FOI: Email and electronic filing search

The request was refused by Camden Borough Council.

Dear Camden Borough Council,

This is a request for information under FOIA. I request that the information be provided electronically, to this email address.

1)

Please provide the emails which result from a search of your email system, for the past 5 years, on the following keywords:

- Scientology

- COSREC

- COSRECI

- 68 Tottenham Court

- W1T 2EZ

- 37 Fitzroy

- W1T 6DX

Please include attachments.

2)

Please provide the documents which result from a search of your
electronic document storage for the same keywords. By 'electronic
document storage' I mean any network, file server(s) or electronic
filing system which the Council uses for the storage of electronic
documents of any kind.

If this storage is divided by department, then it will be OK for
you to limit the search to the following departments:

- the department which awards mandatory relief from national
non-domestic rates,

- the department which awards discretionary relief from national
non-domestic rates,

- the department which provides legal services to the Council,

- the department which deals with FOI enquiries,

- the department which deals with complaints,

- the department which provides internal auditing to the Council,

- the department which deals with the Council's external auditors.

Many thanks!

Yours faithfully,

Tristan Stewart

Michael Warby, Camden Borough Council

1 Attachment

Camden Council - Information request (FOI/EIR) - Central team

Our reference: 6580747

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Michael Warby, Camden Borough Council

1 Attachment

Camden Council - Information request (FOI/EIR) - Central team

Our reference: 6580747

show quoted sections

Dear Camden Borough Council,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Camden Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'FOI: Email and electronic filing search'.

My reasons for requesting an internal review are:

- the response to this request has been costed incorrectly.

- the Council has not fulfilled its obligation to 'advise and assist': could you please let me know how I could narrow the scope of my request (e.g. by department? by geographic location? by date? by part of my request?)

In detail:

You said: "Searching the manual and electronic records of the Council to determine whether the information is held. Time: 33.5 hours", but I did not ask for a search of the manual records.

You said "Locating the information or documents containing the information. Time: 33.5 hours". I do not clearly understand the distinction being made here between time allowed for 'searching' (above) and time allowed for 'locating' (this part).

You said "Retrieving such information or documents: Retrieving all manual and electronic information held in the Council relating to your request including archived correspondence files and electronic records. Time: 33.5 hours". I do not clearly understand the distinction being made between 'searching', 'locating' and 'retrieving'. I did not ask for a search of manual (hardcopy) records.

You said: "Extracting the information from documents and files containing it (including editing or redacting information): Time: 33.5 hours". Under FOIA the time taken for redaction cannot be included in the cost estimate. I do not clearly understand what 'editing' or 'extracting' (as opposed to redaction) you propose doing on the material. I haven't requested any 'editing' or 'extracting', and would actively oppose any editing of the material before it is released.

In fact it would appear that making editorial changes to the disputed information (as opposed to mere redaction) would be a criminal offence under FOIA s77 ('Offence of altering etc. records with intent to prevent disclosure').

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

Yours faithfully,

Tristan Stewart

Warby, Michael, Camden Borough Council

Dear Mr Stewart,

I am writing to you in the hope that further explanation of the response
that was sent yesterday may avoid the need for an internal review.

I will cover each of the points that you raised below:

- the response to this request has been costed incorrectly.

Response

The total time that was given in the response was 134 hours to provide the
information. This was calculated because it was estimated that you fulfil
your request would require 134 different officers to carry out a separate
search of the electronic information that they hold. To provide an
estimate of how long it would take for each officer to carry out a search,
one officer carried out a search for all electronic information they held
concerning the subject. This search took 1 hour. So the calculation was
that it would take 134 officers 1 hour to search which equated to 134
hours of work to provide the information. It was decided that because it
would take a total of 134 hours to provide the information that we would
divide the time by searching for the electronic records held, locating the
information within those electronic records, retrieving those files and
extracting the information which equated to 33.5 hours for each section
and added up to 134 hours to provide the information requested.

- the Council has not fulfilled its obligation to 'advise and assist':
could you please let me know how I could narrow the scope of my request
(e.g. by department? by geographic location? by date? by part of my
request?)

Response

In the response it was suggested that you may wish to narrow your request
so that it falls within the appropriate limit. I apologise that it was not
highlighted which may be the best way to narrow your request. It may be
possible to provide an answer if you reduced the number of departments and
the scope of the request.

- you said: "Searching the manual and electronic records of the Council to
determine whether the information is held. Time: 33.5 hours", but I did
not ask for a search of the manual records.

