Rother District Council and WhatDoTheyKnow

Susan Davis made this Freedom of Information request to Rother District Council

The request was successful.

From: Susan Davis

5 April 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please could you provide me with copies of any documents you hold
which relate to the impact on the external perception of Rother
District Council arising from the council's engagement with members
of the public submitting requests via the WhatDoTheyKnow website.

This would include minutes of any meetings at which this subject
was discussed, copies of emails or other correspondence (internal
or external), and any other documents which you feel will help give
a full picture of discussions which have taken place within the
authority on this subject.

Yours faithfully,

Susan Davis

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From: Lynda Crawford
Rother District Council

8 April 2009

Dear Ms Davis

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

Thank you for your request received on 06 April 2009 requesting
information about whatdotheyknow.com website. We are processing your
request in conjunction with the Corporate Resources Division and hope to
be able to respond to you within 4 weeks.

Lynda Crawford
Admin Assistant
01424 787835
[1]www.rother.gov.uk

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References

Visible links
1. http://www.rother.gov.uk/

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From: Lynda Crawford
Rother District Council

20 April 2009

Dear Ms Davis

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

With reference to your request received on 06 April 2009 about
whatdotheyknow.com website, we responded to a query by Ganesh Sittampalan
on 6 August 2008. The response is still available on the whatdotheyknow
website. Since then the volume of requests received via wdtk has declined
somewhat. There has also been an increase in the volume of direct
requests. In the calendar year 2009 from January to the present we have
received 85 FOI requests in total of which 5 (including yours) were via
wdtk.

At this level the feared resourse impacts are manageable and therefore
wdtk has not been discussed recently. In terms of external perception,
the Council runs an "Ask the Leader" facility on its website and this, and
direct requests, seem to be more popular with people who live here.

You may use our internal complaints procedure if you are dissatisfied. If
you are still dissatisfied you may appeal to the Information
Commissioner. Please contact Anne Bruin, Team Leader - Customer Services,
if you wish to complain.

David Edwards
Solicitor to the Council
01424 787840
[1]www.rother.gov.uk

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References

Visible links
1. http://www.rother.gov.uk/

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From: Susan Davis

22 April 2009

Dear Lynda / David,

Thanks for your reply.

I think you may have misunderstood my request. The first part of
your second paragraph deals with the impact on Rother District
Council, and the second part mentions external perception. However,
it wasn't either the impact on, or the external perception of RDC
that I was inquiring about, but the impact ON the external
perception of RDC arising from events surrounding WTDK request(s).

I feel that this is likely to have been a subject which will have
been discussed within your organisation. It may be that none of
these discussions were documented, but if they were, it is those
documents which my request relates to.

I hope that helps clarify things. Could you let me know whether you
have any documents which fall within the scope of my request?

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis

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From: Lynda Crawford
Rother District Council

28 April 2009

Dear Ms Davis

There have been no internal discussions because we are not aware of any
impact on public perception of this Council in relation to whatdotheyknow,
e.g. press coverage locally. I looked at Google and there seem to be a
few Blogs (e.g.
[1]http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2... )
which are available publicly, but there doesn't seem to have been anything
in the local media that would need to be discussed. We simply don't hold
the sort of information requested.

You may use our internal complaints procedure if you are dissatisfied. If
you are still dissatisfied you may appeal to the Information
Commissioner. Please contact Anne Bruin, Team Leader - Customer Services,
if you wish to complain.

David Edwards
Solicitor to the Council
01424 787840
[2]www.rother.gov.uk

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References

Visible links
1. blocked::http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2...
2. blocked::http://www.rother.gov.uk/
file:///tmp/blocked::http:/www.rother.gov.uk/

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David Hansen left an annotation (28 December 2010)

Rother District Council got a number of enquiries because of their attempt to not answer FoI enquiries.

There were two parts to this attempt. Firstly an attempt (in breach of the Third Data Protection Principle http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/...) to gather excessive information about enquirers, this excessive information being their postal address. The Council were unable to answer my enquiries about how this excessive information would assist them with their stated objectives for demanding it.

The second part of their attempt was to seek to place unreasonable restrictions on the use of information provided in response to enquiries. Information which was paid for by all of us.

People on Internet reacted as one would expect to the Council's attempt to suppress information, by asking questions in public. I imagine being held to account in public, as opposed to cosy council meetings, was a new experience for officials.

The end result of the argument was that the Council were seen off. They subsequently adopted a reasonable approach and as a result the grounds for asking them questions on their attempt to subvert FoI disappeared. They now have the small number of enquiries they would have had all along were it not for their Kamikaze action of trying to subvert FoI.

The Council seem to have learnt a little from the experience. I hope that they are now a textbook example of how not to do things and how to recover from a big mistake, used as teaching materials in training sessions on FoI.

The operators of this web site were not entirely blameless in some respects either, high-handedly marking one of my requests as all questions answered when it was plain that they were not, trying to get essential background to an enquiry removed (claiming that it was argument). However, the upshot of that argument is a better web site.

All in all a positive outcome. If this particular council hadn't taken a Kamikaze approach to FoI then another one would have done so. Criticism should not be so much of the particular council but of the arrogant attitude of council officials towards their employers (all of us).

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