So long and thanks for the fish.........

Well, this is my last ever post on the blog...I'm hanging up my blog hat as of now.....

I’m pleased to announce that the blog will continue once I’ve left the University in a few weeks; it will be run and edited by the Campaign for Freedom of Information who will maintain the site on broadly similar lines as it is now. I'm delighted they taken the blog on (I look forward to being a reader of it myself!) and they will bring their excellent knowledge and insight on FOI that I'm sure everyone will find valuable. They will be taking over formally from the 5th March.

I'm sure I will still come into contact with many you in my new role, thanks again to everyone for their support over the last 4 years - I wouldn't have carried on for four years if it hadn't have been stimulating and enjoyable. I've been measuring page views since May 2003 and we've had 186001 to date, in 2003 the blog only managed 1893 views in the entire year - thanks to the many people who gave encouragement in that early period so that I carried on. It is also great there many other blogs on FOI now and the creation of a useful online FOI community commenting on and sharing posts etc across the many blogs before here in the UK and internationally.

Steve

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION BILL ADVANCES IN NIGERIA

From the Open Society Insitute Justice Initiative:

Following Adoption by Parliament, Bill Awaits Presidential Signature

Abuja, February 22, 2007—The Open Society Justice Initiative today hailed the Nigerian Parliament's final approval of a harmonized freedom of information bill and called on President Olusegun Obasanjo to sign it into law quickly.

The bill, if it becomes law, will guarantee Nigerian citizens the right to access government-held information. Nigeria is set to become just the fourth African nation with a freedom of information law, following South Africa, Uganda, and Angola.

"This is a significant moment in Nigeria's history," said Maxwell Kadiri, a staff attorney with the Justice Initiative's Abuja office. "With President Obasanjo's signature, this new law should set Nigeria on the path to more open and more accountable government."

The bill has been pending in Parliament since 1999. The Nigerian House of Representatives approved one version of the bill in 2004, and the Senate unanimously approved a slightly different version in late 2006. The two versions were reconciled and adopted by the full Parliament yesterday. Now the bill requires the assent of President Obasanjo in order to become law. The Justice Initiative and other advocates expressed hope that this step would take place without delay.

The bill's passage is a significant victory for Nigeria's freedom of information advocates, who have championed its passage for over eight years. It is also an impetus for other African nations to enact similar laws and for those nations that already have freedom of information laws to enforce them more vigorously.

"This bill enables the Obasanjo administration to claim as its legacy the foundations of open and transparent government in Nigeria. President Obasanjo has always said he wants to change the country for the better and ensure the people's business is done," said Kadiri. "Through this bill, he can realize this ambition. We look forward to his signing it into law at the earliest possible opportunity."

Nottingham City Council issued practice recommedation by ICO

Nottingham CC have been issued with a practice recommendation by the ICO following the recommendations made by the Information Tribunal in its decision from September 2006.

The ICO has made recommendations on the following areas relating to the S45 Code:

- Advice & Assistance
- Transferring requests
- Complaints procedure

Plus:

"In addition, the Commissioner has asked The National Archives to conduct an
assessment of the records management capabilities of the Council. This assessment
will take place later this year and will form the basis of a separate practice
recommendation to be issued by the Commissioner under the section 46 Code of
Practice on the management of records."

USA: browser toolbar for govt info.

Free Government Information have released this free browser toolbar they hope will
increase awareness and usage of government information in the US.

European Commission announces consultation on the regime for access to documents of the European institutions

The following has been posted to the EC Transparency initiative website

Access to Documents: The Commission will launch a consultation in spring 2007 where the public will be invited to comment on the regime for access to documents of the European institutions. The outcome will be taken into account when drafting the proposal for the amendment of Regulation 1049/2001.

Read regulation 1049/2001

The statewatch website has useful section on case law relating to the regulations and a general overview

New website Plots UK’s 60,000 Phone Masts

I received this press release for new website that highlights an important example of re-use of public data disclosed under the EIRs. Last September the ICO served a Decision Notice under the Environmental Information Regulations ordering Ofcom to provide all data on mobile phone base stations held within its Sitefinder database. Ononemap has added the data to a map using the grid coordinates .

