Update 17 July 2013:
The Ministry of Justice has today published the Code of Practice (Datasets) and released a Written Ministerial Statement. The new FOI provisions will commence on 1 September. So far there is no sign of the accompanying Fees Regulations.
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Post: 3 May 2013:
Several months ago the Cabinet Office ran a public consultation on a draft Code of Practice (Datasets) to help public authorities implement some upcoming changes to the Freedom of Information Act.
Those changes will require public authorities to provide datasets requested under FOI in a re-usable format and with a licence for re-use, where reasonably practicable. The draft Code itself and the explanatory material are on the Data.gov.uk website.
In early March the Cabinet Office published a summary of responses to the consultation, but not the responses themselves. I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Cabinet Office for copies of all responses to the consultation, and received them yesterday.
This zip file contains the contents of e-mail responses from the following organisations:
Also enclosed is a copy of 50 comments submitted by 17 users via Data.gov.uk. (User names are omitted.)
The following four responses were already on the web:
I have previously blogged my own comments on the Code.
The Cabinet Office’s summary has picked out the main themes, but the full responses provide insight into the concerns of individual organisations. The local authority responses in particular cast doubt on whether FOI practitioners will be able to confidently handle the additional issues around formatting and re-use of datasets.
The FOI dataset provisions were originally expected to take effect in April, but have been delayed. We have not yet seen publication of either a revised Code of Practice or the Fee Regulations that will accompany the new FOI provisions.
The Fee Regulations will be crucial in determining whether these provisions are used to promote an open data or a chargeable approach to re-use of datasets released by public authorities under FOI.