Public awareness of Freedom of Information (FOI)

Ipsos Scotland was commissioned by the Scottish Information Commissioner to explore public awareness of, and attitudes towards, Freedom of Information (FOI). A module of questions was added to the Scottish Public Opinion Monitor and follows a previous study conducted in 2011.

The findings indicate that:

• 78% of respondents have heard of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act, which is similar to 2011 where 80% had heard of the Act
• 93% of respondents agreed that it is important for the public to be able to access information held by public authorities (compared with 89% in 2011)
• 91% of respondents agreed that FOI is important in holding public bodies to account for their spending decisions
• 81% of respondents disagreed with the suggestion that FOI is a waste of public money, with only 13% agreeing
• 10% of respondents were very confident that they would get an FOI response within 20 working days of making a request, and 12% were not confident at all.

There is continued strong support for FOI to be extended to cover additional organisations, namely:

• housing associations (79% agree that housing associations should be subject to FOI)
• trusts providing services on behalf of local authorities (86% agree)
• prisons run by the private sector (76% agree)
• private companies who build and maintain local authority schools and NHS hospitals (81% agree)

Download the data tables here (PDF) Download the topline results here (PDF)

Technical details:

• This presents the topline results from Scotland
• Results are based on a survey of 1,000 respondents (adults aged 16+) conducted by telephone
• Fieldwork dates: 9^th – 15^th September 2013
• Data are weight by: age, sex and working status using census data; tenure using SHS data; and public-private sector employment using Scottish Government Quarterly Public Sector Employment series data
• Where results do not sum to 100%, this may be due to computer rounding, multiple responses, or the exclusion of “don’t know” categories
• Results are based on all respondents (1,000) unless otherwise stated