Jun 2008 13

Freedom of Information Case Study: The £50,000 Font5

The Freedom of Information (FoI) Act has been one of the greatest innovations in British political history in the way it has opened up Government to the public, allowing us to see a great deal of what is done with our money behind closed doors. It’s not perfect, it’s not comprehensive enough and it’s not backed up by sufficient punishments for those public bodies that flout it, but even the sneak peek behind the scenes that it allows means public servants can no longer operate secure in the knowledge that us poor chumps will never find out what they are doing with our money.

We make great use of FoI requests both in compiling large research papers and in uncovering one-off instances of waste, which in turn attract media attention to the fact that all too often our money is poured down the drain. Increasingly, our activists are sending off their own Freedom of Information requests to uncover waste around the country, so I thought it could be handy to provide a quick anatomy of a successful use of the Act.

May 22nd

We noticed that this company listed the British Council (taxpayer funding = £200m) as a satisfied customer – having apparently commissioned a tailor-made typeface from them, "British Council Sans". In the words of Tony Bains, Head of Design at the British Council,

Commissioning our own font was the best investment we could have made in our identity

This struck us as: a) completely unnecessary, b) probably very expensive. Just about every publicly funded body is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and a quick look at the British Council’s web site revealed their FoI department’s contact details.

The key thing with writing an FoI request is to get the wording right. It should be clear, functional and unequivocal about what you want to find out – don’t worry about it being boring, repetitive or too pernickety. Whilst many FoI Officers are perfectly happy to release information, some are expert at wriggling through cracks in peoples’ requests and if the information you’re after is particularly sensitive they may well be under a lot of pressure to find an excuse not to tell you. Make the wording precise, though, and they will find it difficult not to. Remember, too, to specify you are demanding the information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000!

In this instance we asked:

I would like to know details of

i) how much money was paid by the British Council to Monotype Imaging for the production and design of British Council Sans, the British Council’s font.
ii) in what financial year this transaction took place.
iii) what font the British Council used in its documents prior to the introduction of British Council Sans.
iv) please send me a copy of the British Council Sans font.

Once you’ve made your request, they have 20 days to reply. Mark it in your diary (in this case June 19th) sit back and wait!

June 11th

Dear Mr Wallace
Apologies for the delay in responding to your request.

The British Council paid £50,000 overall for the production and design of ‘British Council Sans’.  Payment was made after receipt of two invoices: the first payment date for £30,000 was 26/3/2002 and a second final payment of £20,000 on 25/7/2002.  I understand that the old fonts were Century Schoolbook and Univers.

Please find attached a copy of the font.  To my knowledge, no similar requests have been received by the British Council…

Our suspicions were proved right – £50,000 for a typeface is ridiculous to say the least. Here it is, in all its £50,000 glory, the font that cost taxpayers more than a year’s salary for three soldiers:

British_council_sans_cropped

So, we phoned media contacts, sent a press release to the newspapers and kept our fingers crossed for the next day…

June 12th

British_council_mail_story

The Daily Mail and The Sun ran the story – waste has successfully been revealed, and public servants held to account!

Of course, it doesn’t always run so smoothly. Sometimes you’ll find that the waste you may have suspected didn’t occur, or the body you are investigating may try to block your request, in which case you may want to appeal to the Information Commissioner.

We’ll provide tips on how to squirrel out information under those more difficult circumstances another time, but in the meantime, why not try putting in your own Freedom of Information requests? You can look at your local council, Primary Care Trust or Regional Development Agency, a Government Department or any one of 1,162 quangos and other agencies we recently uncovered. This is about throwing open the way the state spends our money, so go to it, and if you uncover taxpayers’ money being wasted, let us know!

Related Posts

  • George Shanks

    Real progress will be when this kind of information has to be provided freely by public sector bodies annually rather than have to be extracted from them via FOI.
    Meantime, keep up the good work.

  • Steve in Telford

    so can we all get a copy of this publicly funded font?

  • http://www.taxpayersalliance.com Mark Wallace

    Thanks, George. You’re right that the current assumption that information should always be secret unless forced into the public domain is utterly wrong. It should be the other way round – they should need exceptional reasons for keeping it secret. Until that day, FoI is the best way!
    Steve: Well, I can send you a copy of the image sample I’ve got of it, but apparently they aren’t making the font file available. Why not write and ask – it was you that had to pay for it, so you should be able to have a go with it if you want!

  • Ian

    You are quite right to say that an FOI request should be clearly worded so that there is no wriggle room. This works well if you have an enquiry that is relatively simple and precise, such as the one you outline here. But what if the situation isn’t so clear cut?
    I made an FOI request to the British Council in February 2007. It concerned the provision of free English language lessons to government officials and their families in Libya. I was suspicious because I already had information in my possession and wanted to find out more. To cut a long story short, I asked for information relating to the sponsorship of students at the Teaching Centre in Libya and specified the information I required in detail. The information returned was vague and omitted important details I new to be true.
    A number of further emails were exchanged, with the British Council insisting there was no further information, until I indicated precisely where to look. Then they found the information… The information supplied showed that Grant-in-Aid (i.e. tax payers money) was used to pay for these well connected people’s courses.
    I still wasn’t satisfied with the information supplied. They insisted there was nothing more yet I had been told by a British Council employee that this information would be kept for audit purposes – common sense, really.
    I then complained to the Information Commissioner. As a result, the British Council have refused outright to answer any further questions on the subject using the fact of my complaint to the Information Commisioner as a reason. They also accused me of making vexatious requests.
    My complaint has been with the Information Commissioner for over a year now and I am still waiting for it to be progressed.
    There are two morals to this story. One is that, except in simpler cases, however carefully you word your enquiry you can never be sure the information you receive is complete and accurate – unless you already know it!
    The other is that it is extremely easy for a Public Body to delay provision of the information requested by the simple expedient of refusing to provide it on grounds of one of the many exceptions. There are a number of reasons a Public Body can legitimately withhold information, and they often do so incorrectly. Their refusal can be overturned by the Information Commissioner who can oblige the Public Body to supply the information. It is, however, up to the enquirer to raise a complaint with the Information Commissioner and this can take well over a year to progress, as in my case. In this time the relevant people may have moved on and the information disposed of.
    If readers are interested in more information about dodgy practice at the British Council, can I recommend the following blog? (not mine)
    http://dblackie.blogs.com/the_language_business/
    Articles relating directly to the issue described above can be found here:
    http://dblackie.blogs.com/the_language_business/2007/03/the_british_cou.html
    http://dblackie.blogs.com/the_language_business/2007/05/oil_politics_an.html
    http://dblackie.blogs.com/the_language_business/2007/05/more_on_oil_pol.html

  • Aanchal

    1. Its avilable here
    http://www.britishcouncil-identity.org/com-ID-typeface.htm
    2. It saves them money as the earlier font (licenses) had to be bought by them in the various countries (110) they operated.