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5856 results in Facet Publishing

Page 88 of 293

  • 5 - Scientific information policies in the European context

  • from PART I - DRIVERS FOR MODERN DIGITAL ARCHIVES
  • Edited by Milena Dobreva
  • Book:
    Digital Archives
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    02 October 2019
    Print publication:
    30 September 2018, pp 97-120

  • Summary

    Introduction and background

    The discourses on knowledge production and knowledge dis - semination have traditionally been dealt with separately, as referring to two different systems: the ‘science system’ and the ‘scholarly communication system’. Yet, this separation was even more reinforced by being the processes carried out by the two communities: scientists as knowledge production agents, information professionals as knowledge dissemination agents (Basili, 2009).

    This same distinction applies also to policy issues and measures, conceived independently for scientific research from one side, and dissemination and access to scientific information from the other (Basili, 2010). Correspondingly, such a dichotomy reverberates throughout two basic threads of literature: one dealing with the ‘knowledge society’ (e.g. David and Foray, 2002; Sorlin and Vessuri, 2007) and one dealing with the ‘information society’ (e.g. EC, 1999; Webster, 2006).

    In recent decades, such clear separation is largely blurred, as a consequence of techno-economic forces and factors affecting knowledge dissemination, primarily the internet and the entrepreneurial climate in research and development. To summarise in a nutshell, the two discourses on the information society and knowledge society can be interpreted and analysed as converging towards the discourse on the ‘knowledge economy’, with major policy implications for scientific information, since, at the same time, an economic logic increasingly enters into the domain of knowledge dissemination.

    This interdependent connection appears evident in the policy documents from the European Commission and the European Parliament released since the Lisbon Council of March 2000, and effectively expressed in European Commission COM(2012) 392 final: ‘Knowledge is the currency of the new economy’ (EC, 2012a).

    Focusing the attention on economic pressures more than on technological opportunities, in this chapter a short account will be given on how the transformation from academic science to entrepreneurial science has been theorised in the research policy literature.

    Theoretical literature about research policy is abundant and multifaceted, nevertheless, reference here is made to the concepts ‘Mertonian norms’, ‘mode 2 knowledge production model’ and ‘Triple Helix’, which have a significant impact on the rationale of this chapter.

  • 2 - Freedom of information

  • Edited by Rachael Maguire
  • Book:
    Information Rights for Records Managers
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    01 June 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 13-36

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This is the first of two chapters on how to respond to a request for information made under the UK and Scottish Freedom of Information (FoI) Acts. The UK Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) covers English, Welsh and Northern Irish public authorities and any public authorities which operate across the UK. The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FoISA) covers Scottish public authorities only. While similar to the FoIA, the FoISA does deviate from it, particularly in the matter of exemptions.

    Covered in this chapter are:

  • • the basic method for handling a request, which is also useful for the EIR;

  • • how to recognise a request;

  • • how to process a request;

  • • how to handle requests for clarification;

  • • how to create a response.

    • Covered in Chapter 3 are:

  • • the exemptions and how to apply them;

  • • dealing with internal reviews;

  • • dealing with complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC));

  • • managing the publication scheme.

    • In both chapters, when I refer to ‘you’ I am thinking of the records manager or information manager who finds themselves in the position of having to manage responses to FoI requests. You can read through the whole of both chapters or dip into the parts that have the most relevance for you. I suggest reading through all of this chapter if you are completely new to FoI, as it covers not just how to process a request but also how to recognise a request or a non-request, and how to deal with vexatious and repeated requests. Most requests that you deal with will be to find information, package it and send it out, but others will be more tricky and this chapter provides guidance on how to process those trickier requests.

    Handling requests: the basic method

    The basic method for a one-person or small team to deal with a request for information is set out below. All points are expanded further in the chapter, but, to summarise, you will need to do the following:

  • Determine that you have received a valid request for information.

