FTA Crown Commercial Service

Dear Sir or Madam,

I would like to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act to the Crown Commercial Service regarding the Multifunctional Devices, Managed Print and Content Services and Records and Information Management framework.

Please could I access all the MISO submissions made under this framework in a machine readable format (preferably .csv). As an example, similar information to the data we require is already publicly available for G-Cloud here: https://digitalmarketplace.blog.gov.uk/s....

For the avoidance of doubt, we’d like you to provide the following data fields as a minimum:

Spend value
Month of spend
Buyer name
Supplier name
Companies House Number of supplier (if available)

If you have additional data fields that can be sent, please provide them.

Thanks to the open data available on expenditure, we already know how much each supplier received from each individual buyer. We're only seeking to know how much the framework contract was used and by which buyers and which suppliers. Please note, that because we are simply seeking to determine how much spend went through a contract, rather than the details of suppliers arrangements with buyers, we are confident that this is not an issue of commercial confidentiality. In addition, please note that the ICO has already found in our favour when requesting this data in the past.

Please let me know if you require any clarifications.

I await your response within 20 working days.

Yours Sincerely,

Helen McNally

Dear Crown Commercial Service,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Crown Commercial Service's handling of my FOI request 'FOI - MISO returns - Multifunctional Devices, Managed Print and Content Services and Records and Information Management framework', FOI Reference: FOI325645 .

In responding to my request, you cited Section 43(2) of the FOI Act as grounds for excluding the name of the customers in the data provided. However, I believe this exemption to be misapplied.

Please note that this information was not considered commercially sensitive in a similar case regarding Estates Professional Services MISO data. While I appreciate that this is a separate agreement and that this case must be judged on its own merits, I believe that regarding this specifically data these two agreements are sufficiently similar that the same logic should be applied when judging commercial sensitivity.

Please also note that open data on spending means that we know when public sector bodies have spent money with suppliers listed in the framework, although we do not know from this data when the spend was through this framework. As data on total spend between public sector buyers and external suppliers is already in the public domain, I do not believe that this information can be commercially sensitive. When entering into government contracts, suppliers know that this information will be made public, it cannot be argued that there is an expectation that this information will be commercial in confidence or that publishing this information could jeopardise trust.

Finally, I am not convinced by your assertion that publishing buyer names could reveal pricing strategies. Revealing buyer names would show only the amount a customer spends with a supplier in a given category by month. You have not demonstrated in your response how accessing this data, which I reiterate is already published in open data on spending, albeit without the link to a framework, could compromise pricing strategies. We have deliberately avoided asking for information that could compromise pricing strategies like unit costs, total savings, or use of subcontractors.

Given the above points, I would like to request an Internal Review of this decision. I await your response within 20 working days.

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

Yours faithfully,

Helen McNally