Expenses

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please publish a comma separated value export of the database
table(s) pertaining all BBC expense claims for the 2008/2009
financial year. To the extent of complying with both the Freedom of
Information Act 2000, and other legislation, the table(s) may be
redacted only for the explicit purpose of complying with the law.

Yours faithfully,

Jonathan Poole

Dear FOI Enquiries,

I understand that under the freedom of information act you were
required to reply no later than the 10th of June 2009, and are now
breaking the Law. please respond to RFI20090695 as soon as possible
before I am forced to escalate the matter via legal means.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Poole

Dear FOI Enquiries,

Please release this information today as you promised in your
letter Dated 12th June 2009.

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Poole

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of British Broadcasting
Corporation's handling of my FOI request 'Expenses'.

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

Yours sincerely,

Joanthan Poole

Dear FOI Enquiries,

When you do finally answer my requst can you please hold a review
as to why it took such an unreasonably long time to reply. the Law
requires that you reply no Later than the 10th of June... The date
today is the 22nd of June and I am still waiting. can you please
tell me why this request is taking so long. your apologies to date
have been lacking in information as to why this is taking so long.
and rather than raise a new FOI request to find out why I would
very much prefer if you could at least give me a reasonable
explanation as to the reason, you said you would reply no later
than the 19th of June and that date has come and gone.

Yours sincerely,

Joanthan Poole

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am surprised, disapointed and dissatisfied and hence writing to
request an internal review of British Broadcasting Corporation's
handling of my FOI request 'Expenses'. I trust that now you have
taken time to comply with the FOI act 2000 earlier than 29th June.
that you will find it appropriate that you conduct an internal
review into this matter in preperation for the pending ICO review.
I am complaining for the following reasons:

I requested information - I have not recieved a proper response.

I received information - It was not within 20 working days.

I recieved an estimate of the expense of dealing with the request
and the estimate was not in line with the guidlines on such
matters.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...

The information was not what I requested - I requested “a comma
separated value export of the database table(s) pertaining all BBC
expense claims for
the 2008/2009 financial year.” this is NOT by any stretch of the
imagination what I have recieved which is a redacted aggregation of
the highest 50 paid BBC executives representing maybe 1% of the
information requested for 0.22% of bbc employees.
I requested information on ALL 22,000 BBC employees, I
expected/invited them to redact infomation which tied any expenses
to schedule 1 part 4 i.e. “journalism, art or literature" and to
redact information "relating to personal information" as per the
data protection act" and would like to point out that at no time
did I request information pertaining to what the BBC routinely
alledges is "talent" or request only information which pertains to
the top 50 renumerated employees nor did I request any information
relating to employees in a personally idendifiable manner, for this
reason I cannot understand why the BBC thinks centrally booked
transport/accomadation should have been redacted from the
disclosure since centrally booked transport/accomadation does by
definition not relate to “journalism, art or literature" nor
"talent". I find it quite funny that the BBC has chosen to define
expenses in such a narrow and counterintuative manner. I would have
though that to book a Taxi/plane/hovercraft to go from A to B is an
expense no matter how it is ultimatly paid for, and the manner in
which the expense is financed be that via an “expense account” a
"more senior figure or a member of the BBC Finance community" or
simply a "self verified statment" I truthfully care not the manner
in which the expense was financed (because at the root of all these
claims the financier is always the license/tax payer) simply the
size and nature of the claim, along with any orther information you
are willing to release. I requested only the expenses not
necessarily the "Claimant" or even the "Title" and the information
related only to the expenses which the vast majority of BBC
employees inccur (who may or may not be personally identifiable) in
their day to day business. I did not in any way or at any time
request that the data be grouped or aggregated in any way, and
certainly not such as for the purposes of catergorisation into
"hospitality" "Milage" "travel" or "facility fees" the BBC seems to
have either completly misunderstood my request or altered and
misinterperated it for its own goals.
I expressly and explicitly did not request any information
pertaining to "talent" or “journalism, art or literature” and hence
I am quite taken aback that the BBC seem to have used this as
grounds to dismiss my request.
I am well aware of the BBC expenses policy, the freedom of
information act and also the data protection act, hence why I
requested ALL expense claims and not just those of a handful of
personally identifiable senior managment which meet the two part
test. in order to provide a fair and balanced picture of where
expenses are actually inccured and for what purposes I request all
the expenses not just those which are personaly identifiable. as
per the ICO
(http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...
) the BBC is incorrect in its assertation that releasing this
information would take more than two and a half days work, since
the redaction is not covered by section 12 because "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". In any
case a trival alteration to the extraction procedure (an alteration
in your SQL statment) could at a keystroke remove the information
in the "Claimant" or "Title" columns and also assuming you have a
table containning a list of everyone you claim is "talent" the
personally identifiable nature of this information could easily be
redacted and simply refered to as a "TALENT" expense, it is false
and disingenuous to present a case that this could not have been
done in the generous quantity of working day you have had to comply
with this request.

I am interested that the BBC is committed to a program of
increasing transparency, but when this request has been met by such
opacity. I frankly dont care what the BBC direction group has
incured in expenses in total terms I imagine it is mostly
inconsequential I want the 21,950 (99.7%) other employee expenses
itemised row by row which were illicitly redacted from my request.
I do not see how (RFI20090644) has any bearing on my request since
its scope and depth is so limited.

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

Yours sincerely,

Jonathan Poole