Where is the journalism within the BBC?
It seems to be a rehash of Gordon Browns Press releases.
BBC 24 Hr News seems to be almost entirely
a Government news channel.
Further what has Derogation got to do with the FOI?
It seems to be being used as a euphemism to allow the BBC to ignore the FOI!

If information isn't covered by the Act, then the Act doesn't apply, hence no internal review.

All you can do is refer the matter to the ICO for him to decide whether it is covered or not.

It's a bit like complaining that disclosure of your dead aunt's personal data is a breach of the Data Protection Act. It's not, cos the DPA only applies to living individuals, etc. etc.

The background for my request is related to the backlog of FOI cases at the Information Commissioner as at June 2008: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cu...

The authority with the largest number of outstanding complaints was the BBC (74), and most are related to s.1, ie the derogation. In addition, the ICO upholds nearly all derogation complaints. It seems that a significant number of cases could be resolved much earlier on, and at the BBC's expense (rather than by the overworked & underfunded ICO) if the BBC offered an internal review of their decision.

The ICO say you should exhaust a public authority's complaints procedure before complaining to them, and to make a complaint if an authority fails to provide the information you're looking for - "Not held" is the answer the BBC give using the derogation, and this is the result of a case-by-case interpretation of the derogation - there's no real reason I can see why you can't challenge this interpretation & offer them a chance to reconsider.

It's definitely not as clear-cut as in your DPA example. A more comparable example from that Act is what falls into the "political opinions" category (s.2 Sensitive personal data).

Cheers
Alex

I doubt internal reviews would actually produce any other result; the BBC seems quite firmly wedded to their belief that any tenuous connection to journalism is enough to engage the derogation. In one large class of cases - cost information associated with programme production - the Information Tribunal have found against the BBC, but they are appealing to the High Court. Hopefully once they lose there (assuming they do), it will clear out a lot of cases at once.

http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/DB...(EA-2008-0019,34,51,58)%20PI%20Decision%2007-11-08.pdf

(sorry the link is broken but I can't persuade the text form not to break it across multiple lines)

I know it's not as clear cut as the DPA example - which is why I said it's a "bit" like that.

Whilst it's based on BBC opinion (and an often (usually?) flawed opinion), the fact remains that they do not believe the Act applies. It might not seem right, but it's the way it is.

I have an outstanding case with the ICO, appealing against such a decision by the BBC ("outside the scope of the Act"). I submitted my appeal in May 2007. I found out in December 2008 that it has finally been assigned a caseworker at the ICO...

At least part of the basis of this advice has now been invalidated by the recent House of Lords decision in the Sugar vs BBC case re the Balen report - the ICO stated in the attached document that the complainaint could apply for judicial review if the ICO agreed about the derogation, but the HoL ruling means that the standard ICO Decision Notice/Information Tribunal process applies now.

Since there is now a general principle that the application of the derogation is to be treated like any other part of FOI until it is confirmed to be valid, I wonder if the BBC should now be expected to offer internal reviews in this area.