Características Clínicas

In chapter two I ask how are decisions over public and private made under the Act? While FOI provides access to information deemed public, in accordance with the Data Protection Act, it also includes provisions for the retention of personal information. DPA provides people with a right of access to their own personal information and prevents this information being disclosed to others.

Yet practitioners often found it difficult to make a decision over what constituted public information and what was private or personal. It seemed as if persons would be disclosed by disclosing information created by them or about them, at every turn. In response to this the SIC replied that people were often over-sensitive, and that more information could be disclosed than practitioners perhaps realised. Practitioners such as Duncan, Information Compliance Manager for Lochhead council, in a position and with the capacity to make decisions over public and private similar to the SIC, found himself persuading others to release information that they considered personal, that he and the SIC did not.

While practitioners sought guidance on how the line between public and private should be drawn, decisions over public and private were always made on a case-by-case basis. Information, for example about an employee’s contracted hours, appeared private in relation to the wider society from whom he or she seemed differentiated, but when put back in relation to their colleagues with the same hours, the same information appeared public, and thus was able to be disclosed. Whether information was public or private depended on the particular relational context in which it was assessed. Since this was the case, information, and those creating, holding or the subjects of information, would appear public or private in different moments. Perhaps contrary to expectation, the relationship between public and private was not fixed and something to be unearthed, but relational—a public-private division between persons reflecting a public-private division within persons.

Strathern (1992) writes that people’s division and combination—their difference or similarity to others—is the consequence of the fact that something can always be seen from a different angle. New knowledge creates dilemmas over how to categorize and order cases, people and things, seen from

multiple angles, might be arranged, combined and divided along different lines. It is people’s interests in a particular relation that invokes their division and combination. Indeed, practitioners, end-users, the SIC himself, often adopted contrasting and conflicting approaches to the same thing, whether information—in sum or in part—was confidential for example, which for practitioners seeking pattern in the SIC’s decisions over public and private, was problematic. There were no guidelines it seemed they could follow. As each new connection (from a different angle) was invoked in relation, connections seemed partial, as if there was always more to know. This was reflected in Duncan’s particular need for more information before he could make an informed decision about whether information really could be disclosed.

The combination and division of cases was reflected in people’s own combination and division, and as a result of their changing interests and relations. As people’s interests in a relation changed, they underwent endless permutations in form—their own form emerging in accordance with the perspective they disclosed. Practitioners, end-users, and decision-makers, then, might each adopt a different perspective in relation to one another, and on the same thing. Each perspective, relayed in the information produced, might be either ‘public’ or ‘private’. It was categorized differently as people appeared to act in the capacity of persons or the capacity of a larger body—divided or combined, differentiated or undifferentiated, person or thing.

As one of many, persons could be disguised—a specific interest, concern or relation, appearing a general feature of the group. This was a method used by statisticians to conceal ‘persons’ in information. As with the leukaemia case that Stewart described, obscuring the number of individuals with leukaemia in a data set would suggest that an ambiguous number of people held the same characteristics in common, making it more difficult to identify people through their symptoms, thus implying these characteristics were not singularly theirs.

Culture Change

In this chapter I touched on the official rhetorical concerning culture change, what Members of the Scottish Parliament write and say on the subject, and what policy and decision-makers consider it will achieve. I also touched on the responses of FOI practitioners and their colleagues to this change and the expectations placed on them.

FOISA is designed to bring about a of public sector change of culture, from one secrecy to one of openness. This change required people in public authorities, FOI practitioners and their colleagues, to readily disclose information to those who requested it. Such a change requires public authority civil servants to think quite differently about what they do.

Enmeshed in a network of relations on which FOI practitioners depend to locate and retrieve information in response to a request, this information is a product of these relations. Practitioners such as Margaret, an FOI Officer for NHS Glendale, whom I helped prepare for an ‘FOI audit’ regularly met with colleagues for morning coffee and lunch with colleagues and other FOI practitioners to discuss at great

length with each other what they had done at the weekend but also FOI requests with which they were currently dealing. While relations between practitioners and colleagues were sociable, relations between practitioners and applicants were often equally as warm. Colin, another FOI practitioner for NHS Glendale was often on friendly terms with applicants, and would regularly exchange e-mails with them regarding their request for information, or their request for a review. The network of social relations in which practitioners and applicants were enmeshed was replicated at FOISA conferences and meetings at which practitioners liaised, discussed their particular concerns and requests with each other and the SIC, and learnt from the SIC and other practitioners how to comply with FOI. FOISA, it seemed, was both a model forknowledge sharing—facilitated relations between practitioners, and practitioners and applicants— and modelled onknowledge sharing—sociable FOI events were a means through which practitioners could also share and exchange what they knew.

