Intellectual Property Law

February 2009 adoption deadline for ICO's new public authority publication scheme

The Information Commissioner's Office has launched a new model publication scheme for public authorities. With the current model scheme expiring on 31 December 2008, the ICO is asking public authorities to adopt the model scheme by 1 January 2009 and has said from February 2009 it will be conducting "spot checks" on public authorities to check for compliance.

IMPACT looked at the legal basis for and nature of publication schemes in our post on the draft version of the model publication scheme in January this year.

The new model scheme is a very high-level document, and public authorities must supplement it with detailed information as to:

• for each of the 7 classes of information listed, the specific information that they will be publishing
• how they will publish the information - the ICO states that a website is the preferred method

To assist public authorities with completing these details, the ICO will be publishing guidance for different categories of public authorities. The first to be published is the guidance for central government.

Full post as published by IMPACT on May 09, 2008 (boomark / email).