ICO Staff Deleting Complaints

Link: [1]File-List

14 August 2009

Case Reference Number IRQ0264372

                                                             

Dear Mr Gradwick

Thank you for your email dated 14 August 2009 in which you make two
requests for information. These have been dealt with in accordance with
the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Initially it may help to explain that you have received these emails as an
exercise to tidy up archived casework emails was started today which
involves deleting copies of emails stored in the Outlook mailbox on our
server. If a sender had put a Read Receipt on any of the messages, Outlook
has automatically sent out a notification to them that their email has
been ‘Deleted without being read’. This is not the case, as all the
emails deleted from the email boxes have already been put onto our
electronic case management system, where they are then read.

I can confirm that copies of the two emails you refer to are held on our
electronic case management system and were replied to on the 19 September
2008.

In your email you ask for ‘details of the number of legitimate (i.e
non-spam) e-mails which have been deleted by ICO staff without their being
read for as far back as you have records.’ Having discussed this with a
member of our IT team, I can confirm that we do not keep a record of this,
and therefore we do not hold the information you requested.

Furthermore you also ask ‘please also provide figures for the number of
times Andrew Van Damms has received messages to call complainants back but
has not then done so’. We would only hold information relevant to this
if a note was made on a case, or on a document within a case.

Whilst it would seem unlikely that we would hold information within the
scope of this request, it is possible some of the information you have
requested may sit within our electronic and paper filing systems. These
systems are not set up to easily provide us with the type of information
you have requested as this is not the sort of information we would need
for our own day to day business purposes.

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act makes clear that a public
authority (such as the Information Commissioner’s Office) is not obliged
to comply with a request if the authority estimates that the cost of
complying with the request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit'. The
‘appropriate limit’ for the Information Commissioner’s Office, as
determined in the ‘Freedom of Information and Data Protection
(Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004’ is £450. We have
determined that £450 would equate to 18 hours work.

On an initial search, I have located in excess of 500 cases which
currently have the case owner set as ‘Andrew Van Damms’. In order to
search for any information that may fall within the scope of your request,
we would need to access each case individually and look through the
notes/files on each case. Taking an average of 5 minutes per case (some
may take less, some substantially longer), it would take in excess of 40
hours to extract any information that may be relevant. This is well in
excess of the 18 hours mentioned above, and therefore we are not obliged
to comply with this part of your request in accordance with section 12 of
the Freedom of Information Act.

I hope this information is helpful, if you are dissatisfied with the
response you have received and wish to request a review of our decision or
make a complaint about how your request has been handled you should write
to the Internal Compliance Team at the address below or e-mail
[2][email address]

Your request for internal review should be submitted to us within 40
working days of receipt by you of this response. Any such request
received after this time will only be considered at the discretion of the
Commissioner.

If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right
of appeal to this office in our capacity as the statutory complaint
handler under the legislation.  To make such an application, please write
to the Case Reception Team, at the address below or visit the
‘Complaints’ section of our website to make a Freedom of Information
Act or Environmental Information Regulations complaint online.

 

A copy of our review procedure is enclosed.

Yours sincerely

Adam Stevens

Assistant Internal Compliance Manager

show quoted sections

http://www.ico.gov.uk or email: [email address]
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545 700 Fax: 01625 524 510

References

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1. file:///tmp/radF7DFA_files/filelist.xml
2. mailto:[email address]