As practitioners shared knowledge at FOISA conferences and meetings, at which they listened to the SIC talk on culture change and about his latest decisions, practitioners such as Morag, a keen advocator of the Act, established with others a common or shared basis on which to think and act. FOI compliance, here, entailed adopting a common footing, and thus the propagation of certain forms, through shared knowledge. It was important to listen carefully to the SIC and his staff and adopt the same approach in order to comply with FOISA. Attending training courses and taking exams on FOISA was another way in which practitioners made sure they complied with the Act, and came into the same knowledge. Duncan also regularly read the SIC’s ‘briefings’ as a means of ensuring he complied. Replication seemed to underpin FOISA: information dissemination at meetings was not only a means of disseminating the message of culture change, but was the culture change itself, made visible in practitioners’ replicated form and the replication of meetings themselves as organizers of these meetings looked to prior or larger meetings for guidance.

While new knowledge and a new way of behaving came with the role of FOI practitioner, practitioners such as Colin, quickly realised that his shared form with the SIC and other FOI advocators created a new division between him and his colleagues. This division was analogous to that between the SIC and the public authority. As a result, the division between the SIC (or the law) and the authority (in its pre-culture change state) shifted to become one that existed between public authority practitioners such as Colin and his colleagues. While responsibilities for making decisions under the Act were devolved, handed down to individual civil servants, devolution seemed to bring the same government-citizen relationship, replicated here in the relationship between Colin and his colleagues. FOISA thus seemed capable of being put to workbeyondits own realm (between different parts, or persons, in the authority as well as the authority and the public). Culture change, here, entailed themigrationof a division.

On the one hand, FOISA was principally socially governed: practitioner’s own personal relationships with colleagues informed what information they located, retrieved, and disclosed to applicants, the form and functions of FOISA meetings at which new social forms were adopted and

further propagated, their roles as FOI Officers. On the other hand, underpinning FOISA was a right of access to information designed to make social and political relations absent—that is, FOI required that social relations played no part in how or where knowledge—in the form of information—travelled. The points is, included in the responsibilities of individual FOI Officers, such as Colin, Duncan and Morag, was the obligation to make absent the very social relations on which their, and their colleagues, activities depended. This required great skill.

I draw on the work of Riles (2000), who describes the activities of UN delegates at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. She shows how delegates, like practitioners, make their own part in the generation of documents at meetings one of a non-differentiated delegate rather than a person with personality. Each level of UN meeting is identical in form and function, and documents generated at one level of meeting are taken to the next and formed the basis of a new document. Different meetings were undifferentiated in the same way the different delegates who participated in the meetings were undifferentiated. The differences between them were a result of the different shared basis that they held in common—each delegate acting, not in his own capacity, but in the capacity of the country they represented. The undifferentiated state of delegates, reflecting the undifferentiated state of UN meetings served to make absent social relations that might otherwise be considered to direct the flow of information and thus the outcome of the meetings themselves.

Riles’ description of UN delegates provides a parallel example useful for thinking about the activities and expectations placed on FOI practitioners here. It is, in particular, useful for highlighting the undifferentiated status of FOI practitioners, who conceiving of themselves as such, were successful at providing information. Of all the relations he contained, practitioners such as Duncan ensured he always acted on a common or shared footing with others so as to make absenthisparticularity. As one of many, rather than one, acting alone, this brilliant manoeuvre made the social relations, that otherwise might appear to inform a practitioners’ actions, disappear. Acting on a common or shared basis in everything they said and did, practitioners made themselves appear independent of social relations that might otherwise be seen to compromise their credibility. Culture change, here, entailed making individual persons absent.

Secrecy and Truth

Chapter four builds on the previous two chapters, chapter two on private and public and chapter three on culture change. Drawing on the arguments of the previous two chapters in which I point to two different ways of knowing—knowing in relation, and knowing in the absence of relations—I ask what happens in light of the intersection of these two ways of knowing? That is, I explore instances of secrecy where there is no secrecy, and practitioners are left bewildered by applicants’ accusations that they conceal the truth. I also explore instances in which people establish different and conflicting notions of the truth, such that there appears no definitive truth. What is at the root of perceptions of ‘secrecy’ and what governs knowledge and what is the truth for practitioners and applicants who seek it out?