The the phone mast data on the website is reproduced with the following copyright statement:

© Ofcom. Information reproduced accurately and in context from the Mobile Phone Base Station Database and with adherence to the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. OnOneMap displays the mast information as per the aforementioned database as of December 2006.

The press release

OnOneMap Plots UK’s 60,000 Phone Masts
Public can now access information about phone masts in their area.

London, 19th February 2007 – OnOneMap, the company that plots useful information on one map at www.ononemap.com, today switches on a new feature enabling users to see phone mast locations. Users can opt to plot icons representing the location of actual phone masts by searching for any location in the United Kingdom and ticking the phone masts tick box in “Map options”.

Data for nearly 60,000 mobile telephony, railway and emergency services masts is available. Some basic information about each mast is available by clicking on the mast icon.

“OnOneMap believes wholeheartedly in the provision of information to the public in a highly usable and accessible manner. We have already made it possible to search for properties for sale, sold properties, secondary schools and supermarkets in one place and we plan to make further data sets available throughout 2007” says Philip Sheldrake, co-founder and Managing Director, OnOneMap.

I've looked at the site and from a functionality point of view is impressive. The site use the google maps open source code to create the map on which the data is overlaid.

Standards commissioner urged to investigate MP travel expenses

Taken from Personneltoday.com, the disclosure of MP's travel expenses may have some far reaching effects:

Parliamentary standards commissioner Sir Phillip Mawer has been urged to investigate “huge discrepancies” in the travel expenses of MPs.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, MPs are required to reveal details of their car, taxi, air and rail travel.

But figures published recently for MPs' travel expenses have alarmed the TaxPayers’ Alliance, which is writing to the commissioner to request he investigate a “number of MPs who appear to be abusing the system”.

A changing attitude to information in government?

This story in The Guardian at the weekend - "Ministers wake to potential of people power on the net" starts to indicate a possible new direction in terms of a broader government information policy. Whilst campaigners have been concerned about recent threats to the FOIA in terms of a restrictive fees regime & an attempt to remove Parliament from FOI it would appear in the broader areas of open government and proactive release a more open approach is being considered. The Guardian reported that government is considering these issues:

The government plans to put more information on the net, including health and safety records of restaurants, and local planning applications.

Whitehall officials regard it as inevitable that information-sharing forums will develop to discuss the quality of public sector performance, including individual GPs and teachers, as well as bad garages, rogue builders, and holiday destinations

This can added to recent reports that government will consider in future publishing legal advice: the Constitutional affairs Minister Harrier Harman, broke ranks to declare that in future the attorney general's legal advice to the government should be made publicly available (though whether is this a formal emerging position or policy pitch for the deputy leadership contest is unclear) (also see The Guardian)

According to the article Tom Steinberg from mysociety appears to having some influence over this new emerging Government Information Policy (his My Society group were commissioned by the Govt to set up the highly successful No10 petitioning system). In a recent interview Steinberg suggested: "citizens being allowed to comment and exchange tips on government websites such as HM Revenue and Custom's e-tax service" for example.

Mysociety are also behind the Freedom of Information Filer and Archive project which has recently recieved funding and is under development.

Another possible new policy hinted at in the first article I referred to was "permitting civil servants to post information on sites", an issue recently raised on the ideal government blog.

These new policy ideas appear to be drawing on the emerging concept of "information commons" - "Information resources shared by a community of producers and consumers in an open access environment" (definition source). This paper is good intro to the concept: The Information Commons: a public policy report by Nancy Kranich. View PDF Published by Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.

MP's travel expenses released following Tribunal ruling

Liberal Democrat Norman Baker MP has received & published a breakdown of MPs' £5m annual travel expenses following on from the Information Tribunal ruling to uphold the ICO decision to order the House of Commons to disclose the information to him. The HoC have decided not to take the appeal further to the High Court.

