If you know of or work for a public authority or private body which has taken an important openness initiative in the UK or know of any media body or individual who deserves recognition, do please nominate them.

The Awards recognise the authorities, individuals, media bodies and other organisations who have made significant contributions towards freedom of information during the year.

Past winners include:

• Public bodies who have gone beyond legal requirements in allowing access to personal files, planning applications, environmental information, education information, or the internal rules used by staff; or in encouraging greater parental involvement in case conferences and public attendance at meetings. Previous winners include local authorities, a TEC, a public inquiry, a development corporation, a head teacher, a prison governor, a hospital, a social services department and individual health professionals

• Employees who have risked their jobs to expose abuse in the police force, health service, higher education, other public bodies and business

• Relatives of people killed in transport or military accidents or by drug side effects who have had to mount extraordinary campaigns to obtain the truth about the circumstances of the death

• Individual journalists, local newspapers, TV and radio programmes who have mounted systematic campaigns to expose unjustified official secrecy

• MPs who have made a significant contribution in Parliament towards freedom of information or succeeded in persuading the government to release previously secret information

• A company which encourages employees to write anonymously to its in-house journal with complaints about conditions of work and which publishes them with a response from the directors

• A company which voluntarily published normally confidential information about its environmental impact

The categories of Awards are not fixed, and need not follow the pattern of the above examples. However, if you wish to find out more about previous winners, please read the press releases announcing the winners of the Awards for 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997.