Authorisation and supervision of Procurement ITT 4015-2-Professional services-N-RFP at MoJ

[Name Removed] made this Freedom of Information request to Ministry of Justice This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was refused by Ministry of Justice.

Dear Ministry of Justice,

1) Who did approve and supervise as a Director at the Ministry of Justice Procurement - HMCTS/Estates/Corporate Services the procurement operation "Understanding civil court users – research among civil court claimants and defendants" ITT 4015-2-Professional services-N-RFP published in its final specification on the 7th July 2014 through the portal https://esourcing.justice.gov.uk and advertised through the Contracts Finder database?

2) Who did require as a Director this ITT within the Analytical Services (MoJ-AS) said to be the organisational unit that commissioned the research (source: the Notice published through the Contracts Finder database at https://online.contractsfinder.businessl...

3) Why the ITT was advertised in the Contracts finder database and through the MoJ procurement portal but not in the OJEU in spite of an overall value defined in "£110,000 - £130,000"?

Yours faithfully,
[Name Removed]
Information Management Adviser
Open Data Assurance
[Removed]
email: [email address]

Procurement Group Programme,

1 Attachment

Dear [Name Removed],

Please find attached an acknowledgment to your Freedom of information
request logged under reference number 93902.
<<FOI 93902 - [Name Removed] - acknowledgement Letter.pdf>>
Kind Regards
Ian Crook
PMO | Ministry of Justice - Commercial and Contract Management
2nd Floor, Clive House | 70 Petty France | London | SW1H 9EX

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Procurement Group Programme,

1 Attachment

Dear [Name Removed],

Please find attached the response to your Freedom of information request
logged under reference number 93902.

<<FOI - 93902 - [Name Removed].pdf>>
Kind Regards
Ian Crook
PMO | Ministry of Justice - Commercial and Contract Management
2nd Floor, Clive House | 70 Petty France | London | SW1H 9EX

show quoted sections

Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Procurement Group Programme,

1 Attachment

Dear [Name Removed],

Please find attached an acknowledgment to your Freedom of information
request logged under reference number 93902.
<<FOI 93902 - [Name Removed] - acknowledgement Letter.pdf>>
Kind Regards
Ian Crook
PMO | Ministry of Justice - Commercial and Contract Management
2nd Floor, Clive House | 70 Petty France | London | SW1H 9EX

show quoted sections

Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Dear Ministry of Justice,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Ministry of Justice's handling of my FOI request 'Authorisation and supervision of Procurement ITT 4015-2-Professional services-N-RFP at MoJ'.

The answer provided to my question is unsatisfactory, it denies some peculiarities of the original advertisement and ITT documents and it vilifies the same FOI in that: it says that the ITT was a procurement 'part b' opportunity (to clarify for the public who read this message through the website "What do they Know", Part B are "residual services" under Public Contracts Regulations 2006 and the EU Directive on public procurement 2004/18/ EC that do not need to be advertised or put under competitive tendering).

In the meantime the ITT is not documented anymore through the Contracts Finder database or other public sources: the related notice has disappeared / has been deleted after I posted the question. This does not seem particularly encouraging a culture of transparency and accountability in any case, even if there was no causation between my request and your record management policies (I have kept the original of the notice itself and all the related documentation though, should you needed to get back to the original data and you were unable to do it with your own backups or assurance / auditing tools I could provide copy of it).

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

Such history can be complemented with the opinions exchanged through the mailing list "Data-Protection" hosted by Jiscmail.ac.uk between 18 and 20 November 2014, upon my invitation, about the fact that data have been deleted following the FOI request from a public source.

In particularly, here is the message in which I summarised the debate and the collected opinions:

=====================================================
It seems the absolute majority of the list has nothing to say in reply to my question and I do take into account such massive silence (I am talking about the reply I had to the question asked about a procurement exercise, see previous message and https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/user/brun...)

To me, such massive silence says a lot in terms of disconcert and disappointment - and perhaps also a bit of scepticism about the effectiveness of FOI legislation in assuring more transparency and accountability within public processes.

As far as the "stupidity" argument is concerned thanks for the thoughts expressed about it. I have some doubt though that it applies in that: there is no reason to delete information that arises from stupidity or from unintentional mistakes. On the contrary, the more transparency we assure about mistakes made in public processes for whatever reason - and very often for human stupidity or distruction - the less likelihood that they occur again. I have succeeded in making the Insolvency Service re-gazetting a bankruptcy notice in which they had unadvertedly mistaken the name of the Court. Perhaps because this was not the only mistake made in my bizarre bankruptcy case (now discharged, in the next future very likely to be annulled) I do believe they have done the right thing and I guess they will be very careful in the future in sending out for publication documents made copying templates or using email communications without controls.

Having said that, it is only the transparency about the whole public process, including mistakes, that makes possible to understand if there was any failure of governance or any individual or group misbehaviour. If we delete the data such possibility disappears.

A reply I have received in private from a person working for a legal firm adds these words:

"Hi. I am intrigued. There may be circumstances where for example a request is received in one part of an organisation and on the same day, in another part of the same organisation, requested information is disposed of quite legitimately in line with established business processes/retention schedules. Do they publish these anywhere? Not good, but can happen. It does seem to me though that the authority in question have failed in their duty to advise and assist as the response is pretty sparse. You may know the reason-but would the wider world (which is the real test)?"

That's all for now. I may comment further through my icm2re web column. But if you have any further thought please let me know.
==================================================

Yours faithfully,

[Name Removed]
Information Management Adviser
Open Data Assurance
[Removed]

Procurement Group Programme,

1 Attachment

Dear [Name Removed],

Please find attached an acknowledgment to your Freedom of information
internal review request logged under reference number 94612

<<FOI 94612 - [Name Removed] - IR Acknowledgement.pdf>>
Kind Regards
Ian Crook
PMO | Ministry of Justice - Commercial and Contract Management
2nd Floor, Clive House | 70 Petty France | London | SW1H 9EX

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

[Name Removed] (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

On 22 December I received via email a letter the content of which has not been made public here. Why? I understand from this and from a previous interaction on 18 November that employees at the National Offender Management Service might have been delegated the tasks to answer Freedom of Information requests on behalf of the Commercial and Contract Management and / or the Data Access & Compliance Unit Information Directorate at the Ministry of Justice. This constitutes another reason to reiterate that a review of the behaviours connected with this procurement exercise and its accountability is overdue and it would be absolutely appropriate.