There is an 18 hour limit on how long a university can spend answering a request. Some universities appear to know where everything is and make extensive use of computers. Others describe how they depend on unstructured manual filing systems where even the simplest question involves weeks of work. Think through each of the steps likely to be involved in responding to the request and don't ask for anything that you think would take more than perhaps a full day of work to prepare. Work out which questions are the most important. If a university say the request will take too long to answer in full we can then opt for the priority answers.    

When suggesting a request think through how the responses could be categorised. It may be easier to ask for a statistic. League tables can then be readily assembled from the results. There is however nothing wrong with us asking each university to describe how they handle an issue and publishing the 145 responses.

Beware of asking questions that are too easy to answer. If you asked a university whether they were energy efficient they would most probably answer yes. Instead you could ask how much they spent each year on gas and electricity plus the number of full time equivalent staff and students. From that information an energy cost per head could be worked out and compared with other universities.