ACOBA's count of appointments by employer

Dear Advisory Committee on Business Appointments,

Under the Freedom of Information Act, please can you send me
emailed copies of the following information from your database of
appointments data:

1) By department and year of date taken up, the total number of
former Minister appointment applications by new employer name.

2) By department and year of date taken up, the total number of
senior Crown servant appointment applications by new employer name.

Attached to this message are SQL queries that will generate the
requested information based on the database schema you provided in
a previous FOI response. These queries should take a few seconds to
run on modern computer equipment. The output of each of these two
queries will look similar to this:

+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+----------+
| DepartmentName | YEAR(DateTakenUp) | NewEmployerName | COUNT(*) |
+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+----------+
| BERR | 2009 | Falis Ltd | 2 |
| BERR | 2009 | STO Ltd | 3 |
| BERR | 2010 | Falis Ltd | 1 |
| DFT | 2010 | Jarlik Ltd | 1 |
| ... | ... | ... | ... |
+----------------+-------------------+-----------------+----------+

There is a public interest in knowing which organisations are
appointing former ministers and senior civil servants to private
sector roles. If you redact a new employer name, for example for
"market sensitive" appointments, then please state the FOI
exemption you are using to do so.

The information is not available to the public by another means, so
not exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the Act. Your
current reports do not provide details of all new employer names.
For example, in ACOBA's Tenth Report, table 1 indicates there were
394 applications from Crown servants in 2008–09. However the report
provides the new employer name for only 43 Crown servant
appointments, in annex D.

The requested information does not identify individual people, so
it is not exempt from disclosure as personal data under the section
40 of the Act. A count of how many appointments a company made of
people from a particular department in a year does not identify the
people themselves.

Individuals providing appointment information to ACOBA, do so under
the understanding that details may be published by ACOBA if there
is a public interest to do so. Given the circumstances under which
ACOBA receives the information, the requested information is not
exempt from disclosure as information provided in confidence under
the section 41 of the Act.

The requested information is unlikely to prejudice the effective
conduct of public affairs, as it does not contain any information
on how decisions are made or who was involved in making decisions.
Appointment information is given to ACOBA on the understanding that
specific details may be published where there is a public interest
to do so.

Releasing this information is in line with the "Government
Transparency" agenda of the new coalition government. Attempts to
prevent disclosure of this information fuels a public perception
that there's a revolving door problem between government and the
private sector.

Yours faithfully,
Mr McKinnon

1) SQL query to generate Minister appointment applications count,
by department, year of date taken up, and new employer name:

SELECT DepartmentName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), NewEmployerName, COUNT(*)
FROM MApplication
INNER JOIN (MAPPLICANT
INNER JOIN GovernmentDepartment
ON MAPPLICANT.DepartmentID=GovernmentDepartment.DepartmentID)
ON MApplication.ApplicantID=CSAPPLICANT.ApplicantID
WHERE DateTakenUp IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY NewEmployerName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), DepartmentName
ORDER BY DepartmentName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), NewEmployerName;

2) SQL query to generate Crown servant appointment applications
count, by department, by year of date taken up, and new employer
name:

SELECT DepartmentName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), NewEmployerName, COUNT(*)
FROM CSAPPLICATION
INNER JOIN (CSAPPLICANT
INNER JOIN GovernmentDepartment
ON CSAPPLICANT.DepartmentID=GovernmentDepartment.DepartmentID)
ON CSAPPLICATION.ApplicantID=CSAPPLICANT.ApplicantID
WHERE DateTakenUp IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY NewEmployerName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), DepartmentName
ORDER BY DepartmentName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), NewEmployerName;

Dear Advisory Committee on Business Appointments,

Please find below a correction to one of the SQL statements from my
request to you dated 10 September 2010. The part
CSAPPLICANT.ApplicantID should instead be MAPPLICANT.ApplicantID:

---
1) SQL query to generate Minister appointment applications count,
by department, year of date taken up, and new employer name:

SELECT DepartmentName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), NewEmployerName, COUNT(*)
FROM MApplication
INNER JOIN (MAPPLICANT
INNER JOIN GovernmentDepartment
ON MAPPLICANT.DepartmentID=GovernmentDepartment.DepartmentID)
ON MApplication.ApplicantID=MAPPLICANT.ApplicantID
WHERE DateTakenUp IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY NewEmployerName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), DepartmentName
ORDER BY DepartmentName, YEAR(DateTakenUp), NewEmployerName;
---

Can you please confirm by email that you have received my request
dated 10 September 2010?

I look forward to receiving your response within the 20 working day
statutory time period.

Yours faithfully,
Mr McKinnon

Dear Advisory Committee on Business Appointments,

It is now 20 days since my request to you dated 10 September 2010,
yet I have not received a response from you.

As you should be aware 20 days is a legal deadline under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000, therefore by not responding you
have broken the law.

I look forward to receiving a response from you on the next working
day, 11 October 2010. If you fail to respond by the end of that
day, then I will be sending a complaint to the Information
Commissioner's Office.

Yours faithfully,
Mr McKinnon