Freedom of information (FOI) has been around in Scotland since 2005 yet it remains underused by Scottish third sector organisations (TSOs), with few applications to the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) coming from TSOs. FOI provides individuals and organisations with the right to access valuable information held by Scottish public authorities (SPAs) by requesting it from them. Making an FOI request could not be simpler. All a TSO needs to do is to put the request in writing (which includes e-mail), provide a name and address for receiving the information and wait 20 working days for a response. SPAs are entitled to charge a fee of up to £50 for providing access to information, altho
The Government has confirmed that it will implement the EU General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation), which will come into force on 25 May 2018. Organisations must start taking steps towards compliance now to meet the higher data protection standards contained within the Regulation. What about “Brexit”? While the result of the EU referendum in June this year determined that the UK would leave its membership of the EU, it was expected that the UK would nevertheless implement the Regulation, mainly for two reasons. First, the UK Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) is based on an EU Directive dating back to 1995 from an era when public Internet access was not widely available and data collect
