Better than asking: an experiment on the effectiveness of FOI requests

In July 2015 the government appointed a new independent commission to look into how the law on freedom of information (FOI) is working. Having received 30,000 pieces of evidence, the commission has also managed to unite the Guardian and the Daily Mail against it while Labour has responded with its own alternative review. Here, Ben Worthy, Peter John, and Matia Vannoni explain how their field experiment provides evidence that FOI requests work, and that they are twice as likely to get a response than informal requests.