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Two-thirds of respondents identified cost as a significant barrier. Individual responses spoke volumes. "There is a lack of joined-up government," said one council officer. "I know the information exists but I am not able to find it," remarked another. "I am frustrated by departmental boundaries," said a third.

Another survey, commissioned by document management company The Stationery Office (TSO), found that 60% of respondents expected a rise in the number of requests for information, but only 27% had set a budget to comply with the act.

The findings raised serious questions about where the necessary funds would come from to pay for the needed data cleansing programmes and document management, customer relationship management and records management systems. There also seemed surprisingly little movement towards changing underlying business processes and procedures.

Although the surveys were commissioned by technology suppliers with a clear interest in raising awareness of FOI-compliance shortcomings, Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, says that their findings are still instructive.

There is little question that many organisations have left things until "the last minute" before thinking seriously about FOI, he says. For a sizeable minority, FOI is simply not high enough on the agenda. "Some authorities are clearly investing a lot in records management and training, but there are many others that are thinking that they can get away with treating it all as if it is 'business as usual'. They are the ones that will cause the most problems," he says.

Big stick

There is a clear incentive to comply with the act. The law gives citizens the right to access a broad swathe of non-personal information held by public sector bodies including central government departments, local councils, hospitals, schools and the police. (The right to access personal information is covered by the Data Protection Act.) If requests for information are refused, individuals can complain to the office of the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, a regulator with sweeping powers to seek fines and even short prison sentences against people who refuse court orders to release information.

One of Thomas's two deputies, Graham Smith, acknowledges that even wielding such a substantial stick will not necessarily ensure that compliance is universal. "This will totally transform the way the public sector works and I'm not sure how prepared the sector is for that," he told a recent local government conference.

The compliance challenge is part logistical, part technical. "The guiding principle is that IT will be an indispensable element in compliance - but it cannot act on its own," says Martha Bennett, an analyst with market research group Giga.

"Get to know what information you have - until you've done that, you can't even begin," adds David Allcock, director of technology at In-Form Consult, a specialist advisor on document and information management issues. There is no point throwing precious IT resources at FOI compliance, he says, unless the project will cut down on wasteful practices such as inefficient records handling procedures.

Processes have to change, too, before IT systems are overhauled. Chris Haynes, a senior government advisor on e-government, says that many files are still managed in a "sloppy" fashion within the civil service. "Filing has typically been left to a junior clerk and now it's moving upstream. Today, more than ever, the public sector needs to adopt an information management portfolio approach," he says.

Sound records

In order to respond to FOI requests, information held by public authorities must be subject to sound record-keeping practices. As the Act itself points out, "any freedom of information legislation is only as good as the quality of the records to which it provides access." That means that IT buyers may first plump for new records management software - technology that automates tasks associated with records-keeping, from declaration to disposal.

While the aim of the act is to make information more readily available to the public, not all documents will be approved for access. That could result in additional technology requirements to ensure that staff only provide documents that have been approved for release. In addition, measures must be put in place to ensure that records and documents can be 'cleansed' of exempt information.

"If a document or record contains exempt information as well as information that can be released, the document or record will have to be provided, with the exempt parts removed," says Giga's Bennett. This area will likely need close attention: deleted parts of a Microsoft Word document can be made visible if the 'track changes' function is activated, for example. Revision histories might also reveal sensitive information.

Finally, in addition to having workflow elements in place that can deal with individual information requests, public bodies may also need to ensure that an audit trail is kept of how the request was dealt with. This will offer some protection in the case, for example, of an information tribunal being ordered by the Information Commissioner. Both document cleansing and audit trail capabilities are standard features of enterprise content management (ECM) systems.

Facing up to such challenges, the majority of public sector bodies have implemented some form of document and content management system and now seem on course to comply. East Hampshire District Council, for one, is confident that it is on top of things - and as a result of its FOI efforts is now capable of delivering better general information services. It has implemented an IBM-based content management system capable of handling records management processes across about one-third of the authority. The results have been impressive so far. Land search enquiries, for example, that can take some local councils as long as six weeks to process are taking East Hampshire just five working days.

"Our aim is that, ultimately, all records will be held electronically and managed effectively," says Barry Keen, head of information and communications technology at the council. "For our residents this will mean quicker more efficient service delivery as we improve our ability to retrieve stored information such as council tax payment records and planning information."

But for every East Hampshire, there are countless more organisations just grasping the nettle of FOI. The true test of how prepared the public sector is will be reflected in the workload of the Information Commissioner's office. The expectation, at least among campaigners for open government, is that his in-tray will be stacked high with complaints come January.