Freedom of information legislation gives a right to request records from public bodies, and how well it works depends on details that vary enormously.
The basic structure
Anyone may request information, generally without giving a reason.
The body must respond within a defined period, either providing the information or citing an exemption.
Refusals can be appealed, generally to an internal review and then to an independent body or tribunal.
Exemptions
Where most of the variation is.
Absolute exemptions apply regardless of public interest — generally covering national security, personal data of others and information available elsewhere.
Qualified exemptions apply only where the public interest in withholding outweighs the interest in disclosure.
Which requires a balancing exercise that the body performs and the appeal body reviews.
Common qualified exemptions cover policy formulation, commercial interests, law enforcement and international relations.
The policy formulation exemption
Protects internal deliberation, on the reasoning that officials need space to advise frankly.
Which is the most contested exemption, since it covers exactly the material that would explain how decisions were made.
Appeal bodies have generally held that the argument weakens as time passes and as decisions are implemented.
Timeliness
Statutory deadlines exist and are frequently missed.
Which matters because delayed information loses value, particularly for journalism.
Extensions are permitted in defined circumstances and are used routinely in some bodies.
Performance statistics are published by oversight bodies in several jurisdictions and show wide variation between organisations.
Cost
Requests are generally free or subject to nominal charges.
Which is a design decision — charging deters requests, including frivolous ones and legitimate ones.
Cost limits allow refusal where compliance would exceed a threshold, and how that is calculated affects what can be obtained.
Proactive publication
Many frameworks require certain categories of information to be published without request.
Which is more efficient than responding to repeated requests for the same material, and coverage varies.
Open data initiatives publishing datasets by default have expanded substantially and cover different material from what requests generally seek.
Circumvention
Documented behaviours include using private communication channels for official business, avoiding creating records, and outsourcing functions to bodies outside the scope of the law.
Which are addressed variously — some jurisdictions have extended coverage to private bodies performing public functions, and some have brought private communications about official business within scope.
Record-keeping obligations are the underlying requirement, since a right to request records does not help where records were not created.
Making a request
Specificity helps, since vague requests are more likely to be refused as excessive.
Identifying the right body matters, and requests can be transferred.
Guides published by oversight bodies and by civil society organisations explain the process, and platforms exist that submit requests and publish responses publicly.
Vexatious requests
Provisions allowing refusal of requests that are abusive or that impose disproportionate burden.
Which are necessary and are also a route to refusing inconvenient requests.
Appeal bodies have generally set a high bar, requiring evidence of the burden rather than assertion.
Journalism and research use
A substantial proportion of significant disclosures originate in access requests.
Which makes the practical operation of these laws a press freedom question as well as a transparency one.
Some jurisdictions provide expedited handling for journalistic requests, and most do not distinguish.
Comparative assessment
Ratings of access law strength are published, assessing scope, exemptions, appeal mechanisms and sanctions.
Which frequently show that laws rated strongly on paper operate poorly, and vice versa.
Implementation ratings, assessing actual practice, are a separate and more informative measure.
Fees and cost limits
Some systems permit charging for search and copying time, which deters requests substantially where the amounts are meaningful.
Which is why fee waivers for journalists, researchers and public interest requests exist in several systems.
Cost limit calculations, determining when a request may be refused as excessive, vary considerably in what may be counted.
Deleted and unrecorded information
A right to request records does not create records.
Which means record-keeping obligations and retention schedules determine what is available years later.
Deletion policies that are unusually aggressive have attracted attention in several jurisdictions, since they limit what can subsequently be disclosed.
Publication schemes
Requirements to publish categories of information routinely.
Which is more efficient than repeated requests and reduces the burden on both sides.
Appeals in practice
Success rates on appeal are published in several systems and are frequently substantial.
Which indicates that initial refusals are often wrong, and it means appealing is worthwhile.
Appeal timescales can be long, which reduces the practical value of eventual success for time-sensitive requests.
What it has produced
Access laws have produced disclosures on public spending, safety failures, official misconduct and policy reasoning across many countries.
Which is the practical case for them, and the cumulative record is substantial.
Requests that produced significant disclosures are frequently published by the platforms that facilitate them.