The change is part of some broader developments for BBC blogging, which were indicated last month by Steve Herrmann, editor of the BBC News website.

Blogs like mine are being brought within the same software platform used for the news website generally. Among other benefits, it will make it easier to publish a range of material together in one place, and it should also result in a better experience for those reading on mobile devices.

So as from today you can find my reporting and analysis at a new home here.

Various practical consequences will follow:

If you have been using an RSS feed for Open Secrets, you will need to change that to the new page. The new RSS feed may not be available immediately, but I hope it will be within the next few days.

If you link to the main page for Open Secrets from your website, you will need to change that to the new address (although individual entries from the old blog will remain available at their old URLs).

Finally, the title "Open Secrets" will disappear, sadly fading away into the mists of ancient cyberspace. But I hope you will follow me to the new location.

But he also spends some time discussing the potential economic consequences of reducing immigration. He concludes that through measures such as prioritising the admission of skilled workers with a job offer in the UK and raising the skill levels demanded, the government's cutbacks on immigration won't damage the UK economy.

The economic implications of different forms of migration is a complex topic, disputed by for example a free-market think tank arguing against immigration controls and a pressure group campaigning for tighter restrictions. And it's considered within the Home Office Impact Assessment for the current government policy.

If you're interested in this topic, you might like to see the Treasury's viewpoint. Under freedom of information I have obtained a copy of the Treasury's submission [5.51MB PDF] last year to the Migration Advisory Committee, a government advisory body which was examining the potential results of limits to economic migration into the UK.

The Treasury's analysis is of course subject to many caveats and uncertainties, but its broad argument is that cutting immigration of skilled workers would reduce the UK economy's potential for growth. It also states that migrants tend to make a positive contribution long-term to the UK's fiscal position.

In other words, this document shows the Treasury's unease about the economic impact of immigration curbs. Some of this is referred to in the detailed and extensive report which the Migration Advisory Committee produced. The Treasury's interest in policy is clearly primarily financial rather than social. This departmental angle is also shared by the Business Department.

Mr Cameron's speech today has been strongly attacked as "very unwise" by his cabinet colleague but party political rival, the Business Secretary Vince Cable. Mr Cable is concerned that stronger immigration controls could harm British companies and universities.

I also wanted to see the memorandum which his department, BIS, had sent to the MAC to help inform its investigation into limits on economic migration. However, while the Treasury sent me its submission (after I appealed against its initial refusal), the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has refused to disclose the one it made.

BIS argued that releasing it would be against the public interest. It told me:

"We believe that if this information were to be made public, frankness and policy development would inevitably be inhibited and ministers would be prevented from taking decisions based on the fullest understanding of the issues involved."

Government departments often coordinate their responses to FOI requests. I was surprised by the discrepancy in this case, because it is unusual for one to reveal and another to keep secret a similar document.

The Information Commissioner Chris Graham is announcing today that he is targeting action on three public authorities because of their particularly bad record of FOI delays. One of these is the Cabinet Office. The other two are the Ministry of Defence and Birmingham Council.

Mr Graham says he is now considering what regulatory action to take against them, due to their persistent failure to reduce the excessive time taken to respond. He is especially concerned about the existence of long overdue FOI applications. This could lead to him issuing enforcement notices, which would legally require specified measures to improve their performance.

This is particularly embarrassing for the Cabinet Office and its minister Francis Maude, given their central role in promoting transparency in the public sector. The Cabinet Office is also responsible for answering freedom of information requests to the prime minister's office at 10 Downing Street.

These three authorities have been on a list of 33 public bodies that the Information Commissioner's Office has been intensively monitoring for months because of serious doubts over their FOI operations. Mr Graham says he is now satisfied that most of the list "have managed to overcome their problems".

Apart from the three now selected for tougher regulatory measures, there are four other exceptions. In a lesser sanction they are being asked to sign undertakings to improve further. These are Hammersmith & Fulham, Islington, Westminster and Wolverhampton Councils.

Mr Graham is now publishing a new list of 18 other bodies from across the public sector which will be monitored closely because of concerns about their delays in handling requests. These include the Department for Education, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and Nottingham Council, the one English council which said it would defy the government's request to publish detailed spending data.

This announcement is the next step in Mr Graham's campaign to speed up the freedom of information system, which he feels able to do following his success in reducing the enormous backlog of complaints his own organisation was grappling with. He says:

"Responding promptly to FOI requests is key to delivering citizens' rights. Too many public authorities are taking too long to decide either way whether to release information or to refuse requests."

The Cabinet Office maintains it is tackling its difficulties. A spokesperson says:

"While this is a long-standing issue for the department, the number of FOIs has also increased by over a third in just over 12 months. We take the Information Commissioner's comments seriously and we have already taken steps to improve our performance."

