in the dying days of the Labour government, as the election got under way, both then Prime Minister Gordon Brown and David Cameron were marking themselves as enthusiasts for open data.

Information & Ethics committee  I want to thank everybody for asking me. It's been very interesting speaking with you. Your questions have been really helpful in making me think about this issue more. I'd go back to something that has come out of this discussion from both myself and the other witness. It's about how freedom of information and open data are increasingly merging.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes....

Information & Ethics committee  The obstacles are numerous, and they can take the form of either political or physical obstacles, as it were. In terms of the political obstacles, persuading people within the bureaucracy who have secretive habits to operate in a more open way is the biggest. This is where the importance of leadership comes in, which is something John explained extremely well.

Information & Ethics committee  John, would you like to answer?

Information & Ethics committee  There are a few ways in which it's measured. The Ministry of Justice publishes statistics, broken down by department, to say how many requests they've had—and what percentage has been answered, what percentage is delayed, and what percentage has not been disclosed. That in itself acts as a kind of lead table for performance, and the media and others comment if a department isn't doing particularly well.

Information & Ethics committee  I can pass it over to John for that one. I think he would probably know more than I about that. I'll say something after him, if that's okay.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. Just to add one more thought, one particular kind of international institution to keep an eye on is the World Bank, which recently set itself some new standards in terms of openness. Now it seems to be very much an enthusiast for open data, for itself and also for the developed and particularly the developing world.

Information & Ethics committee  Not that I know of. I presume that authorities are obliged to respond in either of the two languages, but I'll perhaps pass that over to John, if he knows.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm not aware of it being an issue in Wales. I've not heard of anything. I would point to a rather different example. I know one country in which this has been raised as an issue was India over the Right to Information Act, where there was a large-scale study of its impact. Language there was a huge issue, because it seems that lots of officials were using English when perhaps they shouldn't have done.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, of course.

Information & Ethics committee  I could just say a few words about this. First, it's terribly difficult to establish the impact of freedom of information or open data on records because so many things flow into what makes a record be a certain way or not. Of course there are so many influences. I know there have been a few rather high-profile cases in Canada about the issue of records destruction.

Information & Ethics committee  If I could just add something, one of the interesting things about Wales was it tried to put itself at the top of the pack, as it were, when FOI was passed because it was decided that the cabinet, the Welsh Assembly, would publish its minutes six months after it met. So it did try to do a few things that put it ahead of, for example, the local authorities in Britain and the central government in Britain.

Information & Ethics committee  That's an extraordinarily difficult question to answer. I think if you asked people who worked in government, the greatest success for the Freedom of Information Act would be in promoting this more open culture John just spoke about and I spoke about earlier. Even departments that were historically rather closed, such as the Ministry of Defence, are now operating in a more open manner.

Information & Ethics committee  I could begin with a few thoughts. One of the interesting phenomena about FOI is that very few people actually use it; fewer than one in a thousand people make an FOI request. It's still a lot, but not a lot as a proportion of the population. Most people find out about freedom of information via the media, mainly via the mainstream media, whether that's in physical form or online.