How freedom of information commissioners work
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A freedom of information commissioner independently reviews decisions made by government agencies about whether to release requested documents, giving a person who has been refused a way to challenge that decision without needing to go directly to court. The role sits between the requester and the agency as a genuinely independent referee.
Reviews typically examine whether a claimed exemption was actually applied correctly, weighing the agency's stated reason for withholding material against the broader public interest in disclosure. Commissioners can usually order material released, and their decisions often carry real weight even where an agency initially disagrees strongly with the outcome reached.
Beyond individual reviews, commissioners often publish guidance and statistics on how well agencies are handling requests overall, creating a useful, comparative form of accountability across government. An agency with unusually high refusal rates, or persistently slow response times, tends to draw scrutiny well beyond any single request that was actually refused.