Birmingham Council says that it is committed to compliance with FOI and it accepts it needs to deal with overdue applications. But it also insists that a sense of perspective is needed, arguing that there are considerable cost implications stemming from a small number of complex requests at a time when the council has to make substantial savings.

Finally, to comment anecdotally from our own experience, I am not surprised that the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence are two of the authorities focused on in this way.

Although at one point last year I felt that the Cabinet Office was getting prompter and more efficient, it appears to have declined again. One request that I sent to it last December has been subject to four extensions of the time limit and remains unanswered. As for the MoD, in the first two to three years of freedom of information its FOI operation was comparatively well organised and reliable to deal with, but its systems do seem to have deteriorated badly in the more recent period.

One of these publicly owned databases is the Data Protection Register, which contains details of companies and public bodies who process the personal information of individuals, what kind of material they hold, and for what purposes (as in this example).

You can search it by certain selected fields such as name, postcode and organisational category. But you can't obtain more than 100 entries in response to one search. And, more importantly, you can't consult the register online in browsable form, nor can it be downloaded. In short, as a way of providing data, this isn't very useful.

And as it happens the official responsible for the Data Protection Register is actually the Information Commissioner himself.

I have to say that I have found the cumbersome nature of searching the database, rather than being able to browse it, very inconvenient. Perhaps those who have better web-scraping skills than I do might manage to get more out of the current setup.

It seems that I'm not the only person to be frustrated by this. Last year someone else made a freedom of information request to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), asking for a copy of the register "in any usable format".

The ICO dismissed the FOI application, stating that there is no legal requirement "that the register is provided as a usable database".

After an equally unsuccessful internal review of this rejection, the applicant took advantage of his right to complain to the person who decides whether FOI requests have been correctly handled by public bodies - the Information Commissioner.

Last week the ICO issued its ruling - and it turns out that the ICO agrees with the ICO's arguments that the ICO dealt with the case in accordance with the law. The judgment maintains that the information is reasonably accessible to the requester by other means, ie by searching the database one step at a time.

This is not an entirely comfortable position for the Information Commissioner to be in. Whatever the technical legal situation, it is clearly a long way from the spirit of the transparency rhetoric that has emanated from the government and from Mr Graham himself.

And in fact the ICO has recently been running a consultation exercise on the possibility of making the entire register available to be downloaded in a reusable format. The closing date for responses is this coming Friday.

I expect that in due course the Data Protection Register will become much more usefully accessible than it is at the moment. Just like other public authorities, the Information Commissioner's Office itself is being forced to change its processes by the drive towards openness.

The transparency agenda of this government and its predecessor has recently opened up a lot more information about the details of public spending. Some of this has been about the salaries and expenses of identifiable individuals, with more promised for the future.

But to assess value for money, cost is only half the equation - the other half is achievement. Plenty of data about targets and indicators for public services has been issued over the past few years - but much less about specific staff. Freedom of information requests have only occasionally (such as for heart surgeons) produced records about the performance of individuals.

These thoughts occurred to me after I came across a project in the Los Angeles Times, which rated the success of 6,000 of the city's teachers by name. This was actually published last August, but I only became aware of it last month when it won the top award at the conference of the US National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.

The teachers' results were based on the "value-added" progress made by their pupils from year to year in standardised English and maths tests. The LA Times included a list of the 100 teachers who scored best according to this system, although it doesn't seem to have publicised the lowest performers in the same way.

Of course not all those covered by this analysis are happy, and this kind of methodology for measuring teacher effectiveness has been criticised by some.

Now other newspapers in different parts of the US have tried to get the same information. A judge in New York has ruled that the interests of parents and taxpayers should outweigh the privacy rights of public employees.

It's very unlikely that the same kind of data about the performance records of individual teachers would be released in the UK, even if the information existed in that form. As well as the privacy concerns, questions would be raised about how well one numerical measure could encapsulate an individual's achievements. But the LA Times didn't find it easy to obtain the material either.

When I told Jason Felch, one of the leading reporters on the story, that there would be enormous resistance to the publication of such data here, he replied:

"'Enormous resistance' is a fair description of what we faced".

Is that resistance justified?

Whether Baldrick would have done a better job than the Police then did of protecting the car carrying the heir to the throne and his wife is not known. But given what happened, it has proved to be a very unfortunate choice of comedic reference.

The cunning plan developed by the Police consisted of "flexibility", according to the internal briefing paper received by the BBC through a freedom of information request.

If you want to read the entire document, it's here [264KB PDF]. A small word of warning: you may feel disturbed if you have a sensitive disposition when it comes to spelling errors, grammatical mistakes and strange jargon (officers are warned to avoid negative photo opportunities such as drinking coffee while "embussed").

