Child Safety on the Internet

Dear Mrs Fitzsimons

Freedom of Information Act 2000 - Information Request - 000900/09

With regard to your Freedom of Information request received on 22 October
2009, firstly I apologise for the delay in sending you our final response
which is simply due to the volume of requests we are receiving at
present. I hope this has not inconvenienced you too much and be assured
that this is not our usual service standards. Please find our response
below.

According to the Act requests costing up to £450 to retrieve are free
(apart from photocopying, printing and posting costs) but any requests
above this ceiling may incur a charge. The Act does not require the
council to satisfy information requests costing more than £450.

The Council's Education department have confirmed that data regarding the
responsibility for delivery and accreditations of staff and how often this
training is delivered is not held centrally but within each individual
schools.

Whilst this is a strict interpretation of the Act, the Council policy is
to provide a balance between the needs of the requester and the use of
resources to ensure effective service provision is maintained. We
therefore provide the following responses to your questions.

In accordance with Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act, the
Council is required to inform you that some of the information you have
requested has not been provided and has been withheld due to the following
exemptions under the Act.

1. Internet Safety Education provided as part of the school curriculum.

a) Within your schools is there a specific program aimed at teaching
children about staying safe online, including cyber bullying been
integrated into the curriculum?

Section 21 - Information available by other means.

It is considered that this exemption under Section 21 of the Act
applies to some of the information you have requested, namely that
the information on a number of such resources available to schools
can be found on the web site below.

Hull Grid for Learning website

([1]www.hgfl.org).

Hull City Council holds no central records on how cyber bullying has
been integrated into the curriculum as this will be held by each
individual school.

b) - If yes, who is responsible for delivery and what
accreditations/training have they received? For example, teacher, CEOP
trained ambassador.

Hull City Council is unable to provide this information without
exceeding the time/cost limit as defined under the Act.

c) - If yes, how often is internet safety training integrated into
the school curriculum, i.e. weekly, monthly etc

Hull City Council is unable to provide this information without
exceeding the time/cost limit as defined under the Act.

d) - If no, what steps/timeframes are being taken for implementation?

Schools are supported in the use of the BECTA
([2]http://www.becta.org.uk/) Self Review Framework for ICT, which
includes benchmarking and steps to implementing e-safety.

2. Internet Filtering

a) - Do the primary and secondary schools within your authority have
internet filtering in place?

Yes.

The vast majority of schools have filtering provided by the Yorkshire
and Humberside Grid for Learning (YHGfL, [3]http://www.yhgfl.net/).

b) - If yes, what tools do you use? For example Hardware or Software?

YHGfL use DansGuardian ([4]http://dansguardian.org/) for web
filtering, which is integrated with an open source DNS (Domain Name
system) Black Hole system (in effect, a list of `bad' IP addresses
and domain names) for spam filtering. They essentially have two Load
Balancing* servers which route to 7 Proxy servers with a
whitelist/blacklist. If a URL is not on the whitelist or blacklist
then it's forwarded to a bank of 11 Linux Filtering Servers.

The specifications of these servers are held by the YHGfL and not
Hull City Council.

*Is a technique to distribute workload evenly across two or more
computers, network links, CPUs, hard drives, or other resources, in
order to get optimal resource utilization, maximize throughput,
minimize response time, and avoid overload.

c) - If yes, what is the name of your internet filtering supplier and
when was their contract last renewed/due for renewal?

As stated above, the supplier is YHGfL, our Regional Broadband
Consortium (RBC).  There is no contract as they are a not for profit
company funded by a consortium of 12 local authorities in the region
representing 275 secondary schools, 86 special schools, 30 nurseries
and 1,657 primary schools and their partners in learning.

The RBC is currently procuring a new grid which will include
filtering. The situation is further complicated by the fact that
Secondary and Special schools will be transferring to a managed
service (provided by Research Machines) through the Building Schools
for the Future programme, which will provide filtering. The BSF
contract with RM runs until 2017.

3. Internet Filtering Breaches

a) - Have any of the Schools within the past 24 months experienced a
breach of Internet Filtering where children were able to access
pornography or Indecent images. Please provide details of School
Type(Primary or Secondary), Date of Breach and Type of Unsuitable material
accessed.

Section 40 - Personal Information.

It is considered that this exemption under Section 40(2) of the Act
applies, namely that details of primary and secondary schools and
date of breach is personal information and all personal details are
protected under the Data Protection Act 1998 legislation. The Council
cannot disclose personal information where to do so would breach any
of the data protection principles and we believe consent to disclose
would not be given. In this case the Council believes there is not
sufficient justification to release the information.

Yes there were 6 incidents at Primary and Secondary schools within
the past 24 months all viewing Adult images.

b) - If a breach of security occurred how was your authority
notified? For example, by a parent, by the school, through an automated
alert provided by hardware/software supplier.

Schools report breaches of security on the Council's IT Help Desk,
this information may initially have come from a range of sources.
YHGfL also report serious breaches to CEOPS/Police as appropriate.
The CLC employs Securus ([5]http://www.securus-software.com/)

software that provides automated alerts.

We hope that you will be satisfied with our response and should you
require any further information then please do not hesitate to contact
us.

We are required to advise you that if you wish to complain about our
response in any way, then this should initially be done through the
Council's internal complaints procedure. Please contact Lynne Bird, Legal
Services, The Guildhall, Hull HU1 2AA to register your complaint. If you
are not satisfied with the outcome of the internal complaints procedure
then you may take your complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office,
the government body established to enforce the legislation. Their details
are Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, telephone
01625 545 700, Email: [6][email address], web site
[7]www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk.

The Council's Freedom of Information Policy, which includes the charging
policy, is available on request and from the web site
[8]www.hullcc.gov.uk. Also available is a booklet on `Accessing
Information from Hull City Council' which explains how to request
information and your rights (according to the Data Protection Act 1998 and
The Freedom of Information Act 2000).

Yours sincerely

Information Governance Team

Hull City Council

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