Media coverage:

The Guardian

The BBC, the story also featured on the 10 O'Clock news last night and did also make a very brief mention of the proposed FOI amendment bill that would potentially exempt the House of Commons from the FOIA.

Outline data

Members' mileage

Top five air travel claimants

1. Alistair Carmichael, Lib Dem, Orkney & Shetland, £34,347

2. Eric Joyce, Lab, Falkirk, £30,578

3. Angus MacNeil, SNP, Western Isles, £19,919

4. Gregory Campbell, DUP, East Londonderry, £17,733

5. Peter Robinson, DUP, Belfast East £16,126

Top five mileage claimants

1. Janet Anderson, Lab, Rossendale & Darwen, £16,612

2. Laurence Robertson, Con, Tewkesbury, £12,015

3. Eric Joyce, Lab, Falkirk, £9,647

4. Stephen O'Brien, Con, Eddisbury, £9,878

5. Daniel Kawczynski, Con, Shrewsbury & Atcham, £8,866

Top five rail fare claimants

1. Alan Milburn, Lab, Darlington, £16,782

2. John Grogan, Lab, Selby, £13,934

3. Ann Cryer, Lab, Keighley, £12,668

4. Sir Gerald Kaufman, Lab, Manchester Gorton, £12,434

5. Phil Willis, Lib Dem, Harrogate and Knaresborough, £11,753

Top five taxi and car hire claimants

1. Richard Bacon, Con, South Norfolk £5,685

2. Stephen Dorrell, Con, Charnwood £4,933

3. John Thurso, Lib Dem, Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, £4,717

4. John Grogan, Lab, Selby, £4,063

5. Nigel Evans, Con, Ribble Valley, £3,430

The full release is on the House of Comnmons website

Ibrahim Hasan's monthly podcast

Ibrahimn's fourth episode of his monthly podcast program, designed to bring busy public sector practitioners up to date with the latest developments in Freedom of Information(FOI) law, has just been published.

-news about the governments fees consultation
-access to commercially sensitive information
-the application of FOI to the BBC
-the vexed question of access to dead peoples’ information
-MP’s expenses claims
-access to lists of addresses of council properties
AND whether information about David Beckham can be released

Ibrahim also has comment and analysis from Martin Rossenbaum of the BBC and Elaine Fletcher of Eversheds solicitors.

You can listen to all podcast at : www.informationlaw.org.uk

The raw feed is : http://informationlaw.jellycast.com/podcast/feed/5

Launch of the HE Business Classification Scheme and Records Retention Schedule

Third iteration has now been made available after consultation and review. Might also be of interested to those in other sectors.

Also see the RM infokit

Wolfowitz Launches Probe Into Leak of Board Meeting Minutes

From www.freedominfo.org:

Washington, DC, February 9, 2007 - World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has launched an internal investigation into who provided Fox News with the "raw" minutes of a World Bank board meeting in January, a document that transparency advocates say should routinely be made public, according to an article posted on freedominfo.org's IFTI Watch column today.

Freedom of Information Amendment Bill featured on BBC Newsweek Scotland

This item went out on the BBC Radio programme Newsweek Scotland on Saturday - contained a valuable discussion of the current FOI(Amendment) Bill - comment from Nick Harvey MP (Lib Dem, Member of HC Commission, and of Public Bill Committee on the Bill) and Martin Rosenbaum of the BBC. Harvey stated he thought the Bill was "unlikely" to suceed and also stated he was against the Bill.

Listen again

(thanks to Barry for flagging this up)

New disclosure log

A new log for Bournemouth Borough Council has been added to the index

European Court of Justice rejects Sison appeal against denial of access to EU documents

The European Court of Justice has rejected Professor Jose Maria Sison's appeal against the EU Council's decision to refuse access to the documents relating to his inclusion on the terrorist list. More details on the Statewatch website

Government Spending (Website) Bill

The above Bill was introduced by the Conservatives in late December. The Bill has a basic requirement that:

The Treasury shall create, or cause to be created, a publicly searchable website containing information about expenditure by all government departments and executive agencies

As previously mentioned on the blog, the Bill is based on similar legsilation passed in the US last year. See previous post

Read the Bill

Read the 2nd reading debate on the HoL (26th Jan.)

