As promised in its ICO25 strategy, the ICO has been making changes to its Freedom of Information work to better support organisations.

The ICO has developed a self-assessment toolkit to help public authorities assess their current FOI performance and provide indicators of where efforts should be focused in order to improve. It also provides templates for taking improvement actions.

In addition, the ICO has been encouraging proactive publication of information that is in the public interest and is safe to disclose.

The ICO now has a new Upstream Regulation team in place to provide more help for public authorities dealing with FOI requests. The team’s remit includes promoting good practice, one of the specific duties of the ICO set out in the FOI Act.