Our FOI application also obtained the Police tactical plan [664KB PDF] for the first student demonstration on 10 November, which resulted in extensive damage to the building housing the Conservative party headquarters.

This plan shows how the Police apparently failed to consider any possibility that the Tory offices could become a target for demonstrators, even though they knew the protest route would go past that building. The Police instead focused on protecting the Palace of Westminster and government buildings such as the Department for Education.

 

This information has been made public as a result of a freedom of information request by the BBC and an appeal to the information commissioner.

The Department of Health refused to give the information to the BBC when my colleague Julia Ross asked for this data in February last year. The department rejected the FOI application on the grounds that it would breach commercial confidentiality.

We then appealed to the information commissioner, who ruled last month that the total sum paid on obtaining doses of swine flu vaccine should be disclosed.

The commissioner however ruled against the publication of a more detailed breakdown of this spending which we had also asked for.

The department has today complied with this decision and issued an overall figure. It has revealed that it had paid two drug companies £239 million for vaccine doses until the end of deliveries in April 2010. These supplies were for the anticipated swine flu pandemic which failed to materialise.

Most of the money was paid to GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for its Pandemrix vaccine, and the remainder to Baxter Healthcare for Celvapan.

The department was left with many unused doses, although some have been used this flu season after stocks of the latest seasonal flu jab proved insufficient.

This case illustrates the limits of commercial confidentiality under FOI. It shows how claims sometimes made by public authorities about possible damage to commercial interests are not necessarily strong enough grounds for refusing freedom of information requests.

 

However that case will not be happening this Wednesday, following the death last month of the man who initiated it and has been fighting it for several years, a London solicitor named Steven Sugar.

The dispute also involves the BBC. On 8 January 2005, a few days after the right to make FOI requests became active, Mr Sugar asked the BBC for a copy of the Balen Report, an internal report assessing the corporation's coverage of the Middle East which had been compiled in 2004 by an editorial adviser, Malcolm Balen.

The BBC is only partly covered by the Freedom of Information Act. According to Schedule 1, the organisation is only subject to FOI "in respect of information held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature". The corporation argues this exception is needed to protect the editorial independence of programme-makers.

Mr Sugar's request was rejected by the BBC on the grounds that the Balen Report constituted journalistic information. After he then appealed to the information commissioner, the case become embroiled in a complex and lengthy dispute over legal technicalities and the extent of the Information Tribunal's [156KB PDF] right to intervene when the commissioner has discarded a complaint as outside the scope of the FOI Act. This process, which I wrote about on various occasions, went all the way to the House of Lords in 2009.

After that was settled the dispute moved on to other, less procedural matters. These haven't actually focused on the principle of whether disclosing the report would threaten journalistic freedom or be in the public interest, but they have been about how far the BBC is affected by FOI law.

The key legal argument has revolved around information held by the BBC for more than one reason, both for journalistic and for other purposes - when and how is that covered by FOI? Following the tribunal's earlier verdict that the Balen Report had become predominantly a matter of strategic policy and resource allocation rather than journalism, this question has been working its way through the legal system.

The current legal position, as expressed by the High Court and upheld by the Court of Appeal, is that "the BBC has no obligation to disclose information which they hold to any significant extent for the purposes of journalism, art or literature, whether or not the information is also held for other purposes".

On this basis the courts ruled that the BBC was entitled not to release the Balen Report. Mr Sugar's appeal against this was the case due to be heard today at the Supreme Court.

This leaves the BBC in the position of being able to turn down any FOI request for material which is kept, even if only partly, for programme-making or editorial purposes. This is also the principle employed by the information commissioner when considering complaints about the BBC.

The corporation often receives FOI applications for information held for multiple reasons (eg financial management or governance, as well as programme-making). The First-Tier Tribunal [52KB PDF] has a backlog of several cases involving the BBC which had been stayed pending the outcome of the expected Supreme Court hearing.

However the extensive and convoluted legal battles over the Balen Report have not yet come to an end. It may be possible for someone else to pursue the appeal on Mr Sugar's behalf.

So this particular FOI dispute, and also the more general question of the extent of the BBC's obligations under the Act, are yet to be finally determined.

The Supreme Court says that it has now listed the case provisionally for another hearing in the autumn. It seems unlikely that a judgment would then be handed down before 2012, over seven years after Mr Sugar's initial request.

The CLG website contains a list of 346 authorities that have released the data with links to their sites. For some reason the website doesn't actually identify the few which haven't - but the department says they are Nottingham, Bradford, Peterborough, Epsom and Ewell, Hyndburn, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Eastbourne and Lincolnshire.

This is not so much naming and shaming, as shaming by not naming.