  • 4 - Trusting the records: the Hillsborough football disaster 1989 and the work of the Independent Panel 2010–12

  • Michael Moss, David Thomas
  • Book:
    Do Archives Have Value?
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    02 October 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 63-74

  • Summary

    This chapter is not about the disaster of 1989 itself. It is about the implications for archives and for the role of archivists, specifically as a result of the work of the Independent Panel set up in 2010 to research the events of the disaster (Report of the Hillsborough Independent Panel, 2012 (hereafter RHIP)).

    Although the work of the Panel ended in 2012 the legal consequences of the issues raised are still being considered in 2019 and records continue to be used (and indeed new ones managed) with the professional help of records managers and archivists.

    Background

    The Independent Panel which reported on the disaster was a response to the perceived needs of society for transparency as represented, in this case, by the long-standing expressed requirements of the people most affected by the man-made tragedy which killed 96 people – crushed to death, standing together, in locked football-ground pens at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield on 15 April 1989. The response by the government in 2010, first Labour and then Conservative, was to establish an Independent Panel to review the evidence anew. For the families of those who lost their lives and the survivors, this disaster was, and is, a conflicted history, causing much personal pain to them, many of whom have been involved for over 25 years, and still are, in trying to obtain justice.

    The families fought for the truth, which had been publicly disputed from the day itself, although the causes of the disaster had been more or less established by the Taylor Public Inquiry in its interim and final reports of 1989 and 1990 (RHIP, 186–225). They wanted the truth about what had happened on the day to be recognised by the media and the rest of society, and in particular by the government. In the press and elsewhere the blame had been firmly placed on the football fans themselves and this view was commonly believed, except by the families of those killed and many Liverpudlians.

    The coroner's unusual ‘generic’ inquests of 1990, which considered the causes of the 95 (eventually 96) deaths together rather than individually had returned a verdict of ‘accidental death’ for the 95 who died (RHIP, 255–91).

Information Rights for Records Managers
  • Edited by Rachael Maguire
  • Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    01 June 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018
  • Records Managers have tended to find themselves given the responsibility for managing requests under the Freedom of Information (FOI) and Data Protection Acts (DPA), without necessarily having training and/or an academic background in legal studies. This book aims to fill this knowledge gap by offering a fully up to date, accessible, comprehensive guide to Information rights specifically for those without a legal background.Information Rights for Records Managersaims to be as comprehensive as possible, including coverage of the new General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), Â so that the guidance practitioners can provide is as fully informed as possible. Content covered includes:Responding to FOI requests, including exemptions, internal reviews and benchmarkingCoverage of DPA and GDPR regulations, where the differences lie and what the implications are for professionals operating under the actsPersonal data requests and enquiries under GDPRWorking with the European Information Regulations (EIR) and where the differences lie with FOIDiscussion of the two strands of records management and information rights work and how the two interact in daily workPractical case studies from a range of organisations and institutions to demonstrate practice.The book will be useful reading for all professionals in the public and private sectors who have responsibility for information rights, particularly around FOI and DPA. Its introductory nature will also mean that it will be very useful students and new professionals seeking to increase their knowledge.

  • 10 - A search for truthiness: archival research in a post-truth world

  • Michael Moss, David Thomas
  • Book:
    Do Archives Have Value?
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    02 October 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 167-194

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed a surge in populist rhetoric, as politicians around the world have challenged the factual basis of reality. They have proclaimed that reality is not real, that news reports based upon evidence is fake and generally relied upon a partisan belief that party subsumes truth.

    At the same time, there has been resistance to this wave of unreality. Sometimes it has been on the part of purveyors of factual data (such as most news organizations), other times from politicians challenged by the forces of unreality, and sadly, yet even other times by those who would just as eagerly embrace their own unreality as long as it opposed those with whom they battle in factional or partisan disputes.

    The forces tied to the present president, Donald Trump, seem to have been the source of much of this rancour, with the constant stream of outrageous claims made by Mr Trump and his administration. According to Allen Abel writing in the 11 December 2018 issue of the Canadian magazine, Macleans: ‘As the president's hallucinatory world heaves and crumbles, Americans ponder what kind of country they wish to live in—and what kind of people they want to be.’ It is noted, however, that the assertions of living in a post-truth world predate Mr Trump's presidential campaign (Manjoo, 2008, 1–7).

