Wild variation in iIrish information charges
LIMERICK County Council claimed it would cost more than €1,500 and 55 man-hours to provide the information on consultants' costs which other local authorities provided free

Read more at the Irish Independent

Irish Freedom of Information Act applied to .ie registry

An Irish web activist has used the country's Freedom of Information Act to force University College, Dublin, which set up the registry, to disclose documents that detail its operation, under accusations of mismanagement and overpricing. 12/05/2003

Source: Outlaw.com

Irish Freedom of Information (Amendment) Act, 2003 available

TheIrish Freedom of Information (Amendment) Act, 2003
has been published on the Irish Information Commisioner's website

Irish Information Comissioner's Annual Report Published

The Information Commissioner today launched his Annual Report for 2002, which can be viewed on the OIC What's New page at
http://www.irlgov.ie/oic/new.htm

Note: You can sign up for update emails at the Information Commioner's Webiste

Openess of Government Records Benefits all

Article in Government Computer News (published in the US) comparing FOI culture in the US and EU

Edition : 28th April 2003

JISC FOI Model Publication Scheme Pilots

Universities UK and the Standing Committee of Principal's tasked JISC with leading the development of a 'model publication scheme' to be approved by the Office of the Information Commissioner and offered to all FE/HE institutions to act as the basis of their own publication schemes.

As part of the process of developing the model publication scheme there are funded 6 institutions: 3 FE and 3 HE, to test an early draft of the model scheme and to report back with their findings.

The first outputs from five out of six of these pilots have now been received and are available from JISC
As well as their draft publication schemes as based on the model, each pilot site will also be submitting a case study report by the end of May. These reports will also be available from the same page.

My article on the implementation of the UK FOIA has been published in Freepint

Available in HTML or PDF

Article on FOI post 9/11

Excellent article on the Information Freedom Vs Security tensions since 9/11 and the access to information that has been lost

Government Doublethink: Protection or Supression in Information
by Miriam Drake • Professor Emerita • Library, Georgia Institute of Technology
Taken from Searcher magazine May 2003

Irish FOIA uncovers that US arms were carried through Shannon without approval

"Aircraft chartered by the US military carried troops and weapons of warthrough Shannon airport without permission from the Irish government up to mid-Januarythis year, documents seen by the Irish Independent have confirmed.

The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that civil servants in the Department of Transport noted that aircraft carrying troops and munitions were not seeking permission to land in Shannon, contrary to regulations which have existed since the early 1970s"

Source: Irish Independent Please note that registration is required