The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) was a milestone in UK legislation and, for the first time, the lid was legally lifted on a lot of what the UK government was doing in the name of the citizens of the country. While the FOI applies only to public sector organisations, it covers a wide range of information. The Data Protection Act, which applies equally in both the public and private sector, had already given individuals the right to find out what information was being held about them, and to insist on having that information kept accurate and up to date. Of course, the Data Protection Act also placed an obligation on organisations to protect the personal data of those people about whom they collected this information and to ensure that this data was not disclosed, either deliberately or accidentally, to anyone not entitled to see it. Clear and practical guidance for data governance professionals Inevitably, information that could and should be disclosed pursuant to a freedom of information enquiry could quite conceivably also contain information that the data controller must protect and herein lies a challenge for those in the public sector.
Data management frameworks must be designed with two apparently contradictory objectives in mind: ensuring that information that might have to be disclosed pursuant to an FOI enquiry can quickly be found and provided, while simultaneously ensuring that personal data that has to be protected remains protected. This is a key data governance issue and, until now, there has been little useful guidance on how to tackle this issue for those charged with designing processes and infrastructure that meets these two sets of legal requirements. This pocket guide focuses on and addresses this critical issue, providing clear and practical guidance for data governance professionals on how to resolve this conundrum.
Sprache
Verlagsort
ISBN-13
978-1-905356-72-0 (9781905356720)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Paul Ticher has over 25 years' experience in the voluntary and public sectors, as an information worker and manager, and as a board member, trustee and governor in local and national bodies. Since 1991 he has worked as an independent consultant specialising in data protection, freedom of information, information management and IT strategy, with a special interest in customer and contact management systems. Paul is also a widely-respected researcher, evaluator, trainer and author.Paul's data protection experience goes back to the mid-1980s and the 1984 Act, in his role as IT advisor for local and national information services. His involvement continued while monitoring the EU debates which eventually led to the 1995 European Directive and then the UK's 1998 Act. His knowledge of freedom of information has grown out of a close study of the Act, in theory and practice, since it came into force on 1 January 2005.Paul has written extensively on both Acts, designed and delivered training courses and conference briefings, taken part in lobbying on behalf of clients and carried out data protection audits.Paul is the author of the standard work Data Protection for Voluntary Organisations, published by the Directory of Social Change and now in its third edition.
Chapter 1: Freedom of Information and the Data Protection Act Chapter 2: Overview of the Freedom of Information Act Chapter 3: Restrictions on disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act Chapter 4: Application of the Freedom of Information Act to organisations that are not public authorities Chapter 5: Freedom of Information Act procedure and time limits Chapter 6: Restrictions on disclosure of personal data Chapter 7: What is personal data? Chapter 8: The data protection principles The data protection principles Sensitive personal data Chapter 9: When should personal data be released? Cases where a disclosure would breach the data protection principles Cases where a disclosure (or partial disclosure) would not breach the principles Chapter 10: Subject access under the Data Protection Act Chapter 11: Requests made by one person on behalf of another Chapter 12: Checklist for disclosing information under the Freedom of Information Act where individuals are mentioned in the information Appendix: Glossary ITG Resources