The BBC has contacted the eight councils involved. Nuneaton and Bedworth maintains the material has in fact been available on its website for about three weeks.

Bradford, Hyndburn and Peterborough say they will publish it during this week. Eastbourne, Epsom and Ewell, and Lincolnshire say they will do so by the end of February.

If this happens that will leave Nottingham as the only local authority determined to resist the government's request. The council's deputy leader Graham Chapman said:

"We have said that we will publish accounts over £500 if it becomes a legal requirement to do so. We are happy for information to be transparently available for public scrutiny but feel that the time and money needed to implement this change is wasteful and a distraction at a time when we are coping with £60million of cuts in government funding. The government talks about localism but as this issue shows, it seems intent on interfering at every opportunity."

If Nottingham is the only council maintaining this stance, it will be interesting to see how it withstands the pressure and inevitable accusations of secrecy.

The CLG statement was released as part of the next stage in the local transparency drive being pursued by the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles.

He has today launched a consultation document on a new code of practice on local authority data. Councils could now be asked to issue an organisational chart with the names and responsibilities of staff paid over £58,200, which is equivalent to the lowest pay band for senior civil servants.

The draft code also refers to releasing datasets on contracts, councillor expenses, voluntary sector grants and the democratic running of the council.

Some local authorities will be happy to follow this agenda, but there are others who will not be pleased by some of those proposals.

Several councils have already made it clear that they regarded the publication of the spending data over £500 as a bureaucratic exercise with little practical benefit, and they may well be unenthusiastic about these further demands.

This unease featured in an earlier CLG consultation which asked councils for details of what they considered to be unnecessary administrative burdens. Under freedom of information the BBC has obtained from CLG a copy of the summary of responses [68KB PDF].

This report identifies 13 councils with concerns about issuing the spending data. It also names 49 councils who complained about the level or nature of enquiries stemming from the Freedom of Information Act. (The document gives a figure of 52, but this is an error due to double-counting).

However by far the most common protest from authorities was about the data they have to provide to central government, and how they are audited and inspected. There were 152 councils with objections to the monitoring requirements they are subject to.

Some councils however apparently had more unusual complaints about the administrative burdens imposed on them. These included bonfire regulations (raised by East Devon), the out-of-hours stray dog service (Harborough), and the requirement to have four-year election periods (Gravesham).

This raises the question of the role of transparency and freedom of information in ensuring the public sector gets value for money in what it buys from private companies.

The NAO report is certainly a more substantial piece of work than the document produced by Sir Philip Green [176KB PDF], who last year conducted an efficiency review of procurement in central government.

Sir Philip's conclusions have themselves been the subject of an interesting FOI request from the computer magazine PC Pro, who wanted to know more about the basis for some of the apparently startling comparisons of purchases which he referred to.

The government refused to release the details on the grounds of commercial confidentiality, and the magazine has now appealed to the Information Commissioner.

We've also tried to use FOI to shed more light on the efficiency or otherwise of public procurement, a process which often raises these tricky issues of commercial confidentiality.

By the way, I should state that naturally I'm aware that the BBC itself sometimes rejects FOI applications on the basis of commercial confidentiality. Judging by previous experience a few of you may wish to make this point in the comments, which of course is fine. But please note this point: how the BBC handles incoming FOI requests does not and should not constrain the BBC's journalism.

A BBC investigation a year ago based on FOI revealed how local councils paid widely varying prices for road salt, in a market dominated by just two suppliers. What was also very interesting was that we found major differences in councils' attitudes to openness, ranging from some who were immediately happy to provide full details of amounts purchased, supplier and price, to others who would not supply any of this data.

More recently Francis Maude, the minister leading the government's transparency agenda, told last year's Conservative party conference that the coalition had already saved several 100 million pounds by renegotiating contracts with large suppliers.

My colleague Julia Ross asked the Cabinet Office to break this down by supplier, so that we could examine and report on the exact nature and extent of the savings obtained. The government confirmed they held the information, but this week declined to reveal it.

They argued that it would harm commercial confidentiality and also damage relationships with suppliers. The minister who gave his formal opinion that disclosure would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs was the Minister for the Cabinet Office, who is Francis Maude.

In another case we asked the Department for Health last year how much they spent on buying swine flu vaccine for the predicted pandemic, which they refused to say.

Last month in an important decision the Information Commissioner ruled that the DH should reveal the sums paid to GSK and Baxter Healthcare, although not the quantities of vaccine involved nor the pricing.

At this stage we don't yet know whether the department will supply us with the data or appeal the decision to the tribunal and leave the issue unresolved for longer.

This was before he was a minister and so before he gained the knowledge of the UK's FOI system that he now possesses. Yet his experience illustrates one of the controversies that currently surround FOI policy - how far the right of access to information can, or should, extend.

