Three government departments have each had six Freedom of Information notices served on them.
The Information Commissioner's Office, which polices FoI, has served 91 formal information notices on public authorities since 2005, including 34 on government departments. Such notices are used either in relation to a complaint or to assess compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.
The ICO issued six notices each against the Home Office, Department of Health and the House of Commons. The Cabinet Office received four, while the department for business — which has been renamed twice in the period — had three.
Other departments received one or none, according to a written parliamentary answer from justice minister Michael Wills to Labour backbencher Gordon Prentice.
The Home Office is also one of four state-sector organisations criticised by the ICO for failing to develop a model publication scheme, under which organisations set out the information they automatically release to the public, by the legal deadline of 1 January, 2009.
The other three of 30 surveyed by the ICO were the Department for Energy and Climate Change, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Government Equalities Office.
The ICO research also found that only three of 30 organisations automatically release the minutes and agendas of senior management meetings: the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Department for International Development and the National Assembly for Wales.
"Public bodies need to be more open about how they spend public money," said information commissioner Christopher Graham. "This report highlights that too many of the biggest public authorities could easily be more transparent. There is a real appetite to know how our taxes are spent and what is done in our name — especially in the current environment.
"Public bodies can help themselves by publishing more information up front before they are asked. I will be visiting public bodies to press home the advantages of openness and the importance of complying with the [Freedom of Information Act]."
Five years after the act was introduced, the ICO is receiving record numbers of complaints on FoI, and still has 425 cases that are more than a year old. Graham said that speeding up complaint handling is his priority, and that the ICO will continue to close as many cases as possible as an "honest broker" between the complainant and the public body.
