AFCS

The request was partially successful.

Dear Ministry of Defence,

I would like to know the following:

1. The number of applications to the AFCS for the year 2016.

2. The number of rejected claims.

3. The number of requests for a reconsideration of award.

4. The number of appeals submitted.

All for 2016.

Yours faithfully,

Robert Campbell

Def Strat-Stat-PQ-FOI-Mailbox (MULTIUSER),

Dear Robert,

Thank you for contacting the Ministry of Defence.

Your request for recorded information is currently being considered under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000
with reference FOI2017/02294.

You are entitled to receive a written response no later than 16th March 2017.

Regards,

FOI & PQ Desk ¦ Defence Statistics & Economics ¦ Oak 0 West #6028¦ Ministry of Defence¦ Abbey Wood North ¦ Bristol BS34 8JH

show quoted sections

Def Strat-Stat-Health-PQ-FOI (MULTIUSER),

1 Attachment

Good Morning Mr Campbell,

 

Please find attached our response to your freedom of information request.

 

Regards,

 

Defence Statistics (Health)

Dear Ministry of Defence,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Ministry of Defence's handling of my FOI request 'AFCS'.

As you can see from the request, it was shoddily written with emails written as xxx@xxxxx, unsigned and without a name. Is this an indication that my questions are irritating to you, or just a general reflection on your lack of professionalism?

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

Yours faithfully,

Robert Campbell

Becky Bbear left an annotation ()

Mr Campbell:

The email addresses in the MOD's response were either redacted (blanked) by them so that any further correspondence went through Whatdotheyknow to maintain the thread of exchanges, or were redacted by Whatdotheknow to avoid releasing addresses that may have been 'personal' email addresses - an automated feature of the site.

The Mod's copy of their response could well have those full addresses present, they wouldn't know if the site redacted them unless they looked themselves.

Becky

CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER),

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Campbell - thank you for your email of 15 March 2017 in respect of
the Departments substantive response for your FOI request our reference:
FOI2017/02294.

 

o I can advise that the replacing of email addresses in the response
with X’s was not undertaken by the Department and is likely the result
of an automated process through the whatdotheyknow website applied to
prevent the release of personal data. I have therefore attached
another copy of the response in PDF format which should prevent this
happening.  

 

·         With respect to your complaint that correspondence from the
Department had been issued without a signature or named Departmental
representative, there is not a formal requirement under the Act for
substantive replies to be signed or for responding Departments to provide
the name of a public authority employee. Under the legislation it is the
public authority headed by the Permanent Secretary and Ministers who are
publically accountable for FOI performance, not individual civil
servants.  Any response to an FOI request from the Department is
considered to be made on behalf of the MOD and requestors always have
recourse to the Department and ultimately to the Information Commissioner
and the Information Tribunal should they be dissatisfied with the reply.
The Department`s substantive response identified the area responsible for
processing and responding to your request, Defence Statistics, and
provided the email address and the role title for the responsible member
of staff which was Defence Statistics (Health) Head (B1). All that said, I
recognize that for the reasons detailed in the first bullet this
information was not available to you.

 

o In addition, it is the MOD’s policy that the names and posts of
members of staff below the Senior Civil Service (SCS) and their
military equivalents (Commodore, Brigadier, Air Commodore and above)
will not normally be published into the public domain and will
therefore be redacted from any information released under FOIA. The
Department takes the view that whilst it is reasonable for senior
staff to face public exposure, it is unfair for junior officials
undertaking activities under the direction and control of senior staff
to be at risk of insulting remarks and other forms of harassment aimed
at them personally from members of the public. Whilst this type of
correspondence is fortunately rare, the Department has a duty of care
to its junior officials to protect them from such unwarranted
attacks.  The official responsible for writing the response that you
received was not a member of the Senior Civil Service, and so the name
was not provided in this instance, only the post title.

 

 

I hope this explains the issues you have raised in respect of the
Departments reply, however, should you wish the Department to conduct a
full independent internal review into the substance of the substantive
response we would of course be happy to do so.

 

Information Rights Compliance Team