Mark Weiler, is an FOI expert who has kindly contributed resources and his time to help Harvey understand FOI issues in preparation for the OGP meetings in Brazil.  Below is a talk he shared from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society entitled Open Government Data for Open Accountability by Felipe Heusser, Berkman Center Fellow. 

Mark provides some context about the content of the video here:

As background for those who might be interested in watching it, the video is of a lunch seminar hosted on Feb 7th at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. The presenter is a visiting fellow and current PhD candidate at the London School of Economics. 

While he starts the presentation saying that FOI is obsolete, by the end of the seminar he says he thinks FOI and Open Gov Data are complementary.   This change occurs because during his presentation he skirts around the fundamental difference between current open gov data policies and current FOI laws. When it comes down to it, the open government data policies (that I've heard of) are based on a few elected people  (e.g., prime minister, premier, city council, etc.) ultimately deciding what info people can access (hence all the consulting that goes on). Whereas FOI legislation is about individuals deciding what info they will access.  The other participants in the presentation recognize this and draw it to his attention at 38:00 and then again at 41:00 and again at 49:30 and again at 52:00 and 63:30.  He responds at 50:10 and 65:00.

I think an illuminating discussion is not about FOI legislation being obsolete but about how to integrate the best of Open Gov Data and FOI. This point is made by a participant at 64:35.  Necessary to this discussion are questions of how to make public information more usable to an increasing number of people (e.g. Michael Gurstein's notion of effective use).