We all love a good survey. They’re almost a PR watermark when you see them in a story — when a newspaper is telling you ‘X per cent of people do/think/are Y’ you know it’s the end result of someone’s media plan.
But surveys can be a bit flimsy (especially for charities who pride themselves on hard, reliable data) and they do cost money, which we all know is beyond scarce at the moment. So is there another way to get that hook without getting into sample size and question structure discussions? Well, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests might be one answer that we’ll have a look at now. They’re usually free (sometimes photocopy costs are charged) and the information should be reliable as it’s from a public body.
I should say that I have never put in an FOI request, not for work nor pleasure, but a friend mentioned that their charity uses them and it struck me as potentially a great idea.
FOI requests are possible because of the Freedom of Information Act which gave the public the right to “ask any public body for all the information they have on any subject”. Unless there’s a good reason, the organisation must provide the information within 20 working days.
For PR people that do use them the process is simple:
- you know a government department or public office has some information (it usually works best if you know what the information is but it’s just not been made public);
- you put in an FOI request;
- the public body releases the information;
- you publicise this new info and respond to it with whatever you want to promote off the back of it.
You can ask for information from a wide range of public bodies including:
- government departments;
- local assemblies;
- local authorities;
- hospitals and doctors’ surgeries;
- schools, colleges and universities;
- publicly funded museums;
- the police;
- non-departmental public bodies;
To actually make the request, write or email the public body, making sure you include your name, an address where you can be contacted, and a description of the information that you want.
As I said, I’ve never made an FOI request but would love to hear anyone’s experience in doing so? Also I’m not sure it’s something I’ll do but do any readers feel differently? I’m just really interested in the possibilities so would love to hear any and all opinions of it as a PR method or experience of doing it.
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There’s a great guide here:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/freedom_of_information/guide/receiving_a_request.aspx
I enjoy that you can make FOI requests over social media like Twitter and Facebook. But in my experiences, public bodies will ignore such posts.
For written requests, they also try their best to get out of them, with excuses such as the “information accessible by other means” but won’t tell you where or how,
or that the “information intended for future publication” but won’t share details on when.
I wrote this article for the Guardian on my experiences of using Freedom of Information last year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/voluntary-sector-network/2011/sep/22/freedom-of-information-act-tips
Personally, I think their are real opportunities to make use of it as a charity and the easiest way to learn is by doing one or two. As I say in my article being as specific as you can is important otherwise it’s easy for it to be rejected.
I’d also recommend the longer NCVO guide about using FoI
http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/yourrighttoknow
Tom and Dan, thanks for those links — I’ve added the NCVO and ICO guides into the main body above, or will do in a sec.
After posting this I spoke to some colleagues and found that my work (Citizens Advice) has a guide for our local bureaux to make them specifically for social policy (including media) work. They’ve had some successes but some definitely back-up your view Dan about people getting around it.
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