16 March 2010
Marie Griffiths
via e-mail to:
[FOI #30206 email]
Dear Ms Griffiths
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 498612
Thank you for your request for information dated 05 February 2010, received by OGC on the
same date. I note you seek access to the following information:
Please provide the following information regarding your responsibilities under the DPA:
1. How many requests do you get under the DPA each year?
2. How do you verify the authenticity of DPA requests?
3. Do you conduct regular DPA audits/have an auditing policy?
4. Do you maintain data on errors in information covered by the DPA?
a. If so, please provide data for the past 5 years.
Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within OGC to locate information
relevant to your request. I can confirm that OGC holds some recorded information relevant to
your request.
Decision
For parts 1 and 2 of your request OGC has decided to disclose the information held to you in
full. OGC does not hold recorded information relating to parts 3 and 4, but in order to be helpful
we are providing responses to those parts of your request outside the scope of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (“the Act”).
Disclosed Information
Part 1
1. How many requests do you get under the DPA each year?
The number of DPA requests received by OGC varies each year. Here are the figures from
2004 onwards:
OGC Rosebery Court, St Andrew's Business Park
OGC Service Desk
Norwich NR7 0HS
www.ogc.gov.uk
T 0845 000 4999 [OGC request email]
Financial Year Number of DPA requests received
2004-05 1
2005-06 3
2006-07 0
2007-08 0
2008-09 1
2009-10
1 (to the date of your request)
Part 2
2. How do you verify the authenticity of DPA requests?
The DPA does not prescribe how an applicant's identity should be checked, saying rather that
the data controller is not obliged to deal with a request until the applicant has supplied
information that the data controller may reasonably require in order to satisfy the identity of the
applicant (section 7(3)). OGC asks for a signed and dated copy of either a valid passport or
photo driving licence and a signed and dated copy of a recent utility bill which gives the
applicant's current address.
Additional information provided outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act
2000
OGC does not hold recorded information relating to parts 3 and 4 of your request. However, in
order to be helpful we are providing the following information outside of the Act:
Part 3
3. Do you conduct regular DPA audits/have an auditing policy?
Personal data of OGC staff is the responsibility of HM Treasury which is a separate data
controller.
OGC holds information about individual customers (for example, members of the procurement
profession) and our internal policy is to fully cleanse this data once a year, although the system
is continually cleansed on a monthly basis. We give recipients of our mailings the opportunity
to update the information we hold on them and they have the option to opt-out of
communications.
Part 4
4. Do you maintain data on errors in information covered by the DPA?
a. If so, please provide data for the past 5 years.
OGC does not maintain a list of data on errors or changes in information. Each individual
contact has a history attached to their record, this automatically records all
amendments/updates to contact data and this is fully searchable.
Notes
The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non-commercial
research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use, for example
commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. Most documents
supplied by OGC will have been produced by government officials and are protected under
Crown Copyright. You can find details on the arrangements for re-using Crown copyright on
the Office of Public sector Information website at:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/click-use/index.htm
Your attention is drawn to the Statement on OGC's Intellectual Property at:
http://www.ogc.gov.uk/sdtoolkit/copyright/index.html
If you are unhappy with the service you have received in relation to your request and wish to
make a complaint or request an internal review of our decision, you should write to the Service
Desk (details at foot of page 1) within two calendar months of the date of this letter.
If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint, you may apply directly to the
Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless
you have exhausted the complaints procedure provided by OGC. The Information
Commissioner can be contacted at:
The Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Should you have any further inquiries concerning this matter, please contact the Service Desk
(contact details at the foot of page 1) quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Ruth Carrod
Head of Information Management
[email address]
