A faster, cheaper and simpler process  There are cost concerned with processing FoI requests both in terms of time and cash terms. [i] To take one example Britain’s largest local authority, Birmingham, spends £800,000 a year dealing with FoI requests. [ii] There is also a delay from the point of view of the applicant. Such a delay is more than an irritant in the case of, for example, immigration appeals or journalistic investigations. Governments know that journalists usually have to operate within a window of time while a story is still ‘hot’. As a result all they have to do is wait it out until the attention of the media turns elsewhere to ensure that if evidence of misconduct or culpability were found, it would probably be buried as a minor story if not lost altogether. As journalism remains the primary method most societies have of holding government to account, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that the methodology for releasing data should, at least in part, reflect the reality of how journalism works as an industry.  [i] Independent Review of the Impact of the Freedom of Information Act. Frontier Economics. October 2006.  [ii] Dunton, Jim, ‘Cost of FoI requests rises to £34m’, Local Government Chronicle, 16 September 2010,