Publication scheme, strategic board papers etc.

Mr Wyllie made this Freedom of Information request to Disclosure Scotland

The request was partially successful.

From: Mr Wyllie

22 July 2010

Dear Sir or Madam,

This is a request for information.

Please provide a copy of your publication scheme, issued under the
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Please provide information about minutes of, and papers submitted
to, the strategic board of Disclosure Scotland from July 2007 to
May 2010.

Please provide information about procedures you have for finding
and reporting breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 to the
Information Commissioner.

Please provide a copy of the information, in an electronic format.

Outside the terms of the Act, I wonder if you could explain why
your publication scheme does not appear to be on the Dislosure
Scotland website?

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Wyllie

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Disclosure Scotland

19 August 2010

Dear Mr Wylie

I am replying to your FOI request in the order established in your email
of 22 July.

You asked for information about minutes of, and papers submitted to the
strategic board of Disclosure Scotland from July 2010 to May 2010. I
can advise you that Disclosure Scotland's Strategic Board was
established in February 2010. We are a new Agency of the Scottish
Government, established in April 2009, and our draft Publication Scheme
is well advanced. I can inform you that we are developing a procedure
to publish the minutes of the meetings of this Board and our expectation
is that these will be on our website by October 2010. The minutes will
have some degree of redaction as this agency is a PPP and there are
commercial sensitivities.

Board papers will not be routinely published. In terms of your request
for information about the papers of the Strategic Board, I can inform
you that this request is refused in terms of s30 (b)(ii) in that
disclosure would inhibit substantially free and frank provision of
advice or exchange of views.

You asked for information about the Agency's procedures for finding and
reporting breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 to the Information
Commissioner. I can advise you that the Agency adheres to the data
protection principles and Scottish Government guidance. We are planning
to revise our all our data protection procedures in order to support the
implementation of the scheme arising from the Protection of Vulnerable
Groups scheme. These procedures will clearly articulate the procedure
for finding and reporting breaches to the Information Commissioner.

You also asked: Outside the terms of the Act, I wonder if you could
explain why your Publication Scheme does not appear to be on the
Disclosure Scotland website. As already outlined above, the draft of
the Publication Scheme is well-advanced and it will be on our website by
13 October.

I trust this response covers the points you have raised in your request.
If I can be of any further help or assistance, please do not hesitate to
contact me.

Joe Cox
Communications Manager
Disclosure Scotland
Tel: 0141 585 8398
[mobile number]
Email: [email address]

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From: Mr Wyllie

19 August 2010

Dear Mr Cox,

Thank you for your response.

I welcome your response so far as the minutes are concerned, and
presume you want to claim the "information about to be published"
exemption, but must probe you on the board papers, particularly it
is common practice across the public sector to publish these.

The problem is your response is legally incompetent. This is
because it does not meet the requirements of section 16(1)(d) of
the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, by failing to tell
me why you think the exemption needs to apply. This means I can't
respond appropriately to your reasoning. I can try to articulate a
few generic arguments, but this won't be good enough.

I would really welcome your response to these points, particularly
given, as I say, the attitude of most public sector bodies
(including those with major contracts) to publish board papers
online, such as SPCB and SNH.

Thanks for your help.

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Disclosure Scotland

19 August 2010

I will be out of the office for most of Thursday the 19th of August and
Friday 20th of August. My emails will only be intermittently read or
actioned. For urgent enquiries, please contact Disclosure Scotland on
0141 585 8390, or my mobile [number removed]. For Freedom of Information
enquiries, please contact [email address]

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

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Disclosure Scotland

19 August 2010

Thanks for this Mr. Wylie. I have since received advice (after I replied
to you) with similar points. I will endeavour to do a fuller reply early
next week. I hope this would acceptable. Joe

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Disclosure Scotland

6 September 2010

Classification: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED

Dear Mr. Wylie,

Thank you for your request dated 22 July 2010 for information under the
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. I apologise for the delay in
supplying you with a full response to your initial request, which I have
answered by individually addressing each point below.

1 - Please provide a copy of your publication scheme, issued under the
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Answer: We do endeavour to provide information whenever possible.
However, in this instance an exemption under section 27(1) of FOISA
applies to the information requested. Section 27(1) covers information
which is held with a view to being published within 12 weeks of the date
of the request. The Publication Scheme is currently in draft form and is
due to be published on our website at
[1]http://www.disclosurescotland.co.uk/free... in October
2010.