    For example, in the 1964 Pulitzer Prize winning study of Anti- Intellectualism in America, Richard Hofstadter wrote that although much of his study derived from events in the remoter American past, the impetus to study anti-intellectualism was driven by his discomfort over the Red Scares of his immediate history, in particular the populist rants of MacCarthyism (Hofstadter, 1963, 1-5). We must therefore assume that there are other elements at play to challenge reality.

    Yet, if we are to support reality, or at least evidence-based research, we must embrace the bastions of data, from which reality, or at least an image thereof, may be drawn. For the most part, these accumulations of data are divided between published and unpublished data. Since published material may be more easily available, the more intriguing repository to examine is the archive, the collected fonds of institutional information.

  • 6 - Memories of the future: archives in India

  • Michael Moss, David Thomas
  • Book:
    Do Archives Have Value?
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    02 October 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 89-104

  • Summary

    The beginnings of archives in colonial India

    Archives have always been more about re-collecting the future than the past. In a neglected essay titled ‘Memories of the future’ the well-known Shakespeare and Middleton scholar Gary Taylor wrote that ‘We can imagine the future only by recollecting the past’ (Taylor, 1996, 237). Archives ‘re-member’ not simply by collecting materials from the present and the past, but also by selecting and organizing them, so that each act of collecting or ‘re-collecting’ is also at the same time an act of forgetting. ‘All the futures of the past are inaccurate’, writes Taylor (Taylor, 1996, 246). Human technologies of memory are designed to overcome the limitations of bodily memory, irrespective of whether we think of the ‘body’ from the viewpoint of a ‘naive physicalism’ or a ‘naive mentalism’. One may think of the ‘memory’ as unselfconscious of visceral processes or as cognizant of the consciousness as ‘embodied’ and of the body ‘enminded’ (Searle, 1984, 13–27). Neither position would make a difference to the perceived function of technologies of memory. While our memory-machines do the remembering for us, we aim to marshal memories for our use and to fashion a memory bank for the future the way that we would like to imagine it.

    Such attempts were made in western arts of memory, such as in the place-rhetoric or topoi since Aristotle and the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium (Moss, 1996, 8). In the twelfth century, Hugh of St Victor in his De arca Noe mystica raised the machine universitatis, a memorial ark which had elements of the mappa mundi and of linea generationis, on a tablet or page of a book (Carruthers, 1990, 231–9). Hamlet is probably thinking of such a tablet (or ‘table’) when he swears to erase all ‘trivial fond records’ from the ‘table of [his] … memory’ and admit ‘Within the book and volume’ of his brain only his father's commandment to seek revenge (Shakespeare, 1988, Hamlet, 1.5.98–103).1 God had inscribed his commandments to Moses in written letters, and Hamlet does likewise with his father's injunctions. Writing is an aid to cultural memory. Keeping records on clay tablets helped Ashurbanipal to centralise power and claim in 668 BCE that he was ‘King of the Universe’.

  • 4 - Data protection: principles and main features

  • Edited by Rachael Maguire
  • Book:
    Information Rights for Records Managers
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    01 June 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 73-98

  • Summary

    Introduction

    Unlike Freedom of Information and the Environment Information Regulations, data protection is not just a straightforward request for information. It includes requests for personal information, but is also meant to govern how personal data is collected, used, managed and disposed of by organizations.

    On 25 May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force within the EU member states. The Regulation applies in the UK, through the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018, which also incorporates how to manage personal data relating to law enforcement and intelligence services.

    In many ways, the GDPR builds on the Data Protection legislation produced under the previous Directive.

    Above all, keep in mind: the main point of data protection is to let individuals know what you are doing with their personal information. Transparency is the key.

    Data Protection has a lot of different aspects, so has been divided into three chapters. If you are the official Data Protection Officer (DPO) or supporting that role, you will need to be able to respond on all of the following:

  • • Chapter 4 covers the basics: the principles, including data breaches, definitions, lawful basis for processing, special categories data and the difference between data controllers and data processors.

