Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to make a freedom of information request for
electronic copies of any documents produced by PICT discussing or
evaluating the possible deployment of electronic petitioning
systems in Parliament.

Yours faithfully,

Francis Irving

Dear Mr Irving,

Thank you for your email dated and received 21 July 2008.

We shall deal with your request promptly and let you have a response no
later than 18 August 2008.

If you have any queries about your request, please contact me.

Mandy Kelly
Freedom of Information Assistant
020 7219 8805

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Irving

I have a response and information send to you in relation to your
request. However, it is not appropriate for this to be automatically
republished on your website.

The information to be sent to you is subject to Parliamentary copyright
which restricts the reproduction of Parliamentary material - this would
mean that the material could not posted to the whatdotheyknow web pages
without breaching copyright.

Therefore, I should be grateful if you could send me an alternative
email address for correspondence that does not automatically republish
responses and attachments onto the internet.

Yours sincerely

Bob Castle

_________________________________________________
Bob Castle
House of Commons Data Protection and Freedom of Information Officer

show quoted sections

Dear CASTLE, Bob,

Section 11(4) FOIA is subject to section 11(1). I am expressing a
preference for you to respond to the request by replying to this
email. Under section 11(1) you must give effect to my preference if
it is "reasonably practicable" to do so.

Under section 11(2) you may give regard to all the circumstances,
including cost, in deciding whether it is reasonably practicable.
Practicable means "capable of being done or accomplished with
available means or resources". It certainly seems that replying to
an email is not an unreasonable cost, and something which you have
the means and resources to do.

However, it seems that you feel this is not the case. Can you do
one of the following:

a) Respond to my request by replying to this email with the
information that I requested.

b) Under section 11(3), notify me as to your reasons for
determining that it is not "reasonably practicable" for you to
comply with my preference for the form of your response. When
giving these reasons, note that the meaning of practicable is
"capable of being done".

c) Reject my request under another section of the Act. If so please
state which section, and your reasons for rejecting my request.

Please do not mention copyright law in your reply, as it is
irrelevant. There is no section of the FOI Act which allows
rejection of a request because of suspected future breach of
copyright law.

You may, of course, wait for WhatDoTheyKnow to publish the
response, and then either complain to them about copyright
violation, or serve them with a take down notice.

But that is a separate matter - I'm currently writing to you as a
private individual, requesting you respond to an FOI request by
email. Only FOI law applies, not copyright law.

I would be grateful if you could do so.

Yours sincerely,

Francis

Dear Mr Irving

As is clear from my previous email to you, a response to your request is
ready and information will be sent to an address that does not
automatically republish information on your web site.

Section 11 (1) refers to preferences given to the communication of the
information requested in one of three forms - electronic, inspection or
in a digest or summary. Your request of 21 July expresses your section
11 preference by asking for electronic copies of recorded information
and the House will meet that preference. We do not believe that the
section extends to an obligation in terms of the address to which those
communications should be sent.

In any event, even if that preference did apply it would not be
reasonable to comply because the information to be sent to you is
subject to Parliamentary copyright, which restricts the reproduction of
Parliamentary material.

FOI does not override copyright law. For more information FOI and
copyright please refer to "The ICO charter for responsible FOI requests"
which states:

"Disclosure of information under the Act or the Regulations will not
remove the copyright in it. Any information released may be subject to
copyright restrictions that you will have to abide by. If you have any
doubts about copyright, consult with the public authority about the
status of information. In some cases copyright may be waived or
information can be licensed for reuse."

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...
actical_application/its_public_information_foi%20charter_final.pdf

For more information about Parliamentary copyright and licenses for
re-use please refer to:
http://www.parliament.uk/site_informatio...

Yours sincerely

Bob Castle

show quoted sections

Dear Bob,

I completely understand your objection, and why you are requesting
that I give you an alternative email address.

However, it would be dishonest and pointless for me to do so. This
is because I will publish your response on the Internet anyway,
whatever email address you send it to me via. I have been doing
this since long before the existence of WhatDoTheyKnow (see for
example http://www.flourish.org/foi/2005-09-20-p... and
http://www.flourish.org/foi/2005-08-05-p...).

My legal advice is that knowing that someone will later break
Parliamentary copyright is not a ground under which you can refuse
an FOI request. Section 17 (1)(b) says that you must "specify the
exemption in question".

Please state clearly which section under Part II of the Act (if
any) you are purporting to refuse my request.

Unless you reply with the information that I requested to this
email address, I will be forced to go to the Information
Commissioner. This is a real pain, and your life would be much
easier if you just waived copyright and sent the information.

