Timescales for Internal Reviews

Dear Sir or Madam,

I should like to find out how long the Cabinet Office takes to
process Internal Reviews under the Freedom of Information Act.

Therefore, for each Internal Review requested under the Freedom of
Information Act received by your Department, please can you provide
the following information:

- Date request for Internal Review was received by the Cabinet
Office

- Date a substantive response was provided to the requester (ie not
just an acknowledgement)

Please also include in the response any Internal Reviews requested
which are currently awaiting a response.

I should like this information going back for as long a time period
as is possible within the costs limit, starting with Internal
Reviews which are awaiting a response and going back
chronologically by the date substantive responses were provided.

I believe a single team is responsible for coordinating such
Internal Reviews, and they would be carried out by a small number
of senior personnel, I would hope the task of collating this
information is not onerous.

Whilst I do not require any additional details about the Internal
Reviews, if there are extra data fields you can easily extract from
any monitoring systems you operate (eg department within the
Cabinet Office, person dealing with the review etc) please feel
free to add this to the response as it may be useful to others.
However, the prime focus is on providing as much information as
possible about the dates Internal Reviews were received and
responded to.

It would be helpful if you could also provide any internal guidance
or operating procedures relating to Internal Reviews within the
Cabinet Office, in particular where there is any reference to
target timescales for response.

Yours faithfully,

Janine Baker

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Cabinet Office's
handling of my FOI request 'Timescales for Internal Reviews'.

Please can you acknowledge this request for an Internal Review and
provide full details of the person who will conduct the review, the
expected duration to complete the review and escalation paths if
you fail to meet this deadline.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ti...

The response from Yasmine Edwards states that it will exceed the
costs limit to respond to the request, and hence refuses to provide
the information unless I narrow the scope. This response is just
ridiculous, and strikes me as something which was written at the
last minute just before the 20 working days expired on this request
rather than being the result of any serious consideration.

If you look at the request I made, it was specifically worded with
the costs limit in mind, and says ...

"I should like this information going back for as long a time
period as is possible within the costs limit, starting with
Internal Reviews which are awaiting response and going back
chronologically by the date substantive responses were provided."

Ms Edwards quotes this very paragraph in her response to me.

In her response, Ms Edwards indicates that the Cabinet Office holds
the information I am requesting. This must imply that somewhere you
have at least a list of cases where Internal Reviews were
requested.

Why, therefore, cannot Ms Edwards narrow the search for information
IN EXACTLY THE WAY I INDICATED IN MY REQUEST, ie

- start with the Internal Reviews which are awaiting response, and
tell me the dates on which they were requested.

then

- working backwards by response date, tell me the dates on which
each request was made and when a substantive response was given.

I estimate that even with someone working very slowly with no
automated systems to draw this information from, it should be
possible to find out the dates for, say, four requests per hour.
Over three and a half days, that gives you about 24 hours and hence
enough time to come up with details of around 100 Internal Reviews,
which should cover over a year's worth of reviews.

So please can you explain to me why it was not possible to comply
with my request when it included specific provision to limit the
request in this way?

I should like the review to specifically look into the actions
taken by Ms Edwards to respond to this request, ie did she actually
look into this in any way, did she talk to the person or people who
conduct Internal Reviews for the Cabinet Office, did she start to
compile any information? If it was clear that this would take more
than three and a half days to respond to, why did it take until the
very end of the 20 working days before Ms Edwards realised this. Is
it possible that Ms Edwards was prompted that this request was
about to breach the statutory time limit for responses, and so gave
an off the cuff response about costs rather than admitting that
this request had been poorly handled?

I note that you have kindly pointed me to the Information
Commissioner's guidance on Internal Reviews, which says that "a
review must be ... thorough and swift and the outcome must be
notified promptly to the complainant", that "a one stage review
should be completed in 20 working days" and that "in exceptional
circumstances it may be appropriate to take longer but even in
those cases it should not exceed 40 working days." This was
precisely the reason for my FOI request, to see whether the Cabinet
Office is actually following this guidance.

Yours faithfully,

Janine Baker

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have now waited 20 working days for a response to this Internal
Review. According to the guidelines you sent me, Internal Reviews
should normally be completed within 20 working days.

Please can you look into what is happening with this as a matter of
urgency.

Yours faithfully,

Janine Baker

Dear Cabinet Office,

I have now waited 42 days for a response to my request for an
Internal Review.

This should be a simple review. I asked for some information which
you hold, specifically stating that to avoid issues with the costs
limit I would limit the request to as much as could be provided
within this limit, starting from the most recent cases and working
back in time. The person from the FOI team ignored this, decided
that to answer this without any limitation would be too expensive,
and then told me just before the 20 working days expired that I
could not have the information.

How long does it take you to recognise that the request was badly
handled, and to instruct the FOI team to do what I asked for in the
first place?

Yours faithfully,

Janine Baker

Dear Cabinet Office,

I have now waited almost 60 working days for a response to my
request for an Internal Review. Since acknowledging it on 14
October you seem to have completely ignored this matter, including
not responding to my emails of 13 November (after 20 working days,
the ICO guidelines for a response to an Internal Review) and of 11
December (after 42 working days).

Please can you do me the decency of responding to this message to
tell me what is happening with this request for an Internal Review,
whether anyone is looking at it and when it will be responded to.

If I do not hear from you by the end of the week, I shall be
complaining to the Information Commissioner.

Yours faithfully,

Janine Baker

Dear Cabinet Office,

I requested an Internal Review of your failure to correctly handle
a Freedom of Information Act request on 14 October last year.

Since your acknowledgement of this the following day, you have
failed to provide any further response to this, and have ignored my
follow up emails on 13 November, 11 December and 4 January.

Would you please do me the common decency of letting me know
whether you are actually looking into this matter, or whether you
are just ignoring this and hoping it will go away? I should remind
you that you have a legal obligation to respond to requests for
internal reviews normally within 20 working days and in extreme
cases within 40 working days. I have now waited over 100 working
days for you to respond.

Yours faithfully,

Janine Baker

Dear Cabinet Office,

On 14 October last year I requested an Internal Review into the
handling of my Freedom of Information Act request concerning the
timescales for handling Internal Reviews.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ti...

On 19 October an unnamed member of the FOI Team provided a response
acknowledging the request and indicating that it was receiving
attention.

It now appears to have been "receiving attention" for over eight
months, during which time I have sent four chasers to you, none of
which has been acknowledged. I am hence re-requesting that you
conduct an internal review of this case.

Please can you do me the common courtesy of at least acknowledging
this email. It would be nice if you could provide an indication of
when your clearly extremely comprehensive review might reach a
conclusion.

Yours faithfully,

Janine Baker