  • • Chapter 5 covers how to respond to requests relating to personal data, including subject access, deletion, portability, marketing and automated processing. In other words, it covers requests from individuals about their data.

  • • Chapter 6 covers internal enquiries about data protection that you are likely to receive from colleagues. It includes guidance on privacy notices, data protection impact assessments and how to handle the sorts of questions you are likely to receive relating to personal data.

    • First, though, is an explanation of the differences between the former Directive that led to the 1998 DPA and Regulations.

    Regulations and Directives

    The GDPR is a Regulation, whereas the EU law it replaces was a Directive. What is the difference?

    A Directive is intended to be translated by the EU member states into individual legislation within those states. So the EU Directive (95/46/EC) was the precursor to the 1998 DPA in the UK and similar legislation in the other EU member states. This meant that each piece of legislation based on the Directive had its own individual quirks.

  • 3 - Freedom of information exemptions

  • Edited by Rachael Maguire
  • Book:
    Information Rights for Records Managers
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    01 June 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 37-72

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This chapter focuses on the exemptions available under the UK Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) and the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act (FoISA). They are covered in order of the FoIA, but any section number differences are included in Table 3.1 so that if you work for a Scottish public authority you can find the right section more easily.

    The first section covers what you have to consider when applying an exemption, which also includes whether you have to apply the public interest test or prejudice test. Both of these are explained below. Each exemption is discussed, with the particular issues to look out for when you are thinking of applying the exemption. If you are new to Freedom of Information (FoI), you will find this section more useful. Those with more experience may prefer to head straight to the exemption guidance.

    Covered in this chapter are:

  • • the exemptions and how to apply them;

  • • dealing with internal reviews;

  • • dealing with complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC);

  • • managing the publication scheme.

    • Covered in Chapter 2 are:

  • • the basic method for handling a request, which is also useful for the EIR;

  • • how to recognise a request;

  • • how to process a request;

  • • how to handle requests for clarification;

  • • how to create a response.

    • As in Chapter 2, when I refer to ‘you’ I am thinking of the records manager or information manager who finds themselves in the position of having to manage responses to FoI requests. You can read through the whole of both chapters or dip into the parts that have the most relevance. I suggest reading through all the exemptions at least once to ensure that you are familiar with them all. You will use certain exemptions many times, but others very rarely. It is worth knowing about those other ones for the few occasions when you need them.

    Refusing the request due to an exemption

    Section 17 of the FoIA and section 16 of the FoISA set out the requirements of a refusal notice. The two sections are similar, but not the same.

  • 5 - Data protection: rights of data subjects

  • Edited by Rachael Maguire
  • Book:
    Information Rights for Records Managers
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    01 June 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 99-120

  • Summary

    This chapter includes the types of requests that data subjects can make relating to data held and processed by a data controller and data processor. The basics of data protection are covered in Chapter 4 and the types of enquiries likely to be raised by staff, including data protection impact assessments and transfers outside the EU, are covered in Chapter 6.

    Introduction

    This chapter covers the types of requests that you are likely to deal with as a Data Protection Officer (DPO) or in helping the DPO at your organization.

    Individuals have been able to request data about themselves under the Data Protection Act (DPA). This right is strengthened in the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), although there is now also the pos - sibility of refusing a request if it is manifestly unreason able, which was not available in the DPA. Under the DPA, you had 40 days to respond.

    Data subjects also had the right to get their incorrect information corrected or deleted under the DPA if the data controller did not have a reason to keep it. Data subjects could also object to marketing or automated processing. You had 21 days to respond to these types of requests under the DPA. These rights have also been strengthened in the GDPR and a right to data portability (see below) has been added.

    Under the GDPR, all requests from data subjects must be responded to within one month. At the time of writing, there is no guidance as to what this length of time is in days. In UK law, there is a definition of a month, as given in Halsbury's Laws of England:

    When the period prescribed is a calendar month running from any arbitrary date the period expires with the day in the succeeding month immediately preceding the day corresponding to the date upon which the period starts: save that, if the period starts at the end of a calendar month which contains more days than the next succeeding month, the period expires at the end of the latter month.

