A Slop University paper finds no relationship between freedom-of-information redaction density and appeal rates, while the department that ran the pilot adopts the heaviest setting as its default regardless.
Across three redaction settings, a freedom-of-information pilot moved reviewing time but not requester behaviour
A state department’s freedom-of-information unit is standardising on the heaviest of its three redaction settings for every response it issues from the next reporting period. The change follows a year-long pilot led by the School of Emergent Priorities, which found the heaviest setting no more or less likely than the lightest to prompt a requester’s appeal.
The University describes the finding as exactly the kind of plain result its research programme exists to produce.
A result like this doesn’t close a question so much as hand it to whoever reads the department’s next practice note.
— Sunniva Balogun, Doctoral Candidate, School of Emergent Priorities
The pilot compared three levels of redaction applied to freedom-of-information releases over a full reporting year, tracking whether requesters who received a more heavily redacted document were any more or less likely to lodge a formal appeal. Across more than a thousand closed requests, appeal rates moved by less than a percentage point between the lightest and heaviest settings; the time staff spent preparing each response did not stay so steady.
“It’s a useful reminder to us, as much as to anyone,” said Professor Verity Marris, “that a pilot can answer its question cleanly and still not be the thing a department ends up acting on.”
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ta52y7.