Blog

In a recent interview with The Independent, National Data Guardian, Dr Nicola Byrne, outlined her concern at government plans to force the NHS to share confidential data with police forces across England. The legislation could impose a duty on NHS organisations to share private patient data with police, which Dr Byrne believes could “erode trust and confidence, deter people from sharing information, and even from presenting for clinical care.”

Lynn Wyeth, Head of Information Governance and DPO at Leicester City Council discusses the Requester Blind Principle in FOI and the issues and nuances around it

Recently we wrote a short blog on the use of personal email in government and its impact on transparency and we now welcome the fact that the ICO is opening up an investigation into its use.

Recently we held a week-long webinar series based on FOI and data protection. Over the week, five experts from across the field joined forces to discuss everything from handling complex SARs, to successful FOI management and digital transformation journeys.

Our latest research report will focus on ‘The State of FOI in Local Government’. Following our most recent webinar series, we have seen an increase in Local Authority FOI practitioners searching for more information about the sector.

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.