Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
T. 0303 123 1113 F. 01625 524510
4 February 2021
Case Reference -
IC-83176-K0V5
Dear Peter Silverman
Request for Information
Further to our acknowledgement of 20 January 2021 I can confirm we are now in
a position to provide you with a response to your information request which was
received by the ICO on 19 January 2021. We have handled your request under
the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the FOIA).
Request
In your email you asked for:
“ I have read your annual report for 2019/20. What I want to do is to get a feel
for the productivity of case officers (COs) dealing with information request (IR)
complaints. I therefore need be able to work out the average number of COs
that were dealing with such complaints during the year.
Could you therefore let me have the number so employed at the end of each
month.
If COs do not specialise in specific types of complaint please let me have the
same figures but for all complaints.
If you have reports which look at CO productivity for the same period please let
me have copies. Please send the whole of any such reports including any
information which you feel may not be relevant to my current interests.
Could you also provide the same figures for the current year up to Dec 31
2020 ”.
Response
In response to your request I should first point out that there is no specific role
for a case officer at the ICO which is exclusive to complaints handling or
specifically handling of information request complaints.
Information Commissioner’s Office (Head Office)
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
T. 0303 123 1113 F. 01625 524510
In addition to handling complaints submitted to the ICO, case officers at ICO
undertake a number of other roles. Furthermore, during the course of handling of
cases, the case officers may need to liaise with their team mangers/group
leaders, senior case officers or lead case officers who may also have some
involvement and input into the handling of a complaint.
In terms of number of case officers employed at the ICO please find attached a
csv file which gives the number of case officers including agency staff, lead case
officers and senior case officers employed at the end of each month from April
2019 to December 2020.
In terms of your query about productivity reports we do not have the type of
reports you appear to be interested in. We do have the ability to produce some
reports from our case management systems for routine management purposes
for example cases completed in a specific time by a case officer but these
reports are not productivity reports as per se. Furthermore any such reports
identify case officers and therefore will be exempt under Section 40 (2) of the
FOIA .
We do not consider that disclosing management reports to you and consequently
to the public is necessary or justified in order to satisfy your information request
and the requirements of the FOIA. There is no strong legitimate interest that
would override the prejudice to the rights and freedoms of the relevant data
subjects. We have therefore taken the decision that disclosing this information
would be unlawful, triggering the exemption at section 40(2) of the FOIA.
We cannot anonymise the reports because they will not provide any useful
information.
Next steps
If you are dissatisfied with our under the FOIA or wish to complain about how
your request has been handled please write to the Information Access Team at
the address below or email xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx
A request for internal review should be submitted to us within 40 working days of
receipt by you of this response. Any such request received after this time will
only be considered at the discretion of the Commissioner.
If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your request or
review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right of appeal to this
office in our capacity as the statutory complaint handler under the legislation. To
make such an application, please write to our FOI Complaints & Appeals
Department at the address below or visit our website if you wish to make a
complaint under the Freedom of Information Act.
A copy of our review procedure can be accessed from our website
here. Your rights
Our privacy notice explains what we do with the personal data you provide to us
and what your rights are, with a specific entry, for example, fo
r an information
requester. Our retention policy can be found
here. Yours sincerely
Kussum Sharma
Lead Information Access Officer
Risk and Governance Department
Corporate Strategy and Planning Service