Our Ref: FOI 2293

26 September 2008

Richard Jackson

Sent via email

Dear Mr Jackson

Further to your email dated 20^th August 2008 requesting a review of our decision to refuse your request on the grounds that it would exceed the £450 limit specified in the Fees Regulations.

This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the department holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. Consequently, the Council is not obliged by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to respond to your request see section 12(1).

As we stated in our response on the 20^th August 2008 in the last 24 months Birmingham City Council has used for internet blocking the Border Manager tool and Bluecoat software. Bluecoat was introduced last year and over time the Bluecoat software will replace Border Manager.

As such, information which falls within the scope of your request will be held by the Council in both systems.

Border Manager block sites by URL, this is managed for the Council by an external company called Surf Control. Surf Control search and identify new websites then categorise these sites. The Council are given access to databases they own to upload and filter our product with newly blocked sites. This happens on a regular basis.

The Council are able to unblock and block sites as necessary, although there is no central record of what sites were blocked or allowed. The logs of the internet usage on Border Manager have to be sourced from raw data and only show:

Times, User, Dates, URL

All sites visited are listed, but the software distinguishes between what access has been allowed and where it has been blocked by logging an error code reference, which means we would have to trawl through the individual logs to search which sites were blocked.

With the Bluecoat software we still have the ability to unblock and block sites that are either already in the categories or added manually. Again there is no centralised record of what sites are currently being blocked by URL. The user logs on Bluecoat have the headings:

User, Time, Client IP, Verdict, Category, Hits, Bytes Out, Bytes In, URL.

All sites are listed whether blocked or allowed, therefore, the only method of searching for blocked sites is to trawl through the user logs for the last 24 months on Bluecoat and Border Manager to satisfy your request.

Therefore, the time it would take to trawl through over 8,000 user logs for the past 24 months would exceed the Fees Regulations as set out above.

The Panel have decided to uphold the previous decision to refuse the information on cost grounds.

If however, you are not satisfied with the City Council's decision, you may apply to the Information Commission for an independent review at the following address:-

The Information Commissioner

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tele No: 01625 545700

www.ico.gov.uk

Yours sincerely

Malkiat Thiarai

Corporate Governance and Information Manager

Corporate Information Governance Team Telephone: 0121-303 4876

Governance Directorate Facsimile: 0121-675 1427

1^st Floor, 1 Lancaster Circus

Birmingham B4 7DQ