As the exemption is conditional we have applied the `public interest
test'. This means we have, in all the circumstances of this case,
considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs
the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on
balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption.
While we recognise that there is some public interest in release because
Publication Schemes are a requirement of FOISA, this is outweighed by the
public interest in ensuring the information provided is complete.

2 - Please provide information about minutes of, and papers submitted to,
the strategic board of Disclosure Scotland from July 2007 to May 2010.

Answer: In this instance an exemption under section 27(1) of FOISA applies
to some of the information requested. As notes above, section 27(1)
covers information which is held with a view to being published within 12
weeks of the date of the request. We intend to publish the minutes of the
meetings of this Board and our expectation is that these will be on our
website by October 2010.

As the exemption is conditional we have applied the `public interest
test'. This means we have, in all the circumstances of this case,
considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs
the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on
balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption.
While we recognise that there is some public interest in release because
Publication Schemes are a requirement of FOISA, this is outweighed by the
public interest in ensuring the information provided is complete.

3 - Please provide information about procedures you have for finding and
reporting breaches of the Data Protection Act 1998 to the Information
Commissioner.

Answer: Disclosure Scotland adheres to the data protection principles
listed in Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act and Scottish Government
guidance. The Data Protection Principles can be accessed at:

[2]http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/...
-

We are planning to revise all of our data protection procedures in order
to support the implementation of the Protecting of Vulnerable Groups
Scheme [3]http://www.disclosurescotland.co.uk/abou... .
These procedures will clearly articulate the procedure for finding and
reporting breaches to the Information Commissioner.

4 - Please explain why your publication scheme does not appear to be on
the Disclosure Scotland website?

Answer: Disclosure Scotland is a relatively new Agency of the Scottish
Government - as noted above. Our draft Publication Scheme is well
advanced and due to be published in October 2010.

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,
Disclosure Scotland, PO Box 250, Glasgow, G51 1YU. . 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 then have the right to make a formal complaint to the Scottish
Information Commissioner.

Joe Cox

Communications Manager

Disclosure Scotland

Tel: 0141 585 8398

[mobile number]

Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.disclosurescotland.co.uk/free...
2. http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/...
3. http://www.disclosurescotland.co.uk/abou...

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From: Mr Wyllie

12 September 2010

Hello there,

Many thanks for your message, which I shall not be appealing.

However, I do think it would be a good idea to publish
non-confidential papers of Board meetings, not least because it
avoids requests from people like me! Given other bodies with a hand
in law enforcement, such as the Gambling Commission, do the same, I
wonder whether it is worthy of a good deal of thought.

Many thanks for your reply.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Wyllie

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Disclosure Scotland

19 October 2010

Classification: NOT PROTECTIVELY MARKED

Dear Mr Wylie

Further to your earlier request for information I can now advise that the
Agendas and Minutes of the Disclosure Scotland Strategic Board have been
published on the Agency's website at
[1]http://192.168.1.60:8085/publications/in... , under 'Other
Disclosure Scotland Documents' - each month that there is a meeting, the
Agenda and Minutes are listed. When you made your original request we
advised that it was out intention to publish our Publication Scheme
within the next 12 weeks. Unfortunately, the timescales for publishing
the Agency's Publication Scheme have slipped but I can inform you that the
draft Scheme has been submitted to the Office of the Scottish Information
Commissioner for approval.

You will note that some of the information on the Agendas and Minutes has
been redacted. The redaction has been made as it is our view that the
information in question is exempt in terms of s 30 (b) (i) and (ii) and
the public interest test would not be met by releasing the information in
full.

I will be back in touch with you when we receive approval from the Office
of the Scottish Information Commissioner and the Publication Scheme has
been placed on our website.

Joe Cox
Communications Manager
Disclosure Scotland
Tel: 0141 585 8398
[mobile number]
Email: [email address]

show quoted sections

Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

References

Visible links
1. http://192.168.1.60:8085/publications/in...

Link to this

From: Mr Wyllie

23 October 2010

Dear Mr Cox,

I just wanted to drop a line to thank you for your continued
correspondence with me, and say how pleased I was to see the
minutes and agendas published on your website. Hopefully, as well
as opening things up, this will forestall and more requests, so I
hope you think the effort was worthwhile.

Many thanks again for the clear effort you've put in.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Wyllie

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Things to do with this request

Anyone:
Disclosure Scotland only: