Dear Sir or Madam, Please supply a copy of the contract signed 1st
August 2008 with Thales Information Systems to support IPS in
delivering the early releases of the National Identity Scheme
(NIS), including all appendices, schedules, technical manuals, work
orders and other such supplementary information. Yours faithfully,
Sue D Nym

Dear Ms Nym,

Thank you for your email of 2 August. Please find an acknowledgement
attached.

Yours faithfully,

On Behalf of James Hall
Identity and Passport Service

<<9964 Sue D Nym acknow.doc>>

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Your ref: FOICR 9964/08

Dear sir/madam,

Your response to this request was due on or before 2 September.
Please can you let me know where you are with my request.

Yours faithfully,

Sue D Nym

Dear Ms Nym,

Thank you for your email of 2 August. Please find a response attached.

Yours faithfully,

On behalf of James Hall, Chief Executive
Identity and Passport Service

<<9964 S D Nym final response (2).doc>>

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Your ref: FOICR 9964/08

Dear sir/madam,

I am writing to request an internal review of your decision to
reject my request as referred to above.

The grounds for my complaint are that the basis on which the
request has been rejected is incorrect in law.

Section 12(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 states that
the Secretary of State may make regulations as to the manner in
which costs relating to a request made under that Act may be
estimated by a public authority, for the purpose of assessing
whether these costs would exceed the "appropriate limit". The
relevant regulation is Regulation 4(3) of The Freedom of
Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004, which sets out four activities a public authority
may take into account when making this assessment:

(a) determining whether it holds the information,

(b) locating the information, or a document which may contain the
information,

(c) retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the
information, and

(d) extracting the information from a document containing it.

The Information Commissioner's guidance, entitled "Freedom of
Information Act Practical Guidance: Redacting and extracting
information" [1] states:

"A public authority is not permitted to take into account any time
likely to be spent:

- in considering exemptions that may apply to the information
requested; and

- in redacting exempt material."

The Commissioner's guidance goes on to state that the Information
Commissioner's position on this matter has been upheld by the
Information Tribunal:

"The Tribunal agrees with the Commissioner that such an act of
deletion, i.e. removal of what may be thought to be exempt
material, even at the stage at which the exercise is carried out,
cannot sensibly be viewed as coming within the provisions of
Regulation 4(3)(d) as it is presently drafted."

See Mr J Jenkins v Information Commissioner and Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, EA/2006/0067 [2].

This view has been supported in numerous further Information
Commissioner and Information Tribunal decisions [3,4,5,6,7].

On this basis, I respectfully request you reconsider your refusal
under section 12 of the FOIA.

Yours faithfully,

Sue D Nym

[1]
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...
[2]
http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/Do...
[3]
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/d...
[4]
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/d...
[5]
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/d...
[6]
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/d...
[7]
http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/Do...

Dear Ms Nym

Thank you for your message of 8 September to the Identity and Passport
Service in which you asked for an internal review to be carried out into
the handling of an earlier request for information.

Your message has been passed to the Home Office for consideration and I
have been asked to carry out the internal review. I can confirm that I
was not involved in the consideration of your original request and hope
to reply to you no later than 4 November.

Yours sincerely

Steve Kirk

Information Rights Team

Information Management Service

4th Floor

Seacole Building (NE)

Home Office

2 Marsham Street

London

SW1P 4DF

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Ms Sue D Nym Our ref: 9964

[FOI #1562 email]

Dear Ms Nym

When I wrote to you on 16 September to acknowledge receipt of your request for an internal review into a decision taken by the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) not to supply you with a document you had requested, I said I had been asked to carry out that review. I also confirmed that I had not been involved in the consideration of your original request. I have now completed my review and the purpose of this letter is to let you know the outcome.

In order to carry out my review, I contacted the relevant IPS staff to discuss the handling of your original request for information. I noted that the target date set to reply to your initial request was 2 September, but a reply was not sent until 5 September. I would like to apologise for this and the resultant fact that section 10(1) of the FOI Act, which required that in this case a response was sent within 20 working days, was breached.

IPS confirmed that they hold the information you requested, but as this spans some 2,000 pages they explained why they could not comply with your request on cost grounds. IPS continued by explaining that central government departments have set a cost limit of £600 per request and how this is calculated, which in this case included the time spent "finding and removing" exempt information. At this point I should clarify the phraseology employed by IPS. Although they refer to both "finding" and "removing" exempt information, it is clear from my examination of this case that it was only in relation to the deletion of exempt information from the 2000 pages that the limit was actually applied. It was not applied in relation to the process of deciding where exemptions applied, and I would like to apologise for any confusion that might arise from the phraseology employed.

In your request for an internal review you said that departments cannot include the time spent on redacting information and quoted guidance the Information Commissioner issued in August on this subject. You also cited an Information Tribunal decision from November last year on the same subject.

I am aware of these decisions, but this is a point on which our policy currently differs from the views expressed by the Commissioner and Tribunal. All cases are treated on their own merits, and it is our belief that in this case the length of time taken to redact exempt information should be included in our consideration of the cost limit.

In compliance with section 16 of the Act you were provided with some information about the documents held which make up the contract, and were invited to submit a refined request which will fall under the cost threshold. Should you wish to do so by, for instance, only requesting higher level documentation then IPS will be pleased to consider it afresh.

However if you are not satisfied with this response you have a further right of complaint to the Information Commissioner who can be contacted at the following address:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmore

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk <http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/>

Yours sincerely

Steve Kirk

Information Rights Team

Information Management Service

Financial and Commercial Group

4th Floor

Seacole Building (NE)

Home Office

2 Marsham Street

London

SW1P 4DF

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