Rejections of of FOI enquiries and data protection

This isn't meant as a criticism of David Hansen in particular, but I can't help feeling that Rother District Council are being victimised a little... I've been tracking requests to Rother ever since the BBC News Online article that highlighted their unusual policy requiring postal addresses. Clearly Rother were in the wrong at the beginning, but I doubt that was a deliberate attempt to be awkward -- more an effort to limit the amount of work generated by the Act for a small authority, from a website whose status was perhaps a little unclear.

Now, because of that original incident, people seem to be targeting the council -- and I can't help but feel sorry for David Edwards! Although no one particular request appears 'vexatious', as a group they're becoming tantamount to harassment -- whatever people's views on the council's policies and past decisions, I'm sure no one wants to end up giving someone a nervous breakdown.

Relax, folks -- it'd be good to see only genuine enquiries about the work that the council do (for better or for worse): isn't that a better way to see if they have learnt lessons from the past few months?

This request is definitely successful - they've answered all the questions and most patiently. I've marked it as successful.

A reminder - FOI requests are principally for requesting documents or information, not for holding arguments about policy or process. Including irrelevant text in a request, particularly commentary and opinion, is distracting and unhelpful.

In the initial request, the requester could have skipped the first four paragraphs, and kept the request to simply one asking for information.

Another example. << Please let me know how a postal
address allows you to spot an enquiry which, "seeks information of a frivolous nature ... >> is not a request for a piece of information, and therefore not within the scope of the FOI act or WhatDoTheyKnow.

Instead, I would ask for policy documents, minutes, emails etc. relating to policy on handling vexatious requests, or to particular cases of vexatious requests.

As one of the people that made a request for information the reason was because I could not believe what I was seeing and reading. The responses from Rother Council were fundamentally undermining everything that I had sought to put in place as operational requirements in other public sector organisations. I now use this website as a resource material when dealing with FOI as it highlights how the public perceive the responses provided.

Assertions that the council is being "victimised", "harassed" and their policy was "not deliberate" are very wide of the mark. The council is simply being held to account for what was very clearly a deliberate policy due to the repeated way it was applied. This was not a one off mistake, but clearly a deliberate decision taken by the council.

Holding officials to account is one of the reasons for having Freedom of Information laws. Nobody should be criticised for using them in the way they are supposed to be used.

Other people are entitled to their views on whether an enquiry has been answered or not. That is called freedom of expression. However, I am extremely surprised that someone else is both confident enough to be able to claim that they know what someone else thinks and is also somehow able to mark an enquiry as "successful".

This enquiry was not successful, though it was partly successful. It was an abuse for someone else to be able to mark it as successful. I WOULD NOT HAVE MARKED IT AS SUCCESSFUL. It is clear that the operators of this web site are not interested in openness. What their true motives are will presumably remain a mystery, but arrogantly presuming to speak for others demonstrates conclusively that they are not interested in openness.

I made several enquiries. All were requests for specific information, no matter what assertions the operators of this web site may make to the contrary. There was certainly some background to the enquiries, as there should be.

My request for information on how knowing a postal address helps identify a vexatious enquiry is a prime example of a request for information, an enquiry which remains unanswered. That the council are unwilling or unable to answer that simple question is revealing.

Time will tell whether the operators of this site will delete this annotation or not. If they are interested in discussing the issues then they know how to get hold of me, time will tell whether they do or not.

Hi David,

I repeat, FOI law is not a place to argue about policy, but to ask for specific information.

For example, regarding Q1, the authority has clearly answered that they did not have a formal policy, but merely believed that that was the law.

Q6, Q7, Q8 are again clearly answered. The authority has made it clear that they do not currently have a deletion policy, and that they believe they will only need to create one at some point nearer to 7 years after FOI was introduced.

Just because you do not like the answer to part of your request, or even if you believe the answer to a request shows the authority is acting illegally, does not mean it is not an answer to the request.

As for why I marked your request successful - you marked it as requiring administrator attention. I examined it, and felt the authority had given an answer to all of your original questions and therefore that it was successful.

Clearly you do not feel that way, however you agree that they have answered some of your questions, so I have changed it to "partially successful".

As Alex explained to you by email, we try to keep the set of statuses simple, so the site is comprehensible. It is impossible to build an exact model that can model all of FOI law, especially for complex requests, so the "partially successful" status exists to cover many edge cases.

You would find it easier to categorise your requests if you didn't digress into policy discussions which do not come under FOI law, and if you asked for new information in new requests, rather than as follow ups.

I will allow the record on openness of both myself and mySociety (who run WhatDoTheyKnow) to speak for itself.

"I repeat, FOI law is not a place to argue about policy, but to ask for specific information."

As is clear from this web site I did ask for specific information. Some of this specific information was provided and some not.

Trying to give the impression that I did not ask for specific information is not productive.

In the case of Q1 the council have asserted that they did not have a policy. However, that assertion is patently untrue because the accusations (no matter how "cleverly" worded that is how they read) against enquirers were made repeatedly by the council. It was not a "mistake", the sort of thing people make from time to time, it was obviously a policy. I don't suppose the council had a piece of paper entitled, "Policy on how to discourage the dammed public from bothering us", but that does not mean there was no policy on trying to force enquirers to reveal irrelevant information. I note that the council has not yet answered specific questions on how this irrelevant information supposedly assisted them in undertaking the tasks the council claimed they were gathering this irrelevant information for. The evidence that there was a policy cannot be refuted. A policy does not have to be written down to be a policy.

The question is then, if a public organisation makes a statement which is patently untrue what should an employer do? Should the employer accept the untruth, or should the employer question it? I decided on the latter course of action and I will do so again in the same circumstances. They work for me.

"Q6, Q7, Q8 are again clearly answered. The authority has made it clear that they do not currently have a deletion policy,"

The "answers" are, at best, incomplete. Under the data protection law the council must have policies on these matters now. They cannot put drawing up the policies off until some date in the future, not the least because it is likely to be put off due to "pressure of work" or "forgotten". I have checked this point most carefully with the Information Commissioner's Office, with regard to another organisation which was seeking to gather irrelevant information.

"As for why I marked your request successful - you marked it as requiring administrator attention."

I did not ask to be patronised, as if it was too complicated for my pretty little head to cope with whether my enquiry was successful or not.

The reason it required administrator attention was to alert the operators to the fact that the web site is unable to cope with anything other than a simplistic model and this limits its usefulness. The model is that of a supplicant, the supplicant asks something of their betters and should be grateful for what they are given. Still, if that is the way the operators of this web site react to suggestions for improvements then I won't bother to take the time to make suggestions in the future.

This is an excellent web site, which I have pointed out to many people. However, it will only remain an excellent web site if it is developed from its current early form.

That is my last word on this subject. It is a pity I have had to respond at such length.

Unfortunately, I think unless an authority really _does_ have a piece of paper entitled, "Policy on how to discourage the dammed public from bothering us", then it's unlikely that there's anything that can be obtained from them under FOI.

Much as it would be useful to be able to grill them on why they do things in certain ways, if that reason is just in people's heads then FOI isn't particularly useful as it only applies to information that is "recorded in some form". Of course if you think there's something written somewhere that they haven't supplied, the Commissioner is allowed to dig deeper, and also request unrecorded information.

I suspect complaining about not having requisite policies in place may be more useful. There's at least one other similar complaint open against Rother: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fo...