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/RSS FeedIn this ten minute skills session from FOI Fest, longtime journalist and author of Freedom of Information: A Practical Guidebook Martin Rosenbaum shares his best tips based on usage of the Act that goes back to its implementation.
Martin mentions some of his slides during this talk, and if you’d rather watch than listen, you can do so on YouTube.
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Transcript
0:00 [Gavin Freeguard] Welcome to FOI Fest 2026!
0:04 [Martin Rosenbaum] Thanks very much. We’ve had a fair amount of advice already about to make effective use of FOI. And what I thought I would do with my two minutes here, as someone who, since the Act came into force in 2005 has made quite a lot of FOI requests, is just give some examples of things that I learnt along the way from particular cases that I was involved in, some which go back more or less, in fact, to 2005 some which are lessons which I learnt quite early on, like perhaps this one. (more…)
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In this ten-minute session from FOI Fest, Chief Executive of the Campaign for Freedom of Information Maurice Frankel explains how to avoid having your requests refused because of the cost limit that is baked into the FOI Act, and what some of the problems with that limit are.
Please fill in our short survey to help us understand more about why and how you listen!
Transcript
0:00 [Gavin Freeguard] Welcome to FOI Fest 2026!
0:04 [Maurice Frankel] My first thing to say is not specifically on my topic, but it’s this: if you don’t know anything about the subject, don’t make an FOI request.
0:14 FOI is not the place to start learning about something that you don’t know anything about. If an idea pops into your head, do some research about it. (more…)
