What does foi mean

Section 16 requires you to provide applicants with reasonable advice and assistance. This includes advice and assistance to members of the public before they have made their request. Making information available is only valuable to the public if they know they can access it, and what is available.

You should:. You should communicate with the public in a range of ways. This is likely to include websites, noticeboards, leaflets, or posters in places where people access your services. You must also make your staff, contractors, customers or others you have contact with aware of how the Act may affect them.

You should make it clear that you cannot guarantee complete confidentiality of information and that as a public body you must consider for release any information you hold if it is requested. You will need to consider each request individually, but it is worthwhile having policies or guidelines for certain types of information, such as information about staff. They include the right for people to access their personal data.

When a person makes a request for their own information, this is a data protection subject access request. However, members of the public often wrongly think it is the Freedom of Information Act that gives them the right to their personal information, so you may need to clarify things when responding to such a request.

These two aims are not necessarily incompatible but there can be a tension between them, and applying them sometimes requires careful judgement. You will need to decide whether you can release the information without infringing the UK GDPR data protection principles. See When can we refuse a request? The Act does not affect copyright and intellectual property rights that give owners the right to protect their original work against commercial exploitation by others.

If someone wishes to re-use public sector information for commercial purposes, they should make an application under the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations. See the What is PSI? The ICO does not have any powers to regulate copyright or the re-use of information.

When giving access to information under the Act, you cannot place any conditions or restrictions on that access. For example, you cannot require the requester to sign any agreement before they are given access to the information.

However, you can include a copyright notice with the information you disclose. You can also make a claim in the courts if the requester or someone else uses the information in breach of copyright. RPSI applies to most but not all public authorities; for example, universities in general are not covered by RPSI although their libraries are. For public authorities that are not subject to RPSI, there are some re-use provisions in the Act but they only apply to one type of information, namely datasets.

The licences to use for this are specified in the section 45 code of practice on datasets. If the dataset can be re-used without charge, then the appropriate licence will usually be the Open Government Licence. Some of the exemptions in the Act that allow public authorities to withhold information use principles from common law, for example the section 41 exemption refers to the law of confidence.

Also, section 44 of the Act allows information to be withheld when its disclosure is prohibited under other legislation, and section 21 can exempt information that is accessible to an applicant using procedures in other legislation.

When dealing with requests for information, you should continue to be aware of your obligations under the Equality Act or Disability Discrimination Act in Northern Ireland. These Acts are not regulated by the ICO so they are not covered in this guidance. You should handle requests for environmental information under the Environmental Information Regulations The Regulations also require you to make environmental information available proactively by readily accessible electronic means.

If you are a public sector body as defined by RPSI then most of the information you hold as part of your public task must be made available for re-use on request. Most, but not all public authorities are public sector bodies under RPSI. Libraries, museums and archives are covered but they have discretion as to whether to permit re-use.

RPSI applies to information in which you, as the public sector body, hold the intellectual property rights but does not generally apply to information that is exempt from disclosure under the Act or under the Environmental Information Regulations. In brief The Freedom of Information Act provides public access to information held by public authorities. It does this in two ways: public authorities are obliged to publish certain information about their activities; and members of the public are entitled to request information from public authorities.

In more detail What is the Freedom of Information Act for? By: Daniel Clark. By: Tamara Parris CD. Dictionary Dictionary Term of the Day. International Certificate in Construction Health and Safety.

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