Media Roundup

Zdnet 5th Jan- FoI opens up intelligence files

New Scientist -Environmental information laws slipped quietly into place

Daily Telegraph 6th Jan - Public to know what EU pays to farmers
"The public will be able to find out how much any farmer is paid in subsidy from next year under the Freedom of Information Act, Lord Whitty, the food and farming minister, told farmers yesterday."

SupplyManagement.com - Procurement’s tricky balancing act
"The impact of the Freedom of Information Act on public procurement is clear in only one respect – it will be big. David Arminas identifies the likely battlegrounds"

Guardian 5th Jan - Italy 'to export nuclear waste to UK'
"The Guardian, meanwhile, is challenging the government's refusal to publish details of its contracts allowing Italy to send nuclear waste to Britain"

Guardian Online section 6th Jan- Second sight
"A back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that if the government were to keep all of the emails for every single one of the six million-ish civil servants in the UK, it wouldn't be that much data. Let's say each of them gets 100 emails every day (excluding junk deleted by filters) and each message is 5KB: that amounts to roughly a petabyte of data. Large companies seem to be able to manage this amount of data without too much trouble - as a comparison"

Guardian Online section 6th Jan - Ask a Policeman
"Complying with the Freedom of Information Act will be a stiff challenge for most public bodies, but as Simon Bisson reports, the police are showing us how it's done in Suffolk"

Guardian 6th Jan - Post Office names branches to be closed
"The Post Office yesterday caved in to demands that it release details of its sub-post office closure programme and the whereabouts of local offices scheduled to close."

The Times 5th Jan - This is the hour of the clever nerd
"The new Act opens a chamber of secrets, but only if journalists remember their old skills"