But ironically this did not extend to Network Rail. Although both coalition parties pledged before the election that it should be covered, Lord McNally says they will now wait while the restructuring of the rail industry is under consideration.

"It was discussed, but it didn't make the cut", he told me when I interviewed him about the government's current thinking on FOI policy.

Lord McNally gives every impression of being delighted with his area of responsibility within the Ministry of Justice. "I came into government convinced of the value of FOI, and I'm still an enthusiast. Freedom of information is the best guarantee of good government. It encourages people to behave properly and not cut corners."

"I've been an enthusiast for freedom of information for 40 years", he adds. In the 1970s, as Tom McNally, he worked for the Labour prime minister James Callaghan in Downing Street. He recalls that he tried unsuccessfully to persuade Mr Callaghan of the merits of FOI then.

But Lord McNally notes that his current colleagues in government include some who do not share the keenness he proclaims for freedom of information.

"If we all shared my enthusiasm, we might have a more radical policy than we've got," he says. "Some of them share Tony Blair's view". Mr Blair made it clear in his memoirs that introducing the FOI Act and thus helping to supply heavier ammunition to his enemies was one of his major regrets about his premiership.

Those now unhappy about FOI include some officials, according to Lord McNally. "I've had very senior civil servants say to me that we've replaced the normal process of decision-making with a 'Post-It note culture'". In other words, some advice is written on sticky notes which are then discarded rather than kept for the record.

The minister insists he has not experienced this himself, however. And he adds: "I've seen no sign of a chilling effect. I've not been aware of anyone pulling punches with the advice they've given."

Instead, he argues, "I suspect it's had the impact of improving the quality of advice. People make sure their submissions do cover the waterfront. I see it as a thoroughness effect, not a chilling effect."

"I'm not sure we've yet squeezed the culture of secrecy out of government. It varies from department to department. But the balance is changing. The more people get used to transparency, the more it will become accepted as the order of the day."

One minister who has previously expressed serious unease about the tendency towards greater openness in government is actually now Lord McNally's boss, the Justice Secretary Ken Clarke.

Perhaps appropriately for a minister in charge of transparency, Lord McNally is willing to confirm that he and his boss don't see eye to eye on this topic. "There's a difference between me and Ken Clarke. Ken is not an enthusiast for FOI."

Mr Clarke has been particularly resistant to extending FOI to private companies, even where they perform public functions, arguing that instead they should be answerable to their own shareholders. Lord McNally says that he would prefer to take a broader view of their role and bring more of those with public functions within FOI.

He strongly maintains that attitudes within the government to openness and information rights do not split on party lines. A Liberal Democrat himself, he states: "My biggest ally is Francis Maude with his transparency agenda and also Eric Pickles with his for local government."

The formal consultation process which is legally required for the proposed extensions to FOI is now beginning. But further developments on FOI policy may later follow from another decision announced this month - to subject the FOI Act to a process known as "post-legislative scrutiny",

The Ministry of Justice will draw up a memorandum reporting their assessment of how the Act is working in practice. It will then be examined by a parliamentary committee.

Lord McNally says he is committed to building up the role of Parliament and he sees the FOI legislation as "an ideal Act to submit to post-legislative scrutiny". As a law passed in 2000, it is not automatically involved in this procedure in the way that applies to more recent legislation.

When discussing what might come out of this exercise, it is clear that Lord McNally sees downsides as well as upsides to openness and that it could lead to restrictions as well as extensions to freedom of information.

One issue to be explored is the right ministers currently have to veto tribunal decisions that material should be disclosed. Before the election the LibDems proposed removing this.

He says: "In principle I'm still in favour of abolishing the ministerial veto but I understand that other things may have to be given in exchange."

He hints that this quid pro quo could be an absolute exemption for cabinet papers, which can currently be released if it is considered that would be in the public interest. At one point the Labour government planned to introduce this, but then decided against it.

The two instances so far of the ministerial veto being used were both to protect the secrecy of cabinet records, which the information commissioner or tribunal had ordered should be disclosed.

"Even as an enthusiastic FOI'er, I recognise there is a countervailing argument," says Lord McNally. "There has to be some private space for discussion within government."

"I want the committee to take evidence from ministers and public servants on whether there is a Post-It note effect."

He also wants to see more analysis of the pattern of FOI use. And there is another concern he thinks should be examined, the administrative cost for public authorities, or "Has FOI placed an extra burden out of proportion to the public good?"

"Post-legislative scrutiny should look at the international comparison and whether modest charging would have an effect and would it be beneficial," he adds. Any mention of charging for FOI requests will be particularly alarming to freedom of information campaigners and also to the Information Commissioner Chris Graham, who has come out strongly against this measure which was adopted some years ago in Ireland.

