The implication of this discussion is that every employee of a public
authority should be held personally liable for its actions, and I
profoundly disagree. Most of the policy decisions I make for example are
agreed by my line manager and at least one College committee, so I think
liability for any cock-up I may or may not make is a corporate one. Our
soon-to-be published corporate records management policy makes this clear
under the "responsibilities" section.
Having said that I have no problem at all with making my name public, as
you can see!
Sarah Westwood
Records Management Officer
Girton College
On Thu, 25 Sep 2003 11:13:39 +0100, Broom, Doreen
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>***** THIS EMAIL WAS SENT VIA THE INTERNET *****
>
>Hi All
>
>I would have thought like Councillors - if you wish to stand on any public
>committee/forum you are literally public property and have to be
>accountable.
>
>Doreen Broom
>Access to Information Officer
>Scottish Borders Council
>Tel@: 01835 826516
>Fax@: 01835 825041
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Owen Parry [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 25 September 2003 10:07
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Committee Membership
>
> ***** THIS EMAIL WAS RECEIVED FROM THE INTERNET *****
>
> Colleagues
>
> A possible area of conflict between the DPA and FOI has been
brought
>to my
> attention and although I give my views below, I'd welcome any
>comments.
>
> Issue: We are beginning to publish the minutes and related papers
of
>some
> University committees on our web site. Some members of those
>committees
> (academics at HE institutions) are concerned that the publication
of
>those
> minutes will reveal the fact of their membership which they
consider
>to be
> personal information.
>
> Some concerns have been expressed that it would be possible for a
> complaining student to see who the members of our Academic Board
>were who
> disallowed his appeal and approach them directly to harrass them
>(although
> the contents of any such discussion would not appear in the
minutes,
>being
> classed as 'reserved business' under an obvious exemption).
>
> My view:
> My view is that although membership of a committee might be deemed
>personal
> information, the whole point of the FOI Act is to ensure that the
>conduct of
> public bodies is open and transparent and that the days of
anonymous
> committees in dark smoke filled rooms are numbered. As the details
>and
> membership of our committees are published elsewhere (University
>Calendar),
> it is illogical to suppress either minutes of committees or details
>of who
> attended a particular meeting. Any student who wanted to harrass
>committee
> members would simply borrow the Calendar from his institution's
>library.
>
> Further, the fact that the Information Commissioner has approved
the
>model
> publication scheme for HEIs which requires committees details and
>minutes to
> be included also indicates that he does not consider there to be a
>conflict
> with the DPA ( or if he does, then has decided in favour of
>publication).
>
> Any contributions ?
>
>
>
> Owen Parry
> Pennaeth Cyfrifiadura Gweinyddol / Head of Administrative Computing
> Prifysgol Cymru / University of Wales
> Tel: (029) 2038 2656 Ffacs/Fax: (029) 2039 6040
>
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