    So it could mean you have 28 days to respond in February, 31 days in March and 30 days in April, unless you receive the request on 31 March, which gives you only until 30 April to respond.

  • 10 - Resources

  • Edited by Rachael Maguire
  • Book:
    Information Rights for Records Managers
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    01 June 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 189-192

  • Summary

    Introduction

    You cannot do the jobs of Data Protection and Freedom of Information Officer without outside help. You'll need to pay attention to the guidance produced by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC). Even if you are not subject to the SIC, it is worth keeping an eye on its decisions, as the ICO will be doing so. If you have not already done so, you also need to read the legislation itself. I also recommend reading the decision notices relating to exemptions and exceptions that you are planning to use.

    Legislation

    The UK Freedom of Information Act (FoIA), 1998 and 2018 Data Protection Acts (DPAs), Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) and all the other Regulations are available through the legis - lation.gov.uk website. The Scottish legislation is available there as well. A web search on any of this legislation should bring up the direct link to it on this website.

    The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other EU legislation are also available on the EUR-Lex.europa.eu website, but only as a hard-to-navigate HTML site or PDF. A better link to the GDPR is available here: https://gdpr-info.eu/. This separates out the Articles and Recitals as separate links, grouped by theme and Chapter, and makes the document so much easier to navigate.

    You can also find the debates in the Houses of Lords and Commons relating to the 2018 DPA on the UK Parliament website. The 2018 DPA does not contain the text of the GDPR, so you will need access to both.

    Guidance

    For UK guidance on Data Protection, FoI and the EIR, go to the ICO's website: www.ico.org.uk. The guidance is split between what the public need to know and what organizations need to know. The ICO also has a helpline, including one specifically for small organizations, although I have tended to find that this is not very helpful if you have a question relating to something for which there is no case law.

    For Scottish organizations, this type of guidance is available from the SIC website: www.itspublicknowledge.info/home/ScottishInformation Commissioner.aspx. Although the advice is specific to Scottish legislation, it is worth checking out if you are using a similar exemp - tion/exception in UK law to see if the argument you are making has been rejected by the SIC.

  • 1 - Valuing oral and written texts in Malawi

  • Michael Moss, David Thomas
  • Book:
    Do Archives Have Value?
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    02 October 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 1-16

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The arrival of missionaries in the 1860s marked the beginning of literacy in Malawi (formerly Nyasaland). Planters and traders followed after the missionaries before the colonial administration was established in 1891. A large proportion of the country's historical records therefore comprises records of churches, early planters, traders and both colonial and post-colonial administrations. For many decades, and while preserved in the National Archives of Malawi, these records of continuing value have served different people – those who actually consulted them and those who, interestingly, never consulted them but exerted control over them. It is worth noting that prior to the arrival of the missionaries Malawi was exclusively an oralbased society – and still is, generally. As this chapter will demonstrate, from time immemorial people have ascribed value to both oral and written texts in Malawi, and this has been the case for various reasons.

    Value of oral and written texts during the pre-colonial era

    In general, public functions within a tribal society were carried out by the chief, the chief's councillors, court assessors, village headmen, messengers, initiation teachers and priests. Since all able-bodied men would be called up to fight when war broke out or when a raid had been planned, the men constituting the tribal army would also be considered as public servants of the tribal government. Continuity in the native public service was made possible by a succession of new officials to replace those who had retired or died. Mitchell (1951), Wilson (1972) and Phiri (1975) agree that successors to chiefly or ritual titles and senior advisors to chiefs were given formal instructions orally about their duties and responsibilities by their retiring predecessors. The handing- and taking-over briefs between the retiring and incoming officials were not written but oral, and were memorised by the incoming officials. In this way information about various public offices was preserved in the minds of serving public officials and passed on to succeeding generations.

    Biabaku (in Phiri, 1975), Wilson (1972), Pachai (1972) and Phiri (1975) distinguish between official historical information and general community historical information in the pre-colonial era. These authors appear to agree that the need for the preservation of the former type of information was officially acknowledged. The responsibility for the management of vital public information was placed on such officials as the chief's councillors, advisors on community matters and shrine officials.

