My hypothesis would be that a simple reply is completely within the
act.
(Certainly one with a one line footnote linking to an FAQ with
suitable details about how FOI works if the requester wants things
treated more formally)
Civil servants and Government lawyers tend to assume that maximum
complexity is needed; I doubt it in practice. Never have seen a proper
breakdown of this by people *inside Government* really *trying* to
simplify it.
They're usually defensive about it and covering their back, about
things that neither the ICO nor a court nor a reasonable reading of
the law would actually enforce as breaches.
Francis
On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 10:41:24AM +0000, Colm Howard-Lloyd wrote:
> When I managed a team who's duties included FOI-request response, I
> often had a battle arguing that many of the requests could be
> answered outside the act - with a simple reply.
>
> My previous points about misunderstanding the act are on both sides - many
> inquirers misunderstand the scope ("please explain why you are doing this"),
> and many authorities over-complicate the process of response.
>
> On 19 Jan 2012, at 08:53, Seb Bacon <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Just resurrecting this old discussion briefly as I had a mini query:
> >
> > Surely councils, quangos and government departments already had to
> > deal with vexatious requests *before* FOI? Even if you define "deal
> > with" as "have a quick scan and throw in the bin", it's still going to
> > cost you some amount of money. Has anyone done some research to
> > compare the two? E.g. how much time / money was spent on answering
> > questions about UFOs before FOIA? What *extra* costs has the FOIA
> > introduced for dealing with such requests?
> >
> > Seb
> >
> > On 21 December 2011 12:33, Mark Goodge <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> On 21/12/2011 11:31, Seb Bacon wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> Tom is absolutely right that the starting gun has been fired. There
> >>> have already been a couple of stories along the line that Cabinet
> >>> debates should not be subject to FOI [1], and the
> >>> not-entirely-relevant-but-overlapping idea that the DPA should be
> >>> revoked [2]. At the same time, the outgoing Scottish ICO commissioned
> >>> research showing strong public support for FOI [3]
> >>
> >>
> >> I think the concerns raised in the stories reported in the first two links
> >> are real, and need to be addressed. Personally, I wouldn't have a problem
> >> with excluding Cabinet minutes from FOI, at least in principle. In
> >> practice,
> >> though, I'd be very wary of anything which might be seen as the thin end of
> >> the wedge - if we accept the removal of one thing, what's to stop the
> >> removal of another? So I'd only accept such a change along with a broader
> >> review of FOI that not only excludes some things that it may have been
> >> wrong
> >> to include but also includes some things that were previously excluded.
> >>
> >>
> >>> I read the general thrust of the report as "FOI is a great success,
> >>> but probably costs too much money" (see para 221 in the Conclusion
> >>> section, for example).
> >>>
> >>> There is a lot of space dedicated to how much requests cost (a total
> >>> of 900,000 requests at an average cost of £160 - £254), to how
> >>> authorities view the costs as being too high (e.g. opportunity costs
> >>> of staff having to deal with requests other than their day jobs), and
> >>> to the subject of vexatious requests.
> >>
> >>
> >> I think there are two separate points to be made about costs. Firstly, a
> >> lot
> >> of costs would be minimised, or even eliminated, if the sort of information
> >> likely to be requested via FOI was pre-emptively published by the
> >> authorities themselves rather than waiting to be asked for it. Obviously
> >> that isn't going to apply to every possible request, since you can't
> >> predict
> >> every question that will be asked, but simple things like making sure that
> >> budget documents, etc can readily be found on the relevant website would
> >> help a lot.
> >>
> >> But, on the other hand, with my councillor hat on, I do think that the
> >> cut-off is possibly too high for some authorities. £600 is peanuts for a
> >> central government department, but £450 is a significant sum to a local
> >> council which needs to account for it in their annual precept-setting
> >> budget
> >> meeting. But I'm not entirely sure what the solution is, since reducing the
> >> limit might make it unduly difficult to obtain some information.
> >>
> >>
> >>> On the one hand, the WDTK team is committed to discouraging any
> >>> non-serious requests. And in the context of severe budget cuts, it's
> >>> clear that consicentious FOI officers are suffering [4]. Perhaps one
> >>> thing we can do is add a note during the request process about the
> >>> average cost of an FOI request (and/or an internal review)? Just
> >>> along the lines of "please consider if this request is important
> >>> enough to justify the average cost of answering it" (though worded
> >>> much better than that, of course!).
> >>
> >>
> >> Vexatious, frivolous and misguided requests are a real issue. I'm not quite
> >> sure how to stop people sending them, though, without it looking like
> >> censorship.
> >>
> >>
> >> Mark
> >> --
> >> Sent from my Babbage Difference Engine 2
> >> http://mark.goodge.co.uk
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
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> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > skype: seb.bacon
> > mobile: 07790 939224
> > land: 01531 671074
> >
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