The Bill extends the proactive release elements of FOI specfically to information about govt spending. Baroness Noakes called this Bill a "companion" to FOIA when moving the 2nd reading.

Interestingly the Bill also states that the Information Commissioner will oversee compliance: S6: 1. "The Information Commissioner shall have the power to examine compliance 2."The Secretary of State may make regulations which facilitate the exercise of the power of the Information Commissioner under this Act.
with this Act in response to a request by any person or otherwise."

The Bill was committed to a "Committee of the Whole House", the next stage.

Note to last post

You can listen back to the Freedom of Information(amendement) Bill Committee online

Don't forget as well (was a busy day on FOI in Parliament today!)....

The adjournment debate on the FOI Fees Regulations started at 2.30 this afternoon in Westminster Hall, watch here

Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill - news

The above Bill has been featured here and elsewhere quite a bit over the last few weeks - it would remove both houses from the FOIA and exempt (currently with PI test) any form of correspondence from Members to public bodies -via a new s37A. The Bill reached Committee stage today unopposed. This article in the Guardian had previously indicated that that the Govt were split on the issue of allocating time to the Bill.

I have heard that the Bill Committee met this morning and the Bill went through, not sure whether to report stage or third reading though.

Latest versions of the Bill- some further amendments had been made prior to today

- The Campaign for FOI prepared this briefing for MPs

-The House of Commons library have also produced this research note

The membership of the Public Bill Committee that considered the Bill today was:

Chairmen: Mr Martin Caton

Mr James Arbuthnot
Mr Tim Boswell
Mr Nicholas Brown
Mr Tom Clarke
Mr Fraser Kemp
Jim Dowd
Mr Mike Hall
Nick Harvey
Mr George Howarth
Mr Greg Knight
Martin Linton
Peter Luff
David Maclean
Bridget Prentice
David Simpson
Mr John Spellar
Mr Don Touhig
Mr John Whittingdale

Scotland: Appeal goes to Lord's over childhood leukaemia statistics complaint

The Scottish Information Commissioner's decision was affirmed in December 2006 by the First Court of Session opinion that refused the appeal by the Common Services Agency. After the the Lords appeal the case could still go to the European Court of Human Rights. (thanks to David for heads-up on this)

--Read the Court of Session opinion (Dec 2006)

--Scottish ICO decision from 2005

Media report - The Herald - Appeal to Lords over bid to keep leukaemia death figures private
"A Scottish NHS body which was ordered to reveal childhood leukaemia statistics under freedom of information law is to make a final appeal to the House of Lords in an attempt to keep the figures secret. In the first case of its kind, the Common Services Agency (CSA) is to challenge a recent ruling by the Court of Session ordering it to hand over its records under FoI. The CSA has resisted disclosure since January 2005, when Michael Collie, a researcher for Green MSP Chris Ballance, first asked for its records on leukaemia in under-15s in Dumfries and Galloway."

Constitutional Affairs Committee - freedom of information follow up

Plenty of activity on FOI at present.....the CA Committee have just announced an evidence session as well:

Press notice No. 09 of Session 2006-07

5 February 2007

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION FOLLOW UP

Announcement of evidence session

The Constitutional Affairs Committee will hold a one-off evidence session on Freedom of Information on Tuesday 6 March.

The DCA has published new FOI Fees Regulations in draft, which it states ‘will allow public authorities to take into account more comprehensively the work involved in dealing with an FOI request’. The DCA’s review indicated that these changes would lead to ‘a substantial increase in the number of FOI requests which would exceed the (cost) threshold’ and could therefore be refused.