Response

I apologise for the administration error it should have read searching
electronic records would equate to 33.5 hours. To see how the 33.5 hours
was calculated please see the first response to your point raised.

- you said "Locating the information or documents containing the
information. Time: 33.5 hours". I do not clearly understand the
distinction being made here between time allowed for 'searching'(above)
and time allowed for 'locating' (this part).

Response

The time to search is when we carry out a search of all electronic folders
to determine if any information contained in them matches the suggested
search options that you gave. Once we know that some information matches
your search options we then have to examine the folder to decide if the
information is relevant. This is the locating stage. To see how the 33.5
hours was calculated please see the first response to your point raised.

- you said "Retrieving such information or documents: Retrieving all
manual and electronic information held in the Council relating to your
request including archived correspondence files and electronic records.
Time: 33.5 hours". I do not clearly understand the distinction being made
between 'searching', 'locating' and 'retrieving'. I did not ask for a
search of manual (hardcopy) records.

Response

I apologise for the administration error it should have read retrieving
electronic records would equate to 33.5 hours. Retrieving records is when
we move the records containing the information that matches your search
and place them in a folder so that we can then extract the information
contained in the files that matches your searches. To see how the 33.5
hours was calculated please see the first response to your point raised.

-you said: "Extracting the information from documents and files containing
it (including editing or redacting information): Time: 33.5 hours". Under
FOIA the time taken for redaction cannot be included in the cost estimate.
I do not clearly understand what `editing' or 'extracting' (as opposed to
redaction) you propose doing on the material. I haven't requested any
'editing' or 'extracting', and would actively oppose any editing of the
material before it is released. In fact it would appear that making
editorial changes to the disputed information (as opposed to mere
redaction) would be a criminal offence under FOIA s77 ('Offence of
altering etc. records with intent to prevent disclosure').

Response

I apologise for the administration error it should have read `Extracting
the information from documents and files containing it (excluding editing
or redacting information):'. Extracting the information is when we take
the information that is relevant to the subject from the file located when
the original search was carried out. To see how the 33.5 hours was
calculated please see the first response to your point raised.

Further guidance on section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act can be
found at:
[1]http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...

I hope that this explains the reason why your request was turned down
under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act and that there is no
longer a need for your request of an internal review to proceed. However
if you still require an internal review I will be happy to pass your
request on to the relevant department.

Kind regards

Michael Warby

Access to Information Officer - FOI & DPA

Telephone: 020 7974 7857

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Dear Michael,

Many thanks for your further response to my FOIA information request.

I would like to go ahead with the internal review.

I'm absolutely not asking for 134 individuals to each, seperately, search each of their email accounts and fileserver accounts. That would be silly.

What I'm asking for is for a global search (a search by the IT department, covering multiple users at one time) to be carried out on the relevant email server(s) and file server(s).

This should take at most 1 or 2 minutes per keyword per server, in staff time. Although the system might take longer to complete the search, there's clearly no need for a member of staff to sit watching it while it does so.

I remain happy to narrow down the scope of my query; however, I still don't have enough information to do that.

Information you could provide which would be helpful could include:

- what departments are covered by the query, and how much time is represented by each of them.

- how much time is represented by email search versus electronic document search.

- whether the data on file servers and email servers is divided up by time period, by geographic location, by department, or in some other way. For example, perhaps there's an email server for each of the council's geographic locations, or perhaps there's one per department, or perhaps it's all centralised. I have no way of knowing that unless you tell me.

Yours sincerely,

Tristan Stewart

Dear Michael,

Just a quick followup to try and get some more clarity on the information I'm looking for here:

One piece of software which many councils use to run their email servers is called Microsoft Exchange.

Here's Microsoft's instructions for how to do a 'Multi-Mailbox Search' on the latest version of the software, Exchange 2010:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libra...

Here's Microsoft's explanation of what this kind of search is:

"If your organization adheres to legal discovery requirements (related to organizational policy, compliance, or lawsuits), Exchange Server 2010 Multi-Mailbox Search can help you perform discovery searches for relevant content within Exchange mailboxes.