It's all a matter of balance, argues Lord McNally. "There has to be a balance between an insatiable right to know and allowing public services to get on with the job they have to do. It's an interesting point where legitimate scrutiny stops and being a nuisance starts."

However he is happy to accept that one inevitable consequence of FOI for government is to make it easier for political opponents to find evidence to criticise you with. "In ten years' time I hope I'm not as cynical as Tony Blair", he proclaims.

Finally he is keen to stress his confidence in the Information Commissioner, Chris Graham. "I hope that's demonstrated by the movement of more power and responsibility to him".

He would like to give the commissioner's office more independence from the Ministry of Justice. "I'm someone who wants to see Parliament take responsibility for bodies like that, but governments, coalitions, departments are a matter of agreement."

And doubtless it would be very interesting to read about the current deliberations within the government on all of this in their search for agreement. But Lord McNally leaves it there, and a freedom of information request is unlikely to obtain the policy papers and minutes of meetings, let alone the sticky notes, which would reveal the full detail of the internal discussions on FOI policy.

Now possibly this is true of those FOI requests to Downing Street which his staff told him about, but whether it applies to the less intrusive requests that never came to his attention is another matter altogether.

In any case at the time he wrote his memoirs he would have been unaware of the more recent activities of his former parliamentary colleague, Tom Watson, the Labour MP for West Bromwich East.

As an ardent Brownite organiser, Mr Watson was far from being Mr Blair's favourite person, but he's also become an enthusiastic opposition campaigner. He says he's submitted over 3,000 FOI applications since the general election.

Mr Watson writes:

"I love the freedom of information act. I accept that it's not a comforting piece of legislation if you happen to be prime minister. But for a backbench MP who believes in greater transparency in government, it's a great tool."

It all raises the question of what kind of person is actually making freedom of information requests. The data available to answer this question is limited. But I decided to look at one small source which is publicly available.

The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital provides information on its website not only about all its FOI disclosures but also some details of each requester, and has done so since FOI applications were first made in 2005. As far as I know no other public authority has done this (if you know otherwise, I would be very grateful to hear from you).

We've analysed the 900-plus FOI requests which the hospital trust received in 2005 - 2010.

One caveat is necessary: some requesters reported as individuals may actually have been making their request on behalf of an organisation without indicating that. And we should not forget this is only one public authority, which may not be representative of any others.

But the following patterns emerge from this data, such as it is:

The total number of requests was broadly stable for three years, suddenly doubled from 2007 to 2008, and has since remained stable again.

Most requests have come from individuals, with an increase over the past five years and a particular jump in the past year.

Media requests come second, with a pattern of fluctuation over the period.

Political requests come next, peaking in 2008/2009 and dropping rapidly since. Of the 126 requests from politicians or parties, 72 were from Conservatives, 53 from Lib Dems and just one from Labour. This suggests a process of trying to collect useful ammunition in the run up to the general election.

Requesting by businesses has steadily grown over the past six years, as the commercial sector perhaps becomes more aware of the opportunities presented by FOI. This is now the fourth major category of freedom of information applicant.

But actually for me the most surprising revelation was the several instances of hospitals using FOI to get information from other hospitals.

To take one recent example, the Royal Liverpool Hospital has been collecting information on the handling of emergencies which happen outside buildings but elsewhere on hospital premises, eg in car parks.

So who uses FOI? Journalists who in Tony Blair's words may be looking for more effective "mallets" to brandish at those in power (we prefer to call it scrutiny); opposition politicians who can also see a good use for such mallets; businesses who can see commercial value in information; and actually plenty of individuals who hope to find out stuff they want to know and may have a variety of motives. And occasionally there are also parts of the state who exploit it to find out more about other elements of the public sector

The Ministry of Justice will announce on Friday details of dozens of bodies which perform public functions that it wants to bring under Freedom of Information (FOI), so that people will have a legal right of access to information they hold.

The list will contain a range of organisations that have legal responsibilities to regulate parts of the private sector, as well as appeals tribunals for parking fines and some state-funded environmental projects. However freedom of information campaigners will be disappointed that, contrary to many expectations, Network Rail is not to be included.

I understand that bodies to be covered include the following:

the Law Society and the Bar Council, which regulate the legal profession;

the Advertising Standards Authority, which regulates the advertising industry;

the Panel on Takeover and Mergers, which regulates City takeovers;

the Quality Assurance Agency, which monitors standards in higher education;

the British Standards Institute, which develops and certifies industry standards;

the Independent Schools Inspectorate, the Schools Inspection Service, and the Bridge School Inspectorate - inspection services for private schools;

the Traffic Penalty Tribunal and the Parking and Traffic Appeals Service, which hears appeals against parking fines;

the Carbon Trust and the Energy Saving Trust - publicly funded green initiatives;

the Local Government Association and the NHS Confederation, as associations of public authorities already covered.