In its June 2006 report Freedom of Information: one year on the Committee heard that the existing fees regime was working well and that since authorities could already include time spent finding information in their calculations of chargeable limits, the argument that officials were spending weeks finding information would not "justify a review of the fees regulations, but it would demonstrate a serious shortcoming in some public authorities’ records management systems". It expressed the view that it saw no reason to review the fees and felt that "frivolous" requests could be dealt with in the existing provisions.

Chairman of the Committee Rt Hon Alan Beith said:

"We are extremely concerned that the Government might go ahead with these changes, which are very widely opposed. That's why we are taking further evidence at this stage."

Submissions are invited from relevant interested parties. The Committee would also like to receive examples of requests made under FOI which resulted in the release of new information, but which might fall above the proposed new cost threshold (including a brief overview of the type of information made available and the uses made/benefits derived from the information released).

Call for evidence:

Submissions relating to the terms of reference above are invited from relevant interested parties. These should be sent to the Clerk of the Committee at the address above by Friday 16 February 2007. An electronic version in MS Word or Rich Text format should also be submitted, either by e-mail to conaffcom@parliament.uk or on a disk and this should be accompanied by a letter stating clearly who the submission is from, together with relevant contact details. Submissions should be as brief as possible, and certainly no more than 3,000 words. Paragraphs should be numbered for ease of reference, and it would be helpful to include a brief executive summary. Attention is drawn to the guidance on the submission of evidence which can be found at www.parliament.uk/commons/selcom/witguide.htm

Notes:

1. A transcript of the session will be available (within 5 days) on the Reports and Publications page of the Committee’s website

2. The Committee’s report can be found here

3. Committee Membership is as follows: Rt Hon Alan Beith MP (Chairman), David Howarth MP, Siân James MP, Mr Piara S Khabra MP, Jessica Morden MP, Julie Morgan MP, Robert Neill MP, Mr Andrew Tyrie MP, Rt Hon Keith Vaz MP, Dr Alan Whitehead MP, Jeremy Wright MP

Freedom of Information fees debate

Westminster Hall Private Members’ Debates
7th February
14.30-16.00 Freedom of Information fees regulation - Mr Don Touhig

Civil service bloggers

Over at the Ideal Government blog they've been discussing whether Civil Servants should blog and (rather tongue in cheek) what a civil service blogging code could contain

Recent HM Treasury FOI disclosures

From the HMT Disclosure log:

Subject: Appointment of Al Gore as advisor to Chancellor of the Exchequer
Date: 1 February 2007

Text of request:
The terms under which ex-US vice president Al Gore has been appointed as international environmental adviser to Gordon Brown

Text for disclosure:

The terms of Mr Gore's appointment are below. Mr Gore will not be remunerated for this role, by HM Treasury or by another UK Government body.

PDF file of letter to Al Gore: 23/11/07
PDF file of Emissions Trading: UK Government Vision

Subject: Meetings at No 11 Downing Street
Date: 1 February 2007
Text of request:

Requests for information relating to meetings held at No 11 Downing Street and correspondence with the Charity Commission.

Text for disclosure:
The releases provide information relating to the use of No 11 Downing Street and correspondence with the Charity Commission.

PDF of note regarding use of No 11 Downing Street
PDF of Charity Commission e-mail dated 22 January 2007
PDF of HM Treasury e-mail dated 25 January 2007, with two attachments
PDF of further e-mail from HM Treasury dated 29 January 2007

Media update

Press Gazette - Freedom of Information Campaign breakthrough
"Press Gazette scored a significant breakthrough in its campaign to save the Freedom of Information Act this week as Government minister Baroness Ashton gave an assurance that new FoI regulations will not be rushed through."

The Guardian - commment is free - Maurice Frankel - Less is not more
"MPs have extraordinary control over freedom of information disclosures - they must not become exempt from the legislation via an undebated bill."

The Guardian - Harman breaks ministerial ranks over loss of public trust in attorney general
"The constitutional affairs minister, Harriet Harman, is to break ranks by arguing that public trust in the role of the attorney general has been undermined, and this should be addressed by requiring his legal advice, including on issues such as the legality of military action, to be published as a matter of course."