Jisc Legal : Freedom of Information

The FOI Essentials paper provides introductory guidance on the general right of public access to recorded information held by public authorities including colleges and universities.

This overview paper describes the relevance of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) for FE and HE.

This briefing addresses the legal issues that further and higher education institutions may face when engaging with employers as part of their Business and Community Engagement ("BCE") activities.

This briefing gives an overview of some of the legal issues which institutions can face when carrying out cultural and public engagement activities as part of their Business and Community Engagement ("BCE") activities.

Whatever the mobile technology use, there are legal issues to consider from the outset of your project and this is a checklist of the main areas to consider in your planning process.

This guidance is designed to help institutions deal with consent management when sharing personal data across and between institutions and external service providers.

Whether you work in a teaching, research, management or support capacity, the toolkit will help you to make confident, informed decisions about implementing cloud computing solutions in your institution.

An up-to-date, accessible guide for senior managers on ICT law within FE and HE.

JISC's Freedom of Information and Research Data: Questions and Answers, written by Andrew Charlesworth and Chris Rusbridge, is available at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/foiresearchdata.

These Top Ten Tips were created to celebrate JISC Legal's 10th anniversary, all the while looking forward to the challenges UK FE and HE will face in the next ten years.

The first part of our series on Business and Community Engagement (BCE). This video covers the legal implications of data sharing and research, the application of the Data Protection Act and the application of Freedom of Information legislation. 

The FOI Essentials paper provides introductory guidance on the general right of public access to recorded information held by public authorities including colleges and universities.

 Scotland has its own Freedom of Information legislation. The Freedom of Information(Scotland) Act 2002 has been fully in force since ... (cont)

 S.14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (and similarly s.14 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002) provide a exemption to release if ... (cont)

As PhD theses contain information which is held by the institution, in general, they will be subject to FOI requests as with any other information ... (cont)

 There are a number of aspects to this which must be considered: (a) The Scottish and UK Freedom of Information Acts provide a statutory right of access ... (cont)

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 applies to all information held by a college (and pretty much irrespective of whose information it is) ... (cont)

Links to further resources.

A date is set for this Act to come into force.  The Act amends the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act  2002, in some technical respects. 

A new Intellectual Property Bill proposes changes to the UK's intellectual property regime.  The changes are being brought in an attempt to simplify patent and design protection laws and to help businesses be better off as a result of the changes. 

The purpose of the reforms is to ensure that defamation legislation is fit for modern times.  The Act aims to strike a balance between the right to freedom of expression and the protection of reputation.

New search tool available for Information Tribunal Decisions, First Tier.

ACAS guide offers practical tips on the impact of social networking on discipline and grievances, bullying, defamation, data protection and privacy.

A dedicated 'one stop shop' has been produced, telling the public about their FOI rights, and a step by step guide on how to use them.

Information Commissioner publishes top tips on freedom of information for public authority communications professionals.

The Scottish Information Commissioner has published an updated edition of the guide for Scottish Public Authorities on Investigations detailing the procedure followed in an investigation and what information will be required from a public authority.

Guidance for public sector organisationsaims to make current equality law more consistent, clearer and easier to follow in order to make society fairer.

The Office of the Information Commissioner's website provides a wealth of information and guidelines on both data protection and freedom of information.

In October 2007 JISC infoNet launched the new Business Classification Scheme and Records Retention Schedule for Higher Education institutions.

In order to assist Scottish public authorities (including education institutions) who wholly own active or dormant companies, the Scottish Information Commissioner has prepared model schemes. The model schemes can be accessed from the web site at:
http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/web/FILES/pocdormant.doc  and
http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/web/FILES/pocactive.doc.

Guidance and resources to help those who work in central government, or other public authorities, to deal with freedom of information requests.http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/freedom-of-information.htm

A personal view by Steve Bailey of changes in records management and what they might mean.

An example of a records management policy, produced by the Scottish police in consultation with various central agencies such as the Scottish Criminal Records Office. Version 2 produced by the ACPOS FOI group on 25th April 2005.
http://www.centralscotland.police.uk/foi/docs/acpos_records_retention_schedule.pdf.

RecordKeeping was published quarterly between 2004 and 2009 covering news, case studies and examples of best practice from The National Archives and the wider archives and records management communities. 

This section contains details of policies and legislation that relate to or have an impact on archives and records management, such as the Data Protection Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the current acts relating to archive services at local and regional levels.

The vast majority of government records are now produced electronically and The National Archives works with central and local government organisations to ensure that this information is both stored securely and easily accessible.

Good records and information management is essential if the government is to meet the requirements of Data Protection, Freedom of Information and Human Rights legislation.  Under agreement with the ICO this is done through a programme of information management assessments.