[okfn-discuss] RFI: OKF accounts with the UK government

Thu Jul 21 11:49:00 UTC 2011

I am in favour of openness of information of this sort.

Is this the first of its kind? Because if so I suggest a few amendments.

If it is responsive (as in this case) then every request will come to the
list and I think a large number of attached documents will simply clutter
mailboxes. (I have asked several FOIs and I have much appreciated
WhatDoTheyKnow as a way of managing a single instance of the correspondence.

I don't think we should have an OKF-WDTK as I expect the number of questions
to be small. But can we have a wiki or page where the results are displayed.
And, presumably, if the questions is generic (over time) it makes sense to
pre-load that site with the data.

The OKF has nothing to hide. The disclosure of information that the public
has a right to is often somewhat uncomfortable to organizations but that is
how it should be. For example the (enormous) salaries / remunerations for
officers of the American Chemical Society are required to be public info by
the IRS and every year one of the members digs this out of the IRS and
publishes it in a security-by-obscurity location.

P.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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