Free Chapter of The Freedom of Information Officer’s Handbook

FOIMan brings you a free chapter from his recently published book The Freedom of Information Officer’s Handbook.

I was thrilled last week to read a really positive review of my new book by Lynn Wyeth, Head of Information Governance at Leicester City Council (and well-known commenter on FOI and information rights matters) in the Freedom of Information Journal. She had lots of good things to say including:

What makes this book different to other books written about FOI is that it’s written by a practitioner for practitioners…

Describing it as a ‘desperately needed practitioners’ FOI bible’, Lynn finishes by saying:

Every FOI Officer should have a copy on their desk.

There are more reviews available on the Facet Publishing website if you are interested. I hope you’ll understand me drawing attention to these reviews: writing a book is a huge undertaking and a) given the work involved, it is heartwarming and (honestly) a relief to see such a positive reception, and b) I’d like as many people as possible to read it!

As an academic publisher, I understand that some will find Facet’s standard pricing of their output a little on the high side. I’ve been very conscious of this since first discussing the idea with them back in 2017. With this in mind, just a few things that I’m doing to try to ensure anyone who is interested can access at least some of its content:

• Facet have been great at agreeing discounts for particular readerships. As a reader of this blog you can obtain a 30% discount on the cover price by following the instructions opposite, and you can obtain an even bigger discount if you get in touch with me for a training or consultancy quote.
• The Handbook is now recommended reading for anyone taking PDP’s Practitioner Certificate in FOI. To mark this, for a limited time only, you can purchase a copy of The Handbook for £39 from PDP Books.
• For those that still can’t afford to buy a copy, or would like to see what they’re buying, I’m making Chapter 10 of the book ‘The FOI Officer’ available free of charge here on the FOIMan site. This is the original manuscript version as submitted to Facet last summer, so not exactly as it appears in the final book, but for the most part it is identical to the finished product.

Whether you’re studying for a qualification, need help with answering requests, or are just interested in FOI and access to information, I hope you’ll enjoy reading the free chapter provided here and perhaps the book itself.