EM LawShare Training Session 19: FOIA & DPA

Introduction
This page is the support page for the training session delivered by Andrew Mills on 4 July 2007 to EM LawShare delegates at Worksop Town Hall and hosted by Bassetlaw District Council.

Presentation materials

If you sufficient user rights on your PC, you can install the free Mindjet mindmap viewer  and download my presentation file:

• Mindjet viewer download page
• Download emls19.mmp

 If you do not have the ability to use these, I have broken the mindmap into three parts and have embedded them in the elements below. Click-hold and drag to move around the maps, and click on the + symbols to expand branches.

Useful Links

I promised on the day to provide links to the stuff that I have referred to, so here they are:

• Where stuff is going with technology - have a look at the support page for the talk I recently delivered at the BIALL2007 conference. My whole talk there is written up and there are lots of links, a powerpoint and short video.
• Wikipedia - the best known multiple-author, public and free encylopaedia. Want to create your own wikis but struggling with your organisation's IT restrictions? Try some of the free web-based solutions, such as Zoho or PBwiki
• Find out about RSS and try web-based newsreaders if you organisation won't let you install desktop-based software. Have a look at Google Reader or Bloglines
• Freedom of Information Journal
• Data Protection Law & Policy Newsletter from E-comlaw
• My Hackney story posts are set out on our main blog pages, but a Google search for "hackney" should bring them all up.
• The Information Commissioner's Annual Report for 2007 (you need PDF).
• Scottish Information Commissioner's website (his latest Annual Report is for 2006).
• Decisions of the Information Tribunal.

Topics

Of the specific topics that I mentioned during the day, here are some relevant links and references.

• Disclosing staff salaries and the issues around section 40 FOIA. I mentioned the new ICO Awareness Guidance No 1 (you need PDF) and several decisions before the new note, including the following (these are all links that open up a PDF): House of Commons decision, the Corby Borough Council decision, and the Nottinghamshire County Council decision.
• Improved ability to search decision notices on the ICO website - this lets you search using variables such as FOIA/EIR section number, whether the decision has been upheld or not and by public authority.
• Check out the status of the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill and the Feedom of Information (Amendment)(No 2) Bill.
• The Information Commissioner's page about Publication Schemes and his note about the review of publication schemes (you need PDF for the note), mentions of publication schemes on the UK Freedom of Information blog,