Reports of the implementation group for the Review of Teaching and Learning Support Services

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please supply in electronic form ALL minutes, reports, papers or
other documents produced by the implementation group for the Report
of the Review Committee for Teaching and Learning Support Services.
This implementation group was, I believe, established by the
University's General Board at their meeting of 8 October 2008.

I believe (but cannot be certain) that this implementation group
has produced at least one report (of a meeting on 15 December 2008)
which has been presented to the University's General Board as Paper
No. 09.B.03. Note that this may not be the only report, set of
minutes, etc. produced by this group.

Yours faithfully,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

Thank you for the documents you have provided in response to my
request. However, I note that the minutes you have provided refer
to Paper ISG2 ("The Report and the responses to the consultation"),
and that you have not provided a copy of this paper.

You have previously supplied the Report to me in response to my FOI
request FOI-2009-34. Please supply, as soon as possible, and in
electronic form, those parts of Paper ISG2 that you have not
already given me in response to one of my FOI requests (which I
believe, but may be mistaken, will just be "the responses to the
consultation").

Also, in your reply you say that "The Implementation Steering Group
has met only once, on 15 December 2008". However, since making my
FOI request, I have been informed that a "follow-up meeting" of
this group was scheduled for 26 May 2009. Please will you clarify
whether, in fact, this meeting took place?

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

Thank you for confirming that the Implementation Steering Group did
indeed meet on 26 May 2009. Please supply in electronic form ALL
minutes, reports, papers or other documents produced by the Group
for, or as a result of, or tabled at, their meeting of 26 May 2009.

Thank you also for supplying Paper ISG2 (apparently with some
redactions). In examining the PDF you supplied, I have not noticed
any redactions, although that may be my oversight. Please let me
know whether you have made the redactions in the document obvious
(e.g. by blacking out the relevant text, or replacing with
"[Redacted]" or similar), as I believe is considered best practice
when redacting data.

Also, the response from the Deputy Head of the Engineering
Department (Teaching) on page 70 of Paper ISG2 (as supplied by you)
seems to be incomplete: the last sentence on that page is "If a
lecturer has to ask too many times for a particular computer"
which, I am sure you will agree, seems to be a truncated sentence.
(Page 71 is response from the Librarian of the Engineering
Department.) Please confirm whether the remainder of the Deputy
Head (Teaching)'s response has been redacted, or whether it was
never part of Paper ISG2, or whether it has been omitted by
mistake. If it has been omitted by mistake, please supply it, in
electronic form, as soon as possible.

Also, the response from the Judge Business School as given on page
72 of Paper ISG2 (as supplied by you) seems to be incomplete. Page
72 ends "Specific applications include:" but page 73 does not list
any "Specific applications", but rather is an e-mail containing the
response from the Computer Laboratory. Please confirm whether the
remainder of the Judge Business School's response has been
redacted, or whether it was never part of Paper ISG2, or whether it
has been omitted by mistake. If it has been omitted by mistake,
please supply it, in electronic form, as soon as possible.

The response from the departmental librarian in the Computer
Laboratory on page 74 of the Paper ISG2 (as supplied by you) also
seems to be incomplete. This page ends with the apparently
truncated sentence "I thank you in advance for the opportunity of
making these comments and hope", whilst page 75 is the start of the
response from the University Library. Please confirm whether the
remainder of the departmental librarian in the Computer
Laboratory's response has been redacted, or whether it was never
part of Paper ISG2, or whether it has been omitted by mistake. If
it has been omitted by mistake, please supply it, in electronic
form, as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

I note that on page 36 of Paper ISG2 (as provided as a PDF document
by you) reference is made to a response from the Acting Director of
the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics (RCEAL)
that was "to be circulated on receipt" [by the Chairman of the
Faculty Board of the Faculty of English]. However this does not
appear to be included in the document you supplied. Please confirm
whether the Acting Director of RCEAL's response has been redacted,
or whether it was never part of Paper ISG2, or whether it has been
omitted by mistake. If it has been omitted by mistake, please
supply it, in electronic form, as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

Thank you for your e-mail of 17 June 2009. However, I am unclear
why you have decided to treat my first e-mail of 16 June 2009 as a
*NEW* Freedom of Information request. That e-mail asked for two
things:

(a) information regarding the meeting of the implementation
steering group on 26 May 2009; and

(b) clarification regarding the possible omission/redaction of
parts of Paper ISG2 that you had already supplied.

