Telegraph: Councils spend £100m on taxpayer-funded credit cards

Posted on 31 May, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"This newspaper has obtained details of credit card spending at 186 councils across Britain using Freedom of Information laws. Over the past three years, documents show these councils have spent more than £40 million using the taxpayer-funded cards, which suggests total council spending of about £100 million at all local authorities."

WSJ.com: WSJ Jet Tracker

Posted on 26 May, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"The Wall Street Journal filed several Freedom of Information Act requests with the Federal Aviation Administration for the entire Enhanced Traffic Management System database, which contains flight records for aircraft that flew in the U.S. under instrument flight rules. The Journal analyzed the flight data for non-commercial jet aircraft traffic for a four-year period, 2007 through 2010. ... The Journal has included in the flights database an estimated cost to operate each flight. The estimates are based on per-hour cost figures for each model of jet, provided by Conklin & de Decker Aviation Information, an industry consulting firm used by some public companies to provide aircraft-cost estimates for regulatory filings."

BBC News: Local spending survey blocked by government

Posted on 12 May, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"The BBC's attempts to collate this spending data largely avoided some obstacles placed in the way of alternative research being carried out by other media. ... Local Government Chronicle (LGC) was pursuing a similar survey. But it appears to have asked for what's called Revenue Account information ... DCLG instructed councils not to provide this data, on the grounds that it is intended for future publication by the Office for National Statistics."

Kent Online: Council webcasts aren’t a ratings winner

Posted on 6 May, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"Audience figures for live webcasts of meetings at County Hall show many are being watched by fewer than 100 people. ... An analysis of data released to the KM Group under the Freedom of Information Act shows 5,766 people watched committee broadcasts as they happened between April 2010 to March this year. ... KCC spends about £20,000 a year streaming live meetings and making them available on its website to view later."

BBC News: Should photos of Bin Laden’s corpse be released?

Posted on 5 May, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"The possibility of a legal challenge to the White House's decision was also raised when at least two senior lawyers said a request made under the Freedom of Information Act would have a strong case."

Press Gazette: Northumbria Police reveals one per cent of crimes

Posted on 3 May, 2011 by Martin Stabe

A Northumbria Police spokeswoman said: “The introduction of a series of crime mapping systems, with the latest national system launched in January 2011, negates any suggestion that we withhold crimes from the public. The numbers, categories and locations of crime are available for everyone to see.”

Nieman Reports: Investigating Farm Subsidies on a Global Stage

Posted on 3 May, 2011 by Martin Stabe

Nils Mulvad: "The collaborative effort among journalists to make the E.U.’s farm subsidies transparent is a striking example of how developing networks and providing support for reporters can result in important stories being told."

Daily Mail: Royal Mail refuses to tell customer where its post boxes are

Posted on 30 April, 2011 by Martin Stabe

Odd, especially since this data is already in the public domain: "A radio presenter who wrote to Royal Mail asking where his nearest post boxes were received an astonishing reply to say: 'Sorry, it's a secret'. ... The extraordinary two-page reply went on to claim that, as Royal Mail is a publicly-owned company, there was a 'significant public interest' in keeping the information private."

WhatDoTheyKnow: Location of every post box that the Royal Mail Group operates (2008)

Posted on 30 April, 2011 by Martin Stabe

In 2008, the Royal Mail was rather more forthcoming to FOI requests about the location of postboxes.

Telegraph: Secrets put on internet in Whitehall blunders

Posted on 18 April, 2011 by Martin Stabe

Haven't we heard all this before? Amazing this still happens: "Some officials use a software programme such as Photoshop to paste a black patch over secret text, obscuring it but not removing it. When documents are edited in this way, normal home or office software can disclose the obscured text."

BBC Open Secrets: Commissioner attacks Cabinet Office FOI delays

Posted on 12 April, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"The Information Commissioner Chris Graham is announcing today that he is targeting action on three public authorities because of their particularly bad record of FOI delays. One of these is the Cabinet Office. The other two are the Ministry of Defence and Birmingham Council."

Huddersfield Examiner: How Kirklees Council leader Mehboob Khan ‘meddles’ in your information requests

Posted on 30 March, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"The Examiner was able to get hold of emails sent between Clr Khan and Freedom of Information officers at Kirklees Council. In the emails printed below, Clr Khan can clearly be seen intervening in FOI responses and preventing information from being sent out."

Online Journalism Blog: Getting full addresses for data from an FOI response (using APIs)

Posted on 22 March, 2011 by Martin Stabe

How to use the Google Maps API and Google Refine to geocode and improve partial addresses in a dataset.

FOI Man: Open Data – Just Do It?

Posted on 15 March, 2011 by Martin Stabe

"This week Southampton University launched data.southampton.ac.uk, its open data repository. ... this is the lowest tier of the public sector at which I’ve seen this done."

Martin Stabe

A UK-centric look at new media and online journalism

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