The government will begin consultations with the bodies involved with a view to bringing them under the FOI.

The Ministry of Justice will also confirm it is pressing ahead with extending FOI to three organisations previously indicated, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Financial Services Ombudsman and the higher education admissions body UCAS.

However this does not amount to the "hundreds" of additional public and charitable bodies that have been trailed in some reports.

And there are some notable exclusions. Before the election, both coalition parties pledged to extend FOI to Network Rail. According to a Ministry of Justice spokesperson, the government accepts "there is a strong case for its inclusion". But she added that ministers want to wait for a Department for Transport review of the structure of the rail industry before proceeding.

The government also has no plans to extend FOI to private utility and water companies, although whether they might be brought under the regulations that provide for disclosure of environmental information is less clear.

The plans to be unveiled on Friday will not go as far as some ideas proposed by the Liberal Democrats when in opposition, such as repealing the right of ministers to veto tribunal decisions instructing them to release material they want to keep secret.

Ministers will now implement plans to reduce to 20 years the 30-year rule which governs when most historical records are made publicly available in the National Archives. This will be phased in over a decade, starting in 2013, with two years' worth of records being transferred each year until the process is complete.

While these changes extend information rights, the government will also bring into force a measure to give the monarchy greater protection from FOI, with an absolute exemption for communications with the monarch and the heir to the throne.

Along with the reduction in the 30-year rule, this was included in last year's Constitutional Reform and Governance Act and was awaiting implementation.

In another reform, the Information Commissioner will be given greater autonomy on operational matters such as appointing staff. However this does not go as far as making the post report to Parliament rather than the Ministry of Justice, the level of independence which Chris Graham, the commissioner, has called for.

Nevertheless Mr Graham will welcome this limited increase in autonomy and the overall package of government measures as a boost for greater transparency.

Public authorities will also be required to proactively release data in a way that facilitates businesses as well as non-profit organisations re-using the information for commercial and social purposes.

All these steps may also be followed by further changes to the freedom of information system later.

The government will also announce that it will now undertake a further review of the Freedom of Information Act during 2011. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said this will "cover the benefits brought by the legislation, how it is working in practice and an assessment of the costs of the operation of the Act."

She added: "We will be considering the way in which all exemptions function as part of our review of the Act. We have no intention to increase protection for Cabinet minutes at present."

Ministers have given local authorities a deadline of the end of January to issue online the details of their expenditure on items over £500. The Communities and Local Government department maintains a timeline to display progress towards this.

But documents obtained by the BBC under freedom of information show some councils have protested to the department about this demand from central government.

East Dorset council opposed the plan, complaining that "this will create work to comply with and...add no value at all." Its chief executive David McIntosh wrote: "Rather it is only likely to result in requests and therefore further work when the few people who bother to look at it ask for further clarification."

Mr McIntosh also called for the Freedom of Information Act to be revisited. His letter stated: "It's initial and laudable aim was to allow individuals to access information held about them by public authorities. In practise it is mainly used by companies, contractors, consultancies, students, employees, journalists and the public to access information for commercial, academic, editorial, or other purposes."

(Apart from the grammatical and spelling errors, Mr McIntosh is also wrong on the initial aim of the FOI Act. The law which gives individuals access to information about themselves is actually the Data Protection Act.)

Other councils which objected included Stoke-on-Trent which said the scheme "will increase paperwork and process" and Cornwall which said it "will require a disproportionate increase in resource".

Similarly Roger Tetstall, chief executive of Test Valley, told CLG that "the requirement to publish 'items of spend over £500' will result in significant amounts of staff time being wasted on dealing with frivolous, vexatious and idiosyncratic enquiries".

Wyre Council was another opponent. Its then chief executive Jim Corry also called for the government to "ban Freedom of Information requests from commercial companies as they are not in the public interest and waste valuable staff resources".

Some authorities did not object in principle to publishing spending data, but were unhappy about the threshold of £500. These included Gloucester, Newark & Sherwood, and Haringey.

Alan Jarrett, Deputy Leader of Medway Council, also questioned the £500 criterion: "I envisage that the resultant enquiries (both general and FOI) will be excessive and possibly vexatious, and will not assist public accountability."

Waverley Council was worried about other aspects of the department's transparency plans, expressing concerns for example about the idea of publishing online the details of licensing applications.

Its leader Robert Knowles wrote: "My worry is that the current drive towards transparency, while a sound political principle, must not be taken to an extreme, in which councils are spending large sums on processing and publishing information for which there is no local demand."