  • 5 - Sharing history: coupling the archives and history compilation in Japan

  • Michael Moss, David Thomas
  • Book:
    Do Archives Have Value?
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    02 October 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 75-88

  • Summary

    Introduction

    The first modern archives in Japan were set up in Yamaguchi prefecture in 1959. The trigger for the adoption of the idea ‘archives’, when only libraries or museums had existed, was the deposit of the Mōri Family Papers to the prefecture in 1952. The Mōri family were feudal lords who governed the Yamaguchi prefecture area and the papers were administrative records of the Mōri clan in the early modern era, comprising 50,000 items. The best way to preserve and utilise this priceless collection was explored and the director of the prefectural library at that time came across the idea of archives. He studied western literature on archival science to design the system.

    The National Archives of Japan was set up in 1971. The system was based on western archival science, including T. R. Schellenberg's Modern Archives, which was translated and studied while planning the establishment of the National Archives.

    Since then, many archival institutions have been created in both the public and private sectors. The concept of the archival system is now more or less rooted in Japanese society, but there is a tradition of a kind of amalgamation of history compilation and archival functions. In this chapter the background which led to shape this tradition is analysed and its possible future development is discussed.

    History compilation in Japan

    The official history compilation tradition in East Asia

    The influence of Chinese culture is historically dominant in East Asian countries and the compilation of official history of the rulers is a part of it. The oldest existing chronicle in China is Chunqiu [Spring and Autumn Annals], which is a chronicle of the Lu dynasty from 772 BCE to 484 BCE. However, it is understood that the earliest official history is Shiji [Records of the Grand Historian] and the 24 titles, including Shiji, are together called 24 Official Histories. They cover the years from circa 90 BCE to 1739 CE (Takeuchi, 2002, 2–4, 102–3).

    The essential nature of the official history is that it is a project of the imperial order. Although the first four titles were originally written by individual historians and officially approved after completion, later systems included the emperor's order for the compilation of the history of the preceding dynasty.

  • 7 - Environmental Information Regulations

  • Edited by Rachael Maguire
  • Book:
    Information Rights for Records Managers
    Published by:
    Facet
    Published online:
    01 June 2019
    Print publication:
    28 September 2018, pp 141-168

  • Summary

    Introduction

    This chapter covers what environmental information is and how to respond to requests for environmentally related information. This is because environmental information is covered by separate regulations to the Freedom of Information (FoI) Acts. If you are the one processing FoI requests, you need to know about the EIR, as you will be processing these requests as well as a matter of course.

    The EIR are a lot like the Freedom of Information Acts (FoIAs), until they are not. The same process for managing FoI requests that is set out in Chapter 2 can be used to manage EIR requests. Unlike data protection, they are a straightforward request for information. There is a UK and a Scottish set of regulations, although these are very similar. Any differences between the two Regulations will be noted as necessary. Being a set of Regulations rather than an Act, the termin - ology is Regulation rather than section when referring to the separate parts of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), that is Regulation 1(1) rather than section 1(1).

    As is expected from the name, the EIR focus on environmental information, as compared to FoI, which covers information more generally. Which leads to the first question when it comes to using the EIR: what is environmental information? The next section takes you through the definitions in the Regulations and how they can be used to identify environmental information.

    Environmental information

    Both Regulations take their definitions of environmental information directly from Directive 2003/4/EC, Public Access to Environmental Information, (referred to as ‘the Directive’ in this chapter) which was in turn drafted to meet the requirements of the Aarhus Convention. The purpose of the Directive and the Regulations is to allow EU citizens access to environmental information in order to be able to participate in decision making relating to the environment.

    In Regulation 2(1) for both the UK and Scottish Regulations, environmental information is defined in the following way:

    ‘environmental information’ has the same meaning as in Article 2(1) of the Directive, namely any information in written, visual, aural, electronic or any other material form on—

    (a) the state of the elements of the environment, such as air and atmosphere, water, soil, land, landscape and natural sites including wetlands, coastal and marine areas, biological diversity and its components, including genetically modified organisms, and the interaction among these elements;

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