Not only do I believe your rejection to be illegal under FOI law, I
also believe it to be bad public service. It is our Parliament, and
it is here to serve us, including you.

It will not play out particularly well in the media if you decide
to unnecessarily fight this one, when Parliament is perfectly free
not to enforce its copyright on any of its documents.

Yours sincerely,

Francis Irving

Dear Mr Irving
As already explained, the House is not refusing your request under s.17
FOIA. Under s.11(4) of the Act, the House may comply with a request by
any means which are reasonable in the circumstances. You have requested
the information in electronic form, which you are entitled to do under
s.11(1) FOIA. A response, with information to be disclosed, is ready and
will be sent to you in electronic form when you provide an address which
does not automatically re-publish this material.
Yours sincerely
Bob Castle

show quoted sections

Dear Bob,

Thank you for preparing the response and having it ready to send to
me.

I'm trying to understand exactly why you want an address which does
not automatically republish the response on the Internet. This is
especially puzzling as I have clearly stated that I will manually
republish the information whatever address you send it to me via.

Since you have not specifically said why, I can guess. However, I
may be wrong, and it would be quicker if you could tell me the
actual reason, so we can sort this out in a way that is acceptable
to both of us.

My guess is that you may be concerned that you are giving
WhatDoTheyKnow a licence to publish by emailing an address knowing
it will be automatically published on the internet

I would like to clearly state now that if you reply to this email
address, I am not assuming Parliament to be licensing the documents
for republication.

I hope that meets your objections, and you can now answer my
request. If not, please state clearly not just what you want, but
why you want it, so we can work this out.

Thanks for all your help,

Francis

Dear Francis,
Thank you for your email dated 19 August. The points you raise are being
considered further. I will endeavour to respond again by no later than
29 August.
Yours sincerely
Bob

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Irving

Thank you for your email dated 19 August. The House notes the points
you raise and your stated intentions in relation to the information.

To confirm, the information which is disclosable to you under the Act
has been prepared and is ready to be sent to you. You are asked to
provide an address which does not require the House to waive copyright
over the information which is sent.

Yours sincerely
Bob Castle

show quoted sections

Dear Bob,

Thanks for your reply, which helped only slightly. Thank you,
however, for taking the time to consult about it within the House.

I am still not satisfied, so I would like to formally request an
internal review of the House of Commons handling of my FOI request.
You can read the correspondence of the request in full here:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/on...

Please pass this on to the person within the House who does reviews
of FOI requests.

In particular I would like the review to address:

* That I still have not received the information that I requested.

* That a reason under the FOI act for my request being rejected has
not been given.

* Why the House will not send a response to this email address,
which will automatically publish the response. Whereas the House
seemingly would happily send a response to another address which
would result in the response being manually republished.

* Under what law, and why, the House is considering copyright law
in relation to the future actions of others when replying to a
request. As opposed to simply sending the reply, and then dealing
with any consequence breach of copyright later.

* Why the House would not accept a reassurance that when emailing
the automatically republishing address, they were not considered to
be waiving copyright in this case.

* Separate from FOI law, a review of why the House will not waive
copyright on the information I requested and allow republication of
it, when that would be in the public interest, and the information
is available to anybody in the world who wants it simply by
requesting it privately.

* Any other points I raised in the correspondence with Bob Castle
to be considered and addressed.

Thanks once again for your time Bob. Sorry this has had to come to
a review, but I'm sure you understand why!

Francis

Dear Mr Irving,

Thank you for your email dated 28 August 2008 in which you request an
internal review of the handling of your request. Our internal target
for conducting a review is 30 working days and we will endeavour to
provide you with a response no later than Thursday 9 October 2008.

Yours sincerely,

Bob Castle

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Irving

I am writing to let you know that we will not be able to meet our
internal target for providing a response to your request for an internal
review. The issues that you have asked us to review are complex and
necessitate a longer period of consideration.

We will endeavour to provide a final response by no later than 23
October.

Yours sincerely

Bob Castle

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Irving

I regret that we are not yet in a position to respond to your request
for an internal review. As previously noted the issues that you have
asked us to review are complex and the need to consult interested
parties and test options is taking longer than hoped. It is anticipated
that we will be able to provide you with a substantive response to your
request for a review in the next few weeks.

Yours sincerely

Bob Castle

_________________________________________________
Bob Castle
House of Commons Data Protection and Freedom of Information Officer

show quoted sections

Hi Bob,

I requested an internal review on 28 August.

As I am sure you know, the Information Commissioner's guidance on
internal reviews says "in our view, in no case should the total
time taken exceed 40 working days".

Can you tell me how the internal review of this request is
progressing, and when you expect it to be completed?

Francis Irving