However it should be noted that these councils which told CLG of their objections or reservations about the government's openness agenda are only a small minority of over 240 which expressed views on how to reduce administrative burdens on local authorities.

In contrast there are many authorities which are highly enthusiastic, while there are certainly others who may not be keen but accept this is the way the wind is blowing and feel there is little point in protesting.

And this is illuminated by documents obtained by the BBC under freedom of information from the Met Office. These shed new light on the problems faced by the Met Office in its public communications and the strategies it has adopted for tackling them.

The Met Office is under attack from the GWPF, for its "poor advice" on the likelihood of a harsh and cold winter.

The GWPF is drawing attention to a map published on the Met Office website in October which indicated that the UK was likely to experience above-normal temperatures in the ensuing three-month period.

For the GPWF, which is sceptical of the Met Office and other mainstream analysis of global warming, this is evidence of a Met Office tendency to under-predict cold weather and over-predict mild winters.

The Met Office replies that these maps, which feature in the scientific research section of its website, are probabilistic estimates of the chances of a range of outcomes and are not to be taken as simple weather forecasts that can be right or wrong. It tried to squash news stories in October that it was predicting a mild winter.

It should also be noted that, according to the Quarmby report on transport and winter resilience earlier this week, the Met Office did give "early indications of the onset of a cold spell from late November at the end of October".

This argument is linked to views about climate change, but part of the background is the major difficulty the Met Office has faced for some time over forecasting seasonal weather and conveying its views to the public.

It goes back to the well-publicised (and in due course much ridiculed) Met Office forecast of "a barbecue summer" for summer 2009, which turned out to be true if you use your barbecue for collecting rainwater. It became one of the wettest summers in the past century. The widespread derision that resulted left the Met Office feeling badly burnt (while the nation's sausages were not).

The documents we requested show that scientists within the Met Office were uneasy about the language of this prediction. One internal report states:

"The strapline 'odds on for a barbeque summer' was created by the operations and communications teams to reflect the probability of a good summer. Concern over the use of the strapline and its relationship to the scientific information available was expressed by the scientific community, who were not consulted prior to the media release."

The Met Office then resolved to use "more conservative terminology" in future. But its seasonal prediction for last winter was also awry, failing to signal sufficiently the long and severe cold spell.

An internal executive paper noted the impact as follows:

"Unfortunately, less 'intelligent' (and potentially hostile) sections of the press, competitors and politicos have been able to maintain a sustained attack on the Met Office ... The opprobrium is leaking across to areas where we have much higher skill such as in short range forecasting and climate change - our brand is coming under pressure and there is some evidence we are losing the respect of the public."

This report argued that one downside of the seasonal forecasts was that they remained on the website and could easily be later compared to reality. It said:

"One of the weaknesses of the presentation of seasonal forecasts is that they were issued with much media involvement and then remain, unchanged, on our website for extended lengths of time - making us a hostage to fortune if the public perception is that the forecast is wrong for a long time before it is updated."

In contrast it noted that the "medium range forecast (out to 15 days ahead) is updated daily on the website which means that no single forecast is ever seen as 'wrong' because long before the weather happens, the forecast has been updated many times."

The intense embarrassment over the seasonal calculations prompted the Met Office to rethink its approach to predictions for several months ahead. It stopped publishing a seasonal forecast for the UK for public consumption (although it added a rolling 30-day view to its main forecast page). Instead it decided to put probabilistic seasonal data on the scientific pages of its website where, in the words of a board paper, such figures can be "more targeted towards users who appreciate their value and limitations".

As another document put it, "'Intelligent' customers (such as the Cabinet Office) find probabilistic forecasts helpful in planning their resource deployment."

A communications plan in February 2010 instructed staff that "interested customers" should be told the three-month outlook will be available on the research pages of the website but that "this message should not be used with our mainstream audiences".

Met Office staff clearly feel the general British public find it difficult to cope with probabilistic statements. A board paper from September 2009 states: "Feedback from Met Office surveys suggests that users would rather receive a deterministic forecast."

It adds: "It is considered that the task of educating the UK public in interpreting probabilistic information will be neither a short-term, nor simple task." It compares this unfavourably with the apparently greater ability of the US public to grasp such material.

Its location and temperate climate mean that predicting the British weather is a tricky task - especially when your audience is members of the general British public, who don't like probabilities and who may not be the most "intelligent customers" or able to cope with understanding the uncertainty of the longer-range predictions. Thus the problem for the Met Office is not only the variability of the British weather, it's also coping with the intellectual capacity of the British public. That, anyway, seems to be the view within its staff according to these FOI disclosures.

Are they right? Your answers can either be expressed deterministically or probabilistically, according to your own taste.