The Scottish Government

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Responding to this consultation paper

We are inviting written responses to this consultation paper by 30 ^th September 2009. Please send your response with the completed Respondent Information Form (see "Handling your Response" below) to:

foi@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

or

If you have any queries contact Brian Rigby on 0131 244 5148.

We would be grateful if you could clearly indicate in your response which questions or parts of the consultation paper you are responding to as this will aid our analysis of the responses received.

This consultation, and all other Scottish Government consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Government website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations. You can telephone Freephone 0800 77 1234 to find out where your nearest public internet access point is.

The Scottish Government now has an email alert system for consultations ( SEconsult: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/seconsult.aspx). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). SEconsult complements, but in no way replaces SG distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SG consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Handling your response

We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please complete and return the Respondent Information Form which forms part of this consultation as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.

All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Government are subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under the Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise.

Next steps in the process

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library (see the attached Respondent Information Form), these will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library by 22 ^nd October 2009. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SG Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

What happens next ?

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us reach a decision on whether to amend the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. We aim to issue our conclusions on whether to amend FOISA by December 2009. If Scottish Ministers decide to proceed with an amending order this will be laid before the Scottish Parliament early in 2010.

Comments and complaints

If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to the Freedom of Information Unit at the contact details shown above (under 'Responding to this consultation paper').

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