FoI posts, photos and bookmarks (Related: birmingham city council, data, surveillance, privacy, website, Health, research, blogger, grit, web 3)

Investigation ideas from David Higgerson

If you're looking for ideas for investigations then check out David Higgerson's 'FOI Friday' series. Also useful is the Freedom of Information Blog, which publishes monthly updates in the same vein - you can find the latest one here

Users write to politicians to ask that Service Birmingham abide by the Freedom of Information Act

Help Me Investigate users have been writing to their councillors and MP to request that Service Birmingham abide by the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act.Councillors Neville Summerfield, Timothy Huxtable and D Alden have all responded; MPs Andrew Mitchell and Lynne Jones too; and the Chief Executive of Birmingham City Council.The emails are part of the investigation into the new Birmingham City Council website. The investigation has already discovered that the project will be...

The DVLA and missrepresented number plates

The investigation into the DVLA and missrepresented numberplates has got enough information to be marked as complete. It was started to find out who was responsible for acting on illegally displayed number plates, and how often any action was taken. Help on the site prompted setting up a search on the My Society site What Do They Know, and it seemed that an Freedom of Information request was already going through that would answer the...

Birmingham City Council overspend by £2.2m on website

The investigation into 'When can we expect a new birmingham.gov website?' yielded some real results this week when it emerged Birmingham City Council had spent £2.2m over the original estimate of £580,000.The information was revealed in a response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by Heather Brooke as part of the investigation, which was started by Josh Hart (read his round up of the earlier stages of the investigation here). Both the Birmingham...

UPDATED: How much 'covert surveillance' of individuals has been conducted by Midlands councils?

The investigation into 'How much 'covert surveillance' of individuals has been conducted by Midlands councils?' has had its first response - from Birmingham City Council.The information has been provided in an Excel spreadsheet which Ian Duncan has helpfully exported into a public Google Spreadsheet.It's also been analysed by James Ball who picks out the following: I believe, at first glance - that Birmingham is compartively trigger happy, using powers granted by the act six times more than typical councils. Birmingham accounts for roughly a 60th of the UK’s population (pop c. 1 million). In 2007 (calendar year) there were...