Lothian and Borders Police
One change that I think should be made to FOISA is that every body that is subject to the act must provide an online archive of its responses to requests for information. I firmly believe there is a public interest in all responses being made available to everyone.
Some bodies already operate one, NHS Lothian being a prominent local body who does, other large bodies however don’t, Lothian and Borders Police don’t and neither does Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue Service, which isn’t surprising given that they lack proper record keeping when it comes to management of FOI.
There is another form of FOI response archive and that’s in the form of whatdotheyknow.com, a website run by a UK charity which allows people to make requests through the site and view responses to other peoples made via the site, it acts as a form of disclosure log and its UK. It really is a very useful site and I can spend literally hours looking through requests and responses on it.
Every month I get a copy of the responses made by Lothian and Borders Police to other peoples requests for information which were dealt with under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act. From now on I will be making the information available via the whatdotheyknow.com website, just head towards my page to find the information. However, I have decided to make available so off the information I already have.
I have in my possession all the responses released by the force going back almost a year, today I’m making all of Februarys responses available and hope to get the rest online very shortly.
Its worth having a look through!
Often the media only pick out a few select figures but in the documents im providing you will see all the figures they obtained.
It’s a hefty tome, but worth a glance!
Happy reading.