It seems clear that (b) is not a new Freedom of Information
request, but rather a request for you to clarify/better handle
information you have already provided. I therefore do not see why
this part of my e-mail should be treated as a new Freedom of
Information request.

Regarding (a), I observe that you first responded with some of the
information I requested on 3 June 2009 (my original request was
made on 1 May 2009, so this response was late). Section 1(4) of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 states that:

"The information—

(a) in respect of which the applicant is to be informed under
subsection (1)(a), or

(b) which is to be communicated under subsection (1)(b),

is the information in question held at the time when the request is
received, except that account may be taken of any amendment or
deletion made between that time and the time when the information
is to be communicated under subsection (1)(b), being an amendment
or deletion that would have been made regardless of the receipt of
the request."

Since I do not believe that the meeting of 26 May 2009 was held
because of my Freedom of Information request, the information
relating to this meeting constitutes an *amendment* to the
information held by the University on 1 May 2009 (date of my
request) that would have been made regardless of my request. This
amendment therefore should have been supplied to me when you
answered my request (as my request was for "ALL minutes, reports,
papers or other documents produced by the implementation group").
Thus my request for (a) should not be treated as a new Freedom of
Information request either.

I further observe that, in respect of deletions, the Information
Commissioner (IC) interprets Section 1(4) as follows:

"Section 1(4) of FOIA says that the right to know applies to all
information held at the time that a request is received, except
information deleted before the time for responding if that deletion
would have been made regardless of the request."

The above is taken from the IC's "Practical guidance: Destruction
of requested information" at:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...

Since Section 1(4) treats deletions and amendments in exactly the
same way, I therefore conclude that the IC would interpret Section
1(4) as I have done above.

Finally, as I am sure you are aware, the activities of the
implementation steering group will be discussed as part of a
Discussion of a topic of concern to the University on 7 July 2009:

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/curr...

By treating my e-mail as a *new* Freedom of Information request,
you are allowing the University to withhold information crucial to
this Discussion until 14 July 2009, i.e. after the Discussion. This
may not be intentional on your part, but if it is, I would observe
that the Information Commissioner is likely to view such a delay as
grounds for issuing a Decision Notice against the University ("the
effect of delay or other non-compliance served the purposes of the
public authority and requires censure in an adverse Decision Notice
(e.g. avoiding disclosure at a critical time)"):

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...

I would therefore strongly encourage you to supply the requested
information sufficiently far in advance of 7 July 2009 that those
taking part in the Discussion on that date have adequate time to
consider it.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

Thank you for your complete, and relatively prompt, replies to my
e-mail of 16 June 2009, which have provided the information I was
seeking.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

Thank you again for the documents you have provided in response to
my request. However, I note that the minutes of the meeting of the
Implementation Steering Group on 15 December 2008 say that the
"Minutes of the fourth meeting of the Review Committee held on 9
June 2008, and extracts of the minutes of the General Board
meetings of 9 July and 8 October 2008, were circulated for
information", but that you have not provided a copy of these
minutes and extracts of minutes.

Please supply, as soon as possible, and in electronic form, the
"Minutes of the fourth meeting of the Review Committee held on 9
June 2008" and the "extracts of the minutes of the General Board
meetings of 9 July and 8 October 2008" as circulated at the
Implementation Steering Group meeting of 15 December 2008.

Again, please note that the University has scheduled a discussion
for 7 July 2009 at which this information may well be relevant:

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/curr...

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

Thank you very much for your prompt reply to my e-mail of 24 June
2009.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

Thank you very much for the document(s) you have supplied in
response to my request. As your responses
to my request have provided information and [parts of] documents
over the course of several e-mails, please could you clarify the
following for me:

Did the report from the implementation steering group's meeting of
15 December 2008, provided to the General Board as GB Paper No.
09.B.03, contain Paper ISG2, or does it merely mention it on its
first page but not actually include a copy of Paper ISG2?

(Note that I am not asking for you to supply me with either GB
Paper No. 09.B.03 or Paper ISG2 as you have already done so [modulo
redactions].)

A prompt response would be much appreciated as this may well be of
interest in the forthcoming Discussion of a topic of concern to the
University on 7 July 2009:

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/curr...

Thank you again for your help with this matter.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear FOI,

Thank you very much for your extremely prompt reply.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles