Everyone has a legal right to see information from Scottish public authorities. You don’t have to say who you are or why you want the information.
And if the public authority refuses to give it to you, they must tell you why, and the Information Commissioner can overrule them.
Want to know about Freedom of Information, but too afraid to ask?
On Wednesday July 11, the Centre for Carbon Innovation, 15 South College Street, Edinburgh is hosting an evening event on how FOI works and how you can make it work for you.
Speakers include leading environmental journalist Rob Edwards and Irish blogger and journalist Gavin Sheridan, with more to be announced.
Rob Edwards is a freelance journalist specialising in environmental issues for more than 25 years. His work has appeared in New Statesman, The Observer, The Mail, The Sunday Times, Scotland on Sunday, The Scotsman, The Glasgow Herald, the Edinburgh Evening News and others. Since 1999 he has been the environment editor of the Sunday Herald and a correspondent for New Scientist and The Guardian.
Gavin Sheridan, a data journalist and right to information advocate from Ireland. He is Innovation Director at social news agency Storyful, based in Dublin. He also is co-founder of thestory.ie, a website dedicated to the systematic procuring and publishing of Irish government documents and data. He has trained journalists from several eastern European countries on access to information strategies and data journalism techniques. He helped found KildareStreet.com, the Irish parliamentary informatics website, built using MySociety software.
The event will help you learn what FOI is and how it works, in Scotland and abroad, and how you can best use information from FOIs in your work.
The evening will kick off at 6.15pm with talks followed by a relaxed Q+A session (event should last about an hour and a half in total). This will be followed up with both a space in a pub and a large table at Mother India Cafe for those who want to sit down for some food.
Tickets are free but there will be a suggested donation of £5 on the door. Here’s where you can reserve your tickets: http://foiedinburgh.eventbrite.co.uk/ Everyone is welcome.