Blog

UKRI brought together seven different research councils, Innovate UK and Research England, all with their own pre-existing methods and processes and all bringing their own ways of working. As Head of Information Governance and Data Protection Officer, my task was to establish a new way of working that could easily be rolled out across the organisation with minimum disruption and maximum effectiveness.

Recently we have seen more and more examples of politicians communicating about government business using their personal mobile phones. David Cameron’s lobbying of Rishi Sunak and Nadhim Zahawi being one of several examples to come to light in the past few weeks. But should these conversations be published?

Bill Goodwin takes a look at some of the challenges the FOI Act is facing .Looking through the lens of the 'requester blind' principle, he discusses why these principles are so important to maintaining transparency, surfacing important truths and, in turn, democracy itself.

The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act has been in operation for the last 16 years. You would hope by now that public authorities were answering requests in compliance with the law, but we saw only recently yet another story about a local authority failing to answer FOI requests in a timely manner.

There are many burdens that impact the working life of an Information Rights professional, from triaging and drafting, to quality assurance and analysis. eCase takes the hassle out of each of these steps. One of the key areas that all of our customers realise significant time savings is in reporting. In some organisations, reporting tasks that used to take a day or even longer are now done in seconds.

Last week we brought together four of the most influential professionals from the Information Rights sector to discuss the state of Freedom of Information and what the future holds for it.

Jon Baines looks at the Act and the challenges it has faced, and considers the importance of regulation in FOI looking to the future

In this, the second in our Guest blog series, Estelle Dehon of Cornerstone Barristers sets out some of the detail of the appeals involved in the Tribunal which, on 27th January confirmed no territorial limitations for FOI. The blog focuses on the issues raised by the Tribunal and the responses of the parties to those issues, including the ICO’s response.

In her blog, Estelle Dehon discusses 'requester blindness', part of the bedrock of the FOIA, what the implications of the 'Territoriality' question could have meant for public authorities and what the decision on 27th January means for FOI and its preservation.