Sir Peter Bowsher

Maybe I'll make three basic points to you.

The Act is a fundamental constitutional document.

It's regarded as that, and we must guard it jealously because transparency is the best possible way in which democracy is preserved.

And as soon as things are done right,

in a way which is not clear and transparent, then you have the beginnings of corruption and the inroads into democracy.

So I can't stress enough how important the Act is.

The second thing is, if I deal with agencies, they aren't often well set up to answer requests either by training or by resourcing.

And when I did my report, it was called the Chief Ombudsman's Reflections on the Official Information Act.

And I reported to Parliament in March 2025 on the OIA.

And I made a whole lot of points in that, trying to plead with agencies to get a system running.

which eased the supply of information, but many were multi-layered in the way they applied it.

Many took a simple request as meaning an in-depth OIA request on the full 20 days was used.

So I felt that a number of agencies, not all, there were some notable exceptions who performed well, but many were making a mountain out of a molehill.

And the final thing was the number of requests being made by requesters had proliferated.

It's very easy to make an OIA request either of an agency or to the ombudsman office.

And my plea was there should be a tweaking so that you couldn't just ask for anything you wanted to at any time and as often as you wanted to.

It seemed to me that that was untenable.

Well, first of all, I think the perception is correct.

I would wholeheartedly agree that a number of agencies do not comply with the spirit of the Act.

So why have things changed?