Individual Electoral Registration Service API
Dear Cabinet Office,
1. Could you please provide information on how data submitted via the Individual Electoral Registration (IER) service is passed to local authorities.
2. What API or data specification(s) are used for the transfer?
3. Who can request changes to the specification?
4. Following on from the previous question, please provide any information on how changes are approved and then implemented.
Yours faithfully,
Ben
CABINET OFFICE REFERENCE: FOI321357
Dear BEN STUART
Thank you for your request for information. Your request was received
on 6/7/2015 and is being dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.
This email is just a short acknowledgement of your request.
If you have any queries about this email, please contact the FOI team.
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.
Yours sincerely,
Knowledge and Information Management Unit
Cabinet Office
E: [1][Cabinet Office request email]
References
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1. mailto:[email address]
Please find attached the reply to your recent FOI request
Regards
FOI Team
1 Horse Guards Road
London
SW1A 2HQ
Email – [1][Cabinet Office request email]
References
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1. mailto:[email address]
Dear FOI Team Mailbox,
Further to your reply it is now November and I have yet to see the API specification published could you please update me with where you are at?
Yours sincerely,
Ben
Dear Mr Stuart
Thanks you for your recent email.
We are still committed to making the code and API specifications open as
soon as possible, and we are continuously working on it. However it is a
laborious process because all repositories need to be thoroughly sanitised
to make sure that no sensitive information is exposed that may put at risk
the security of the citizens' data handled by the service. The
sanitisation work is being done by the development team alongside other
sprints tasks, and then there will need to be a period during which the
work is reviewed before the code is ready for public view.
We were aiming at having this done by August, but other priorities had to
take precedence over this work. We will start progressively opening the
repositories soon, aiming at having all this done by January.
Regards
FOI Team
Room 405
70 Whitehall,
London, SW1A 2AS
E-mail -[1][Cabinet Office request email]
References
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1. mailto:[email address]
Dear Cabinet Office,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Cabinet Office's handling of my FOI request 'Individual Electoral Registration Service API'.
Knowing that this API is up and running with local government, there must be documentation already in existence. The suppliers of electoral roll software to local government have had to work with this API and they must have been given documentation to enable them to do that. It should therefore be trivial to supply the requested information. Besides the general public interest I see this as also preventing new businesses from entering the market for electoral management software as there is no where for them to find the details of the API.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/i...
Yours faithfully,
Ben Stuart
CABINET OFFICE REFERENCE: IR321375
Dear BEN STUART
Thank you for your request for an internal review. Your request was
received on 25/11/2015 and is being dealt with under the terms of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000.
This email is just a short acknowledgement of your request.
If you have any queries about this email, please contact the FOI team.
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.
Yours sincerely,
Knowledge and Information Management Unit
Cabinet Office
E: [1][Cabinet Office request email]
References
Visible links
1. mailto:[Cabinet Office request email]
Please find attached the reply to your recent internal review request
Regards
FOI Team
Room 405
70 Whitehall,
London, SW1A 2AS
Email – [1][Cabinet Office request email]
References
Visible links
1. mailto:[Cabinet Office request email]
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peter wells left an annotation ()
When asking whether this API existed on Twitter I was pointed both at this FOI and at someone who knows the position in Cabinet Office.
In this tweet I was informed that the IER service was "deliberately built...without a registration API, risks outweighed benefits."
https://twitter.com/marxculture/status/6...
The requestor may want to revisit their FOI to understand the risk/benefits decision.