WhatDoTheyKnow.com Tags

Tags are used by WhatDoTheyKnow to place public authorities in groups so that lists can be generated. Many of the tags represent types of public authorities on the side menu [1].

Usage

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/list/tagname
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/local/tagname

Geographic tags

Countries

Country tags indicate both where a body covers and what FOI regime it is subject to.

scotland: A Scottish public authority, as defined in any of FOIA, FOISA, EIR, or EISR.
wales: A Welsh public authority, as defined by section 83 of FOIA, the National Assembly for Wales, or the Welsh Assembly Government.
ni: A Northern Ireland public authority, as defined by section 84 of FOIA, a Northern Ireland department, or the Northern Ireland assembly.
england: A public authority whose functions are exercisable only or mainly in or as regards England.

Regions in England

Only use where the public authority covers the whole region e.g. North West Regional Development Agency.

London Boroughs

City of London † City of Westminster Kensington_and Chelsea* Hammersmith and Fulham Wandsworth Lambeth Southwark Tower Hamlets Hackney Islington Camden Brent Ealing Hounslow Richmond Upon Thames Kingston Upon Thames* Merton		Sutton Croydon Bromley Lewisham Greenwich Bexley Havering Barking and Dagenham Redbridge Newham Waltham Forest Haringey Enfield Barnet Harrow Hillingdon
† not a London borough * Royal Borough

NHS

pharmacy for NHS pharmacists
nhs for everything below

commissioning_consortium for Clinical commissioning groups (I (Richard) think the word "Group" is now being used in preference to "consortium" and groups and consortia are one and the same? Groups are certainly describing themselves as consortia [2] )

England

nhstrust for National Health Service trusts (maybe also in Wales) and NHS foundation trusts
- nhsft for NHS foundation trusts

Wales

nhswales for all Welsh bodies, including...
local_health_board for Local Health Boards

Advisory NDPB

All advisory NDPBs should be tagged advisory_committee even if they have not got "Advisory Committee" in their name because they are called "Advisory Council" or "Advisory Panel" or something else.

Companies

for public authorities that are companies, this can be useful to know as companies are legally required to create and keep board minutes and minutes of general meetings.

The Companies Act 2006 defines various terms relating to companies. We represent them as:

company for "companies" as defined by the Act
plc for public companies
limited for private limited companies

Joint Committees

joint_committee

Municipal bodies

Non-departmental public bodies (NDPB)

When it comes to Central Government there are the ministerial departments and the non-ministerial departments and then there are the others.

executive_agency
endpb executive NDPB
andpb advisory NDPB
otherndpb other NDPB

Education

academies Academy schools (typically we will list the schools rather than the trust to help our users)
academy_trust Academy Trusts - Intended to be added on request or for major multi-academy trusts.

Urban development and regeneration

udc urban development corporation
urc urban regeneration company

Scottish Private Prison Contractors

scottish_prison_contractor Contractors who run privately-managed prisons in Scotland. See: http://www.gov.scot/About/Information/FOI/Coverage

Not subject to FOI

foi_no not subject (may or may not comply voluntarily)
not_apply FOI doesn't apply to this body) Used for example on bodies which used to be subject to FOI. Prevents requests being made to the body. Prompts note: "Freedom of Information law does not apply to this authority, so you cannot make a request to it. "

foi_voluntary will comply voluntarily
foi_refuse will not comply voluntarily

reason(s) for including body:

eir_only likely to be subject to the Environmental Information Regulations but unlikely to comply voluntarily with FOI

public_appointments - makes public appointments
public_funded - receives substantial public funding
public_assets - controls public assets
public_regulatory - has a regulatory function
public_infrastructure - controls significant national infrastructure
public_money_distribution - distributes public funds
nhs_care_provider - provides NHS care (Primary care providers are covered by FOI, this tag will be used for other providers)

Other

assessor - Assessor (Scotland)
corporation_sole - Corporations Sole
licensing_board - Licensing Board (Scotland)
lscb - Local Safeguarding Children Board
lgps - Local Government Pension Scheme
transport_partnership - Transport Partnership (Scotland)
vjb - Valuation Joint Board (Scotland)
duplicate - Duplicate authorities. Where an authority has more than one entry, all but one should have this tag.
probation_trust - probation trusts
trading_fund - trading funds
department_ni - Northern Ireland departments

Full list of WDTK tags

To help with debugging - here's the full list of tags on WhatDoTheyKnow:

WhatDoTheyKnow.com Tags/Full List

Foreign keys

Some tags are used to hold keys from other databases to make cross-referencing easier.

ch:* - Bodies that appear on the Register of Companies. '*' is replaced by the company number, which is eight characters long and consists of optional upper-case letters followed by digits.
coins:* Bodies appearing in COINS database followed by reference code e.g. coins:BRL048 (British Library)
dpr:* - Bodies that appear on the Register of Data Controllers. '*' is replaced by the registration number.
urn:* - Bodies that appear on EduBase. '*' is replaced by the institution's Unique Reference Number.
VAT:* - Bodies with a VAT (UK Value Added Tax) registration number. '*' is replaced by the VAT registration number (no spaces) e.g. VAT:895108987
charity:* - Bodies that are registered charities in England/Wales or Scotland. '*' is replaced by the charity number, which will begin SC in Scotland.