By: Felix Marwick | Friday, July 06, 2012 6:00 AM

If there's one thing I've noticed over the last 18 months, and more particularly this year, it's that getting information out of Government departments and ministerial offices is getting progressively harder.

I'd be tempted to use the "blood from a stone" metaphor but I fear it would actually be easier to get blood from a stone that to get information from some of our public agencies right now.

Government agencies have a statutory obligation to give a response to request for information within 20 working days.

I can say that after filing around 40 or so formal Official Information Act requests this year I've had just one responded to within that time frame.

Without fail all of the others have been subject to time extensions ranging from 15 to 60 working days.

A few years ago I could ring ACC and get answers to questions the same day. This year, on one request, ACC took four months to respond only to eventually say they wouldn't answer my questions.

It beggars belief that it took 16 weeks for them to come to that decision. But given recent events involving ACC maybe this isn't surprising.

The Department of Building and Housing took the best part of five months to answer a information request about the CTV building collapse. Initially they tried to charge $16,000 to provide the information.

Last year we tried to get information on car crushing legislation. Efforts to get details were stymied, stonewalled, and otherwise mucked around. Strangely no details on prosecutions had been held centrally, or had been collated. The only way to get the information would have been to have OIA the records of every District Court in the country.

It makes you wonder how the Minister subsequently managed to have such details magically at her fingertips when the same information was so hard for media to obtain.

The days of being able to ring an agency and get same day information, or even interviews with an official, are becoming a thing of the past.

All too often such requests are intercepted by communications staff gatekeepers who either treat the request as an OIA, or will only provide a written response or statement.

Decision makers are increasingly being insulated from accountability, it's something that frustrates journalists and should be a concern to the public.

There are some major reforms underway in our public service right now, explanations are owed about their implications and impacts.