Contract with Thales for National ID Scheme

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please supply a copy of the following documents, which form a part
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):

1. The thirty-six Service Agreement Schedules and annexes (in the
order 1-36, or 2-36 followed by 1 if Schedule/Annex 1 is entitled
"Definitions")

2. The Service Agreement which contains conditions specific to a
contract

3. The Framework Agreement which sets out the core terms for
contracts awarded

4. Any and all other documents which form a part of this contract,
in ascending order of the number of pages within the document. For
documents with the same number of pages, the documents should be
considered in ascending alphabetical order of their titles.

Please supply as many pages as possible, starting with page 1 of
the document appearing first in the ordering as specified above,
and proceeding sequentially through the pages of this document
followed by the remainder of the above listed documents, in order,
to the extent that my request would not be subject to exemption
under section 12 of the FOIA.

Yours faithfully,

Peter Collingbourne

Your ref: FOICR 10676/08

Dear sir/madam,

Your failure to respond appropriately within the established time
limits is a violation of the law.

Should any part of the documents I have requested be ready for
disclosure, I require the immediate disclosure of such.

Yours faithfully,

Peter Collingbourne

Your ref: FOICR 10676/08

Dear sir/madam,

I was informed that you aimed to provide a substantive reply to my
FOI request by 26 January. It is now 30 January and I have not
received any such reply.

I remind you that should any part of the documents I have requested
be ready for disclosure, I require the immediate disclosure of
such.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Collingbourne

Your ref: FOICR 10676/08

Dear sir/madam,

May I remind you again that I was informed that you aimed to
provide a substantive reply to my
FOI request by 26 January. It is now 10 February and I have not
received any such reply. Please provide a new indication of a date
by which you plan to provide a legally appropriate response.

I remind you that should any part of the documents I have requested
be ready for disclosure, I require the immediate disclosure of
such.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Collingbourne

Dear Sir or Madam,

Having not received a legally appropriate response to my FOI
request within the statutory 20 working days, and having received
no significant progress updates in the four months since I made my
request, please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Identity & Passport
Service's handling of my FOI request 'Contract with Thales for
National ID Scheme'.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...

If you are considering applying the section 12 exemption to any
extent in the face of clear Information Commissioner and
Information Tribunal decisions to the contrary, please bear in mind
that:

a) A refusal to answer my request in full will result in an appeal
to the Information Commissioner, which will undoubtedly result in a
decision consistent with his earlier decisions;

b) It is in the public interest that public money is spent on the
substantive activities of releasing information under FOIA, rather
than on an unnecessary appeal to the Information Commissioner.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Collingbourne

Dear Ms Pottinger,

In your last email to me you informed me that the Home Office aimed
to respond to my request for internal review by 18 May 2009. As
that date has now passed can you please inform me of a new date by
which the Home Office plans to conclude this review.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Collingbourne

Dear H Reid,

On 29 May I received the outcome of the internal review of my
request regarding the Thales contract and was informed that I
should receive a reply within 15 working days. As it has clearly
been more than 15 working days I am asking for an update on this
case.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Collingbourne

Dear HQ Enquiries,

Thank you for your belated response to my FOIA request. I have
three follow-up queries which I would like you to answer:

1. You mention an exercise commissioned within IPS to release
further contractual information. On what date did IPS make a
decision to embark on this exercise?

2. You mention contract summaries. Are these planned to be redacted
versions of the full contracts or separately drafted documents? If
the former, are the redactions planned to be only those allowed by
the Freedom of Information Act? Please state the date on which the
plans referred to in this question were made.

3. Please confirm or deny whether IPS holds a draft of its summary
of the Thales contract.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Collingbourne

Dear sir/madam,

I am requesting an internal review of the handling of my request
FOICR 10676/08.

I disagree that IPS is able to apply the section 22(1) exemption.
The language of this exemption refers to an intention to publish
that existed "at the time when the request for information was
made" (FOIA s22(1)(b)). However, according to a further response
received from IPS (ref FOICR 12395/09), the decision to prepare the
information to be published was made on 1 July 2009, well after my
request was made on 28 November 2008.

Even if this were not the case, IPS does not have an apparent
intention to publish the information I requested in all cases.
According to the same response from IPS, the intention to publish
does not exist for documents with "commercial, security or
technical sensitivity". Instead of the redacted documentation being
released, IPS only plans to release a summary which may not contain
all releasable information in the document.

Turning to the section 12 exemption, I disagree that this applies
at all due to Mr J Jenkins v Information Commissioner and
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, EA/2006/0067.
Please remember that your own policy cannot override the decisions
of the Information Tribunal which in our common law legal system
should be considered law. Even if the exemption did apply, I also
disagree that a refined request is necessary to "understand the
exact information [I] require". In my original request I have been
very specific about which documents and even which pages I would
like you to consider and in which order and I fail to see how I can
be more specific than this.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...

Yours faithfully,

Peter Collingbourne

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please confirm receipt of my requests for internal review of 19
August 2009.

Yours faithfully,

Peter Collingbourne