Multi-Mailbox Search leverages the content indexes created by Exchange Search. The Exchange Control Panel (ECP) provides an easy-to-use search interface for non-technical personnel such as legal and compliance officers, records managers, and human resources (HR) professionals. To Role-based access control (RBAC) provides the Discovery Management management role group to delegate discovery tasks to non-technical personnel, without the need to provide elevated privileges that may allow a user to make any operational changes to Exchange configuration."

and when you would want to use it:

" Uses for Multi-Mailbox Search

The following are some common uses of Multi-Mailbox Search:

* Legal discovery Complying with legal discovery requests for messaging records is increasingly becoming one of the most important tasks for organizations involved in lawsuits. Without a dedicated tool, searching messaging records within several mailboxes that may reside in different mailbox databases can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive task. Multi-Mailbox Search allows you to search a large volume of e-mail messages stored in mailboxes across one or more Exchange 2010 servers, and possibly in different locations.

* Internal investigations Multi-Mailbox Search can help you facilitate requests from managers or legal departments as part of internal investigations.

* Human Resources monitoring Multi-Mailbox Search can help you facilitate HR requests, whether it be standard e-mail monitoring requirements or a specific search."

so as you can see, FOI is just the kind of thing that this facility is intended for.

Obviously the way in which you go about it will depend on the software you have installed - here's instructions for older versions of Exchange:

'How to Find Mailboxes That Contain a Specific Message'
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/246916

I hope that's some help in explaining the type of search which I'm asking you to do.

Yours faithfully,

Tristan Stewart

Warby, Michael, Camden Borough Council

Dear Mr Stewart,

Thank you for your recent e-mails concerning the searching of electronic
documents. I am currently in conversation with our IT department
concerning the matters that you have raised and will respond to your
points as soon as possible.

Kind Regards

Michael Warby

Access to Information Officer - FOI & DPA

Telephone: 020 7974 7857

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Thank you Michael, I do appreciate your help.

Yours sincerely,

Tristan Stewart

Tristan Stewart

Hi Michael, any news on this?

Thanks again for your time and that of your colleagues.

Warby, Michael, Camden Borough Council

Dear Mr Stewart,

I apologise for my delayed response. I have been in discussions with our
IT department concerning your suggestion of an alternative search to
asking each officer to check their own individual information.

I can inform you that our IT department would not be in a position to
carry out the kind of search that you suggested as we do not have a
centralised archiving/search solution for e-mail or files so any searches
would be have to be done on each officers mailbox and home drive. It was
estimated that to carry out this search would equate to over 18 hours of
work.

Can you please inform me if you wish to proceed with your request for an
internal review?

Kind regards

Michael Warby

Access to Information Officer - FOI & DPA

Telephone: 020 7974 7857

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Tristan Stewart

Dear Michael,

Thanks for getting back to me.

Yes, I'd still like to take this one to internal review please.

The Council's statement that it cannot do centralised email or file searches seems unlikely to be true. It might be the case that the IT department doesn't want to, but that's a different problem.

Camden Council does appear to use Microsoft Exchange as its email server software, as shown by this document:
http://www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/cms-service...
which says "Microsoft Exchange provides the Council's e-mail and messaging infrastructure."

I've already provided links to Microsoft documents which show that a centralised search is possible in Exchange.

With respect to file search, the ability to search an entire server (rather than just one user's section of it) is built-in to Windows, which it appears is the Council's file storage platform.

So on the balance of probabilities, it does seem likely that the council actually is capable of performing this kind of centralised search; I'm thinking that perhaps you've been misinformed by your colleagues.

Thank you again for your time and attention on this matter.

Yours sincerely,

Tristan Stewart

Tristan Stewart

Dear Camden Borough Council,

I'd also add that the IT department's contention that

"we do not have a centralised archiving/search solution for e-mail or files"

does seem to be rather contradicted by the Council's Corporate ICT Strategy:

http://www.camden.gov.uk/ccm/cms-service...

which says:

"The Council’s centralised electronic storage is currently growing at around 3% per month and holds millions of individual files and documents."

and

"The current Exchange environment has been ‘clustered’ to provide failover between servers in the event that any one server fails."

Thanks again for your time. I do appreciate that you're only able to pass on what info the IT department gives you.

Yours faithfully,

Tristan Stewart

Peter Swingler, Camden Borough Council

Camden Council - Information request (FOI/EIR) -
Our reference: 6580747

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Swingler, Peter, Camden Borough Council

1 Attachment

Dear Tristan Stewart

Herewith the Panel decision on your appeal

Yours sincerely

Peter Swingler
On behalf of the Internal Review Panel
FOI Act
LB of Camden
9/11/10
This e-mail may contain information which is confidential, legally
privileged and/or copyright protected. This e-mail is intended for the
addressee only. If you receive this in error, please contact the sender
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