[euopendata] Dutch Interior Minister proposes FOIA amendments

Wed Jun 8 10:25:47 UTC 2011

Thank you Ton

this is very interesting

In the UK too, I heard, there are people who would like to see changes
in the Act

However,  many of the added efforts (and associated expenses) to
comply with the act  are caused by  design flaws in the information
systems

There is no consistency/standard in the information format,
no specification of what information should be recorded  and
associated processes.

FOIA could be more efficiently implemented would the information
specification be a bit clearer and tighter

I am working in this direction and would welcome contributions, so if
interested to devise strategy to address this issue, please get in
touch

PDM

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 11:14 AM, Ton Zijlstra <ton.zijlstra at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> The Dutch minister for the interior recently made a speech on the 'day for
> freedom of the press' in which he suggested to limit the FOIA as it was a
> lot of work for the civil servants involved. That was met with a lot of
> protest of course.
> Meanwhile the minister has send a letter to parliament stating the actual
> changes he wants to make to the FOIA.
> While those protest causing elements are indeed also in the letter (though
> in a less worrying way than one might have feared) there is also in terms of
> open data a lot to be liked:
> no copyright or database right claims by any public service body
> maximum charge for getting material is incremental cost of distribution,
> with no charging at all being also fine. This holds for all PSBs, including
> the ones currently charging for their data.
> Data catalogue explicitly mentioned as instrument in stimulating publication
> and data re-use.
> PSBs encouraged to much more pro-actively publish their material
> Level of knowledge on FOIA and re-use to be raised with all PSBs.
> more
> here http://www.epsiplatform.eu/news/news/dutch_letter_to_parliament_on_foia
> best,
> Ton
> -------------------------------------------
> Interdependent Thoughts
> Ton Zijlstra
>
> ton at tonzijlstra.eu
> +31-6-34489360
>
> http://zylstra.org/blog
> -------------------------------------------
>
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