Unfortunately, not all data held by an organisation is generated and held in a publishable format.
The data in this example is created incidentally within email chains as part of a broader process.
It's really not cost effective to publish real-time data that's been requested by these firms.
So in principle, I agree that where there is substantial data held that the public are interested in, it should be published. However, it's not feasible or cost effective to publish all data or records held by a public organisation.
Fully in favour of this and we are making efforts to publish as much of our data publicly as we can. We have set up an open data portal for this purpose.
My country differs from Germany in that our Freedom of Information laws are much broader and allow anyone to request virtually any record held by a public organisation, with the grounds for refusal being narrower. For example, generic day to day email exchanges between low level public officials are requestable and we have to argue why it is against the public interest to prevent releasing them.
While we're trying to publish as much data that is of public interest ad possible, it's proving very difficult to anticipate many of these requests.
In my organisation in particular - we're receiving requests from consultation firms outside the EU on costings for certain services. So we(The taxpayer) are essentially doing their research for them.
As a freedom of information officer for a public body in another EU country, I feel that some of these changes such as the restriction of requests to EU citizens are inevitable in my country too.
The volume of FOI requests we get is huge and they are more time intensive than ever, due to the fact most are now written by llms.
I see no reason why the taxpayers of any EU country should be footing the bill for requests from non EU citizens. These requests take a significant amount of public sector resources to compile records and deliver decisions.
Given this, why should a non-EU citizen's request be held in equal esteem to EU citizens'?
It comes down to the intent behind these laws. Is it to provide transparency to the citizens that government are accountable to or is it to provide records/information to anyone from anywhere in the world.
The data in this example is created incidentally within email chains as part of a broader process.
It's really not cost effective to publish real-time data that's been requested by these firms.
So in principle, I agree that where there is substantial data held that the public are interested in, it should be published. However, it's not feasible or cost effective to publish all data or records held by a public organisation.