15 May 2025
What steps can authorities take to improve their FOI performance?
There were plenty of answers to this question at the 2025 eCase FOI Awards in March, as FOI staff from across the UK took time out to learn from one another, share good practice, and celebrate the winners of the 2025 Awards.
This year’s winners included NHS Informatics Merseyside (IM), which took home the Team of the Year award, while the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) won the runner-up prize in this category.
Alicia Jones from SEPA was also named Practitioner of the Year, taking joint first place with a colleague from the (UK) Environment Agency. The FOI Rising Star awards meanwhile, went to staff from South Kesteven District Council and Camden Council.
Themes emerging from the awards included the importance of resilience, and the value of seeking opportunities to develop and improve when faced with challenges. More than one of our winners shared how the devastating experience of a cyber-attack nevertheless led to opportunities - amid the disruption - for organisations to ‘build back better’ and improve their FOI performance.
So what were the steps that led to improvement? Key themes shared by our 2025 Award Winners included:
The positive impact of individuals and teams
A common theme among all our award winners was the impact that individual FOI staff can have on an organisation, regardless of its size. There were lots of examples where passionate, committed and knowledgeable staff clearly had a huge impact on organisational culture – helping to build strong, positive relationships with individuals, departments and leadership teams, with these relationships in turn helping to ensure that the FOI principles of openness and transparency sit at the heart of the organisation’s ethos and culture.
SEPA spoke about its team’s role as ‘internal experts’, meeting directly with colleagues who have concerns around disclosure to either advise on why it may be appropriate to release the information, or ensure that decisions to withhold are appropriate, robust and recorded.
The Environment Agency also highlighted the role that its team play as recognised experts within the organisation, with individuals having a strong organisational profile, providing expert advice and guidance which, in turn, helped to develop a wider culture of transparency.
The value of effective proactive publication
Many of our award-winners shared recent innovations taken in their approach to proactive publication, and the positive impact of this on both customer experience and request volumes.
NHS Informatics Merseyside, for example, discussed the ongoing development of a user-friendly FOI webpage, with a focus on the prompt publication of information where there is a clear public interest.
Similarly, SEPA shared the benefits of their own disclosure log, with attention paid recently to speeding up the publication of responses, ensuring that important information is available when it is of most value to stakeholders. The Environment Agency, meanwhile, found that the timely publication of information had helped reduce request volumes, while also demonstrating a strong cultural commitment to openness and transparency.
Camden Council spoke about the work their ‘Rising Star’ award-winner had done to review FOI responses on ‘high-volume’ issues; identifying common questions and advising on information that could be published proactively. This work has, for example, identified opportunities to publish educational data by school- rather than financial-year, in direct response to customer needs.
A focus on review and improvement
All our winners discussed the benefits of continual improvement, reviewing their approach and processes to seek opportunities for better service delivery. SEPA, for example, highlighted the successful development of their ‘Check and Chase’ process, which helps identify and progress unassigned or inactive requests, enabling timely responses and reducing FOI reviews. SEPA also shared details of improvements made in the application of relevant harm or public interest tests, with new resources supporting a more structured approach in these important areas.
NHS Informatics Merseyside discussed the development of a ‘catalogue’ of internal systems used to store information, which enables quick contact to be made with system owners, helping searches to be undertaken in a structured and efficient way. The organisation has also implemented a new process for the audit and review of FOI responses, ensuring that these are as accurate, helpful and relevant as possible.
NHS Informatics Merseyside also highlighted work being done to share learning from information requests among divisions and services, flagging issues that come to light through FOI requests to help improve both internal processes and the experience of service users.
South Kesteven District Council, meanwhile, shared work being done to link current requests with previous ones on a similar topic, allowing previous activity to inform the handling of current requests, where appropriate.
The benefits of developing internal networks
Award winners also discussed the benefits which had arisen from work to build and develop contacts with colleagues in key departments across their organisation.
NHS Informatics Merseyside shared details of work done to develop a network of ‘information providers’, responsible for providing departmental support when gathering information to respond to requests. This work had led to efficiencies in request-handling, freeing up staff time to focus on patient care.
SEPA found that similar benefits had arisen from work they had done to develop their own network of ‘information champions’. They also highlighted a focus on internal meetings to improve responses to complex or country-wide requests, with this work building collaboration and understanding, while also developing enhanced awareness of FOI roles and responsibilities.
The Environment Agency spoke about work to build senior management support for its FOI improvement programme, and the impact this has had in embedding compliance across the organisation. Regular and ongoing performance reporting to senior leadership has also helped ensure that FOI remains a priority.
The value of putting customer experience at the heart of FOI practice
Organisations highlighted the impact of a customer-focussed approach which takes the requester experience into account in all areas of FOI compliance. SEPA shared details of the benefits they had achieved by engaging with requesters directly via telephone, providing advice and assistance in complex and wide-ranging cases to help ensure faster and more effective outcomes. SEPA also described work done to update FOI-response templates, explaining outcomes in an accessible, plain-English format to aid understanding of often-complex issues.
Camden Council also highlighted the importance of taking a requester-focussed approach in internal discussions, challenging services where exemptions are applied to ensure that the rationale provided is considered and robust, while ensuring that information is disclosed in appropriate circumstances.
Camden Council also shared the impact of a review of requests to identify situations where people had trouble accessing information from pre-published datasets. This work led to the development of a simple guide to using the datasets which enables people to more effectively ‘self serve’ when accessing information, reducing the volume of requests. As the Council noted “since this guide was produced we have not had people asking for help…Spotting the issue and resolving it has been a positive step – and as well as helping requesters it also saves our team time.”
Looking for more hints and tips from public bodies on improving FOI performance? Read the Report from our 2023 Holyrood Conference ‘Improving Performance’ workshop, or our 2022 ‘Beat the FOI Clock’ workshop.
You can also read about the experiences of the Scottish winners from previous eCase FOI awards.
The Commissioner’s self-assessment toolkit also provides guidance on how you can improve performance in a range of areas, including:
- Responding on time
- Searching for information
- Providing advice and assistance
- Publishing information
- Conducting review
- Monitoring and managing FOI performance
