Nolene wrote

<Who decides who needs to know what?>

I really get a kick out of the Canadian Association of Journalists' (CAJ) 
annual Code of Silence award - given to federal and provincial government 
departments with the worst track record that year of violating FOI laws:

http://www.caj.ca/news/news-archives/Code-of-silence-award-PR2002.htm

The CAJ president spoke to our Information Policy class one year at FIS, 
University of Toronto - he broke it down for us just how opacity (the deeply 
rooted "siege mentality") is enabled throughout Canadian government by means 
of FOI requests and procedures and various regulatory information 
dissemination procedures. It's sort of fun to learn about the chess game 
that is an FOI request.

I also got a big kick out of The File, the novel by Timothy Garton Ash,  
about an ex-pat's Stasi file that he rediscovers and is allowed to read 
decades later upon returning to reunified Berlin. Essential holiday reading.

"Big kicks" are kind of painful, wake you up, make you leery, and are 
sort-of fun in a twisted, chilling way.



Maureen Cusack, M.I.St.

http://www.maureencusack.net

"There are two kinds of adventurers; those who go truly hoping to
find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won't."
                        -Rabindranath Tagore

_________________________________________________________________
Your Hotmail address already works to sign into Windows Live Messenger! Get 
it now 
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://get.live.com/messenger/overview

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance