On 04/07/2011 09:31, Michael Bimmler wrote:
On Mon, Jul 4, 2011 at 10:24 AM, Mark Goodge <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: On 04/07/2011 08:50, Francis Davey wrote: 2011/7/4 Mark Goodge<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>: I tweeted and blogged about it, and someone else on Twitter pointed out that such an arrangement may well be contrary to section 14 of the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005. If so, that would apply to the contract with Bailii as well. So I've followed it up with another FoI request: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/__request/public_interest___provisions_for_e <http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/public_interest_provisions_for_e> Yes, that occurred to me. Its not the strongest of provisions though, but it would be interesting to see how they respond. What regulation 14 does do is impose a statutory requirement to, essentially, explain various arrangements in documentary form, which means it can then be the subject of an FOI request. FOI can't be used to make people explain things unless they have written that explanation down - a fact which, alas, many requesters don't appreciate. I'm fully expecting that the response will be "information not held", since both contracts predate the regulations and my guess is that they never actually bothered to reconsider or document them when the regulations came into force. But even that would be a step forward, since it would be an opening for pressure to be brought to bear. "Ministry of Justice breaks the law" is a nice headline :-) Out of interest: What is the legal situation in the UK - if you have a contract which predates regulations, is it compulsory to revise it to make it regulations-compliant? Or do the regulations only apply when new contracts are made / existing contracts renewed?
Section 14.6 of the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005 permitted contracts which predated the regulations to continue until either the end of the contract term or December 2008, whichever was earlier. Since that date is now in the past, any contract now existing will be subject to the regulations if it falls within their scope.
I've just had another look, and the licence attached to the FoI response is dated May 2010. So, unless it falls outside the scope of the regulations (and I can't see how it could), then to allow an exclusive contract would require the public interest condition to be fulfilled.
Mark -- Sent from my Babbage Difference Engine http://mark.goodge.co.uk http://www.ratemysupermarket.com _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
