Lies about Additional Forth Road Bridge

Dear Sir or Madam,

I refer to the article at
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldn...
regarding the lies and untruths put out by officials and
politicians concerning the proposed additional bridge. In
particular I refer to the three "peer reviews" mentioned in the
article.

Your publication scheme
http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/repo...
indicates that the place to look for information released under FoI
enquiries is your web site, but a look at
http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/proj...
just now did not show these three "peer reviews".

I am making two enquiries:

1) please provide a copy of the three "peer reviews", or indicate a
URL where they may be found.

2) please provide your intended timescale for putting links to
these "peer reviews" on
http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/proj...
If you do not intend to put these "peer reviews" on there please
provide your reasoning for not doing so.

Please also note that "replies" which involve attachments in
proprietary file formats are not acceptable. A reply which is not
in plain text format will be deemed to be a refusal to answer. In
relation to 1) if you do not intend to supply these "peer reviews"
in plain text format please contact me beforehand to agree an
acceptable format.

Yours faithfully,

David Hansen

Transport Scotland failed to properly answer my FoI enquiry, as it
failed to reply in plain text format.
As I am feeling particularly generous today, I have cut and pasted
the text of the reply myself. My generosity should not be abused in
this way in the future though.

The .PDF also contains reports which appear to have been placed
through the world's worst OCR software and as a result are scarcely
readable. I find it difficult to believe that in this day and age
the Scottish Government gets reports by paper copy, which it then
files in paper files, which it then copies and puts through OCR
software in order to reply to FoI enquiries. It should be possible
to provide these reports as direct electronic copies from the
original files. Any decent word processor has a File | Save As
Acrobat File menu option, or the equivalent.

I do not consider these barely readable summaries to be a proper
response to my enquiry. If error free copies cannot be provided as
above then the scans of the sheets of paper should be provided as
graphics files. These can be put in an Acrobat file. The human mind
is better able to read poor copies than OCR software.

Below is the reply to my enquiry from Transport Scotland.

===================

Forth Replacement Crossing
Major Transport Infrastructure Projects
•
Buchanan House, 58 Port Dundas Road, Glasgow G4 OHF

~~
Date: 23 July 2009

Dear Mr Hansen

Forth Replacement Crossing

I refer to your request of 29 June 2009 for copies of the three
Forth Replacement Crossing Peer Reviews. Your request has been
considered under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
The Peer Reviews were undertaken on 15 June 2007, 18 October 2008
and 23 May
2008. I have attached the reports of these reviews.

Transport Scotland's Publication Scheme adheres to the Scottish
Government's commitment to open government and proactively
publishing information where possible.

The publication of internal correspondence such as minutes of
internal meetings relating to the development of policy, is
however, considered on a case by case basis against whether it is
in the public interest to publish this information. Further
information regarding the Publication Scheme is available on the
Transport Scotland website at www.transportscotland.QsLQov.uk.

The Peer Reviews were undertaken to provide internal advice to
assist in the governance of the project. Since the last review in
May 2008, the scheme design has been developed and the managed
crossing strategy announced, therefore, some areas of discussion
are no longer relevant to the scheme as it now stands. Transport
Scotland has therefore concluded that the
reports of these meeting should not be published, but will be
released on request under FO!.

If you are unhappy with this response to your request, you may ask
us to carry out an internal review by writing to the Chief
Executive of Transport Scotland, Buchanan House, 58 Port Dundas
Road, Glasgow, G4 OHF. Your request should explain why you wish a
review to be
carried out, and should be made within 40 working days of receipt
of this letter, and we will reply within 20 working days of
receipt. If you are not satisfied with the result of the review,
you the have the right to make a formal complaint to the Scottish
Information Commissioner.
a'L

Carron Pollock
www.transportscotland.gov.uk
An agency of ~<III The Scottish Government

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am not sure which bit of "I do not consider these barely readable
summaries to be a proper response to my enquiry. If error free
copies cannot be provided as
above then the scans of the sheets of paper should be provided as
graphics files. These can be put in an Acrobat file. The human mind
is better able to read poor copies than OCR software." is difficult
to understand.

There is a simple way to respond to that, supply either error free
copies or the scans, which is what should have been done in the
first place. If the Scottish Government is refusing to supply error
free copies, or the scans themselves, then it has failed to respond
to my enquiry properly. Information which is unintelligible is not
a valid response to an enquiry.

I felt generous and gave the Scottish Government a simple way to
sort things out. However, if it doesn't want to take the simple way
but prefers a more complicated way then that can be arranged. I
urge the Scottish Government to take the simple way out, not the
least because I am one of the many people from whom money is stolen
to pay for it.

Yours faithfully,

David Hansen

Dear Sir or Madam,

Two weeks and the simple option has not been taken by the Scottish
Government. Therefore I request an internal review of the failure
to provide readable information.

Yours faithfully,

David Hansen

Dear Sir or Madam,

I see that my generosity has been abused again by the failure to
reply in a readable format. This time I am not feeling generous
enough to cut and paste whatever is contained in the file that has
been sent instead of a reply.

Yours faithfully,

David Hansen