I like Michael Gove: like Eric Pickles, he keeps happy 1980s memories of Spitting Image alive just by having a face that, even in repose, looks like a caricature. But Mr. Gove has, as described in Chris Cook’s story in the Financial Times, apparently presides over a wrong-headed approach to FOI that shows once again […]
The Cabinet Office, run by the urbane and slightly saturnine Francis Maude, champions the Government’s Transparency agenda. Transparency is the process of publishing (or obliging others to publish) data on a wide variety of subjects. Although Transparency and FOI are clearly nodding acquaintances, they don’t spend a lot of time together socially. Transparency is about […]
I reviewed some Information Commissioner FOI decisions recently for a presentation, and as always, I was drawn to the vexatious ones, both actual and alleged. There’s an intriguing one where a resident had a vehicular disagreement with a council lawnmower and made FOIs as the insurance case went on. I’ve had my fair share of […]
Last month, a participant in the London riots was convicted of stealing £3.50 worth of bottled water, and sentenced to six months in prison. Another lad would have been jailed for the theft of £1 of chewing gum had he not been under 15. If either stole 100,000 people’s details and sold them, they could […]
Paul Whitehouse had a Fast Show character called Archie, a pub bore constantly talking about a chosen profession being the “hardest game in the world… done it meself see..”. Whilst I loved (most of) my five years as a local government FOI officer, I have my Archie moments about it, especially when I remember certain […]
I had intended this blog to cover all aspects of information governance including marketing, but unfortunately, my anorak’s habit of reading terms and conditions has already got the better of me in a possibly irrelevant way.In Waitrose’s weekly magazine, they had a competition sponsored by Jordan’s Cereals to win a weekend in Norfolk. As always, […]
When I lived in Wigan, the most common response to seeing a copy of the local weekly, the Wigan Observer, was to turn to the page that showed who had been up in front of the magistrates. Like most people, what I wanted to know was whether anyone I had been to school with had […]
Last week, David Cameron asserted that “we will not let any phoney concerns about human rights” prevent the publication of images that might help identify rioters. I didn’t hear anyone raising such concerns, but Cameron clearly felt that the privacy and human rights mob were waiting in the wings to take over where the looters had […]
I am not the most enthusiastic fan of social media. I love new technology, but at some point I associated social media with children (I know, I was wrong), and only now do I see the error of my ways. I use Facebook solely for the purpose of entering competitions, I have just this evening […]
