The Scottish Parliament last night voted in favour of the Freedom of Information bill. The legislation north of the border appears to be more far-reaching than the bill proposed by Westminster, although there is a clause which allows the government to prevent access to current research before its publication date.

The problem remains how to find out what information is held and how to get to it. Not always an easy task when the press are more concerned with how the England football manager conducts his love life than hard news. The government does keep a register of all the unpublished information held by government departments north & south of the border, and what access the public has to this information. It is there, it just isn't publicised very much.

Here in Scotland there has been a fair amount of interest in creating a scottish domain name, as this story from a couple of years ago demonstrates. So much so that Nominet have had to issue a domain statement Scottish businesses currently being attracted by the offer of a "Scottish" domain name, .sc, should be aware that they may not be getting what they think. Apparently .sc is the domain for the Seychelles, but is being offered to Scottish businesses as a Scottish alternative to co.uk etc.

It could be useful to have a Scottish domain for search purposes. I think there is a probably a market for a Scottish version of the SOSIG subject gateway (you could call it HAGIS).