This chapter presents different moments in which applicants perceive ‘secrecy’, and offers three key reasons why practitioners were perceived as ‘secretive’ when there were no secrets. Each key instance, or type of concealment, is the outcome of carefully managed subject-object aesthetics on the part of practitioners, which have contrasting and unexpected effects on their relations with applicants. As mentioned in the chapter above, practitioners such as Colin often made sure they acted on a common or shared basis so as to comply with the Act and ensure that their own particular relations or personality were not seen to govern the decisions they made. However, ‘compliance’, here, was a double-edged sword: practitioners’ concealment of relations was both necessary for compliance and brought accusations of secrecy from applicants.

It soon became clear to practitioners such as Samantha and Colin, who were FOI Officers for NHS Glendale, that differences perceived between them and what they each said, different organizations stated, and even different Acts stipulated, would be interpreted by applicants in terms of secrecy. Practitioners such as Colin and Samantha, and even different organization or representatives such as NHS Glendale and the Public Services Ombudsman were perceived by members of the public to be undifferentiated—to always act on a common or shared basis. As elaborated in the chapter above, this constituted the ‘culture change’ FOISA was meant to bring about, and would at the same time guarantee that applicants did get equal access to information: a practitioner’s own personality would be left out of the decision-making process. But because different persons and organizations were indeed perceived as undifferentiated, the differences perceived between them by applicants could only be explained (by the applicants) in terms of ‘secrecy’.

While the knowledge that practitioners such as Colin disclosed in response to a request remained the outcome of their particular relations with practitioners, colleagues and applicants, their non- differentiation concealed the particularity of these relations. The social knowledge that they disclosed was thus received by applicants as objective, ‘de-socialised’ information—although knowledge, here, appeared as information only because it was separated from the social networks out of which it emerged. As a result of the fact that both knowledge and persons appeared independent of the social relations on which they relied, knowledge was also something recipients considered that disclosers either had or did not have, as if an object that could be collected, applied and put to use.

It was as a result of this that recipients of knowledge such as George, a frequent user of FOI, considered knowledge that (in this case) I did not disclose in our meetings, but that he presumed I knew, was due to my secrecy or reluctance to share it. Perceiving knowledge as an object, something that was either known or not known meant people read ‘secrecy’ into people’s silence or lack of articulation of what they are perceived to know. In my relations with George, I could not share with him what he needed me to share. However, as I explained, I would come into knowledge (that he already presumed I ‘knew’) in relation to any material, e-mail correspondence, repeated conversations that he could share with me. But knowledge was not something that I knew in advance of knowing it. Familiar with a model of

knowing in which persons and knowledge travel independently of the person and relations through which they are created, knowledge was conceived by George in the form of an object, not a subject activated in relation.

While the above instances of presumed secrecy point to secrecy as rooted in the absence of relations, knowledge seen in the form of an object that might be revealed or concealed, the third instance was one in which relations were made highly visible. Applicants, such as the one with whom Samantha, Colin and Hector had to deal, who sought information on post-traumatic stress disorder, sought to read the relations implied in information that was disclosed to him—in the form of written e-mail correspondence, conversations and response letters. He was concerned that the relation that Samantha, Colin and Hector shared in common would make Hector partial as an FOI reviewer. Here, relations between practitioners diminished relations between Hector and the applicant, giving rise to accusations of secrecy.

Thus knowledge could be perceived in the form of knowledge—with social relations attached— or in the form of information—knowledge that was separated and independent of social relations. But information also carried implied social relations it seems. While who disclosed the information that a applicant such as George had requested was not something that was generally taken into account, or should affect what he received, George quickly realised that he did receive different information from different people within the authority in response to the same request. While in striking up informal relations with practitioners and taking his request outwith the scope of FOISA, George quickly realised that a practitioner’s position did determine what he received. Information, here, carried relations in as much as relations gave meaning to andfashionedwhat information was given out.

This chapter has explored the way in which, as social relations are made absent, knowledge appears in the form of an independent entity that can be freely disclosed, and is either known or not known, concealed and revealed. This informs a way of knowing that is in some cases at the root of secrecy. But information also embodies relations that applicants can read into disclosed information. Information appears as both an object (with relations concealed), and an object in the form of a subject embodying relations. These subject-object aesthetics inform perceptions of secrecy and the truth.

Power and Agency

Power holds a certain fascination; for academics concerned with how power operates and relations of power between different bodies; and for FOI practitioners, applicants, policy-makers and advocates of FOISA. Power and agency were notions associated with FOISA, in particular due to the perceived axiomatic relationship between knowledge and power. This was one on which decision-makers, practitioners and applicant’s regularly drew. That is, equal information was perceived to provide people with equal power. In this chapter, I both explore the assumptions underlying the relationship between knowledge and power (that underpins FOISA), and throw into question the power analytics of Michel