If you have submitted a Freedom of Information request please accept this
email as acknowledgement that your request has been received. You should
expect a response from us within 20 working days. 
“You will appreciate that all information requests place some degree of
demand on a public authority’s resources in terms of costs and staff time
and that UCL may need to prioritise resources to other areas, or adapt its
usual approach to information compliance work, in order to meet the
unprecedented challenges we are all facing during the Coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic.

Therefore, we need to advise you may experience delays in receiving
responses to information rights requests during the Coronavirus (COVID-19)
pandemic.”

For details on how we use your personal information, please see UCL's
general privacy
notice: [1]www.ucl.ac.uk/legal-services/privacy/general-privacy-notice
Data Protection & FOI
Legal Services
UCL

References

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Dear Joe

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request of 4^th March 2022.

We have completed the compilation of information in response to your
request for information about UCL’s spend and usage on Microsoft support.

We can confirm that we do hold some information of the description
specified in your request and this information is provided embedded in
your request below.

Your Request:

What date is your Microsoft support renewal?

o 31^st December 2022

What Microsoft support do you currently have in place - Microsoft Premier,
Microsoft Unified Support, something else (please specify), nothing?

o 3^rd party with premier support

On average how many support requests do you raise per year?

o 6

What are you currently paying per year?

o This information has been withheld under Section 43(2) of the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).  Section 43(2) states that:

“Information is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would,
or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person
(including the public authority holding it).”

This information has been withheld owing to the prejudice that would occur
to the commercial interests of both UCL and the supplier of this service.

Section 43(2) is a qualified exemption, and as such a public interest test
must be performed to establish the harm that would occur from disclosure
and where the balance of interest lies.  Please see below for the outcome
of this public interest test.

Public interest test for the application of Section 43(2):

Arguments in favour of disclosure:

o Release of information concerning how a public authority spends its
money is always considered to be in the public interest.
o The general public should be aware that value for money is being
obtained by the public authority, and that financial operations are
being conducted appropriately.
o There is a general public interest in transparency and openness
with regards to decisions made by public authorities.

Arguments against disclosure:

o This information is sensitive to the supplier of UCL’s Microsoft
support services.
o Disclosure of the costs of the Microsoft support services would
prejudice the supplier’s position by disclosing commercially
sensitive information to rival suppliers of comparable services who
would gain a commercial advantage by undercutting their costs,
making the suppliers’ business less attractive and ultimately
harming their commercial interests.  If affected in this way, the
supplier and other third parties would be less inclined to do
business with UCL because they may feel that it does not protect
commercially sensitive information as it should.  Such reputational
damage would have a detrimental impact on UCL’s commercial
interests.
o If third party suppliers are unwilling to deal with UCL, this would
distort tender processes and would be prejudicial to UCL achieving
best value, efficiency and effective use of public money.

Outcome of public interest test:

o It is considered that disclosure of this information would not be
in the public interest due to the substantial prejudice that would
occur to both UCL and the supplier of its Microsoft support
services.  The prejudice likely to be caused in this instance
outweighs the benefits of disclosure.

Who is your Head of Procurement? name, email

Who is your Head of Operations? name, email

o The names and email addresses of UCL’s Head of Procurement and Head of
Operations have been withheld because these are personal data.  This
information has been withheld under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA) by virtue of Section 40(3A)(i).

Section 40(2) of the FOIA allows a public authority to withhold
information from a response to a request under the FOIA when the
information requested is personal data relating to someone other than the
requester, and its disclosure would breach any of the Data Protection
principles.

In this case, we believe that the disclosure of the names and email
addresses of these individuals would not be within their reasonable
expectations, and as such would be unfair and in breach of the first Data
Protection principle which requires personal data to be processed fairly
and lawfully.

As the Section 40(2) exemption is an absolute one, there is no need to
conduct a public interest test.

You are free to use any information supplied for your own use, including
for non-commercial research purposes. The information may also be used for
the purposes of news reporting. However, any other type of re-use, for
example by publishing or issuing copies to the public, will require the
permission of the copyright owner.

If you are unhappy with our response to your request and wish to make a
complaint or request a review of our decision, please email
[1][email address]. Emails should include the words ‘Internal
Review’ in the subject and be marked For the Attention of the
Vice-President (Operations), alternatively you should write to:

Vice-President (Operations)

University College London

Gower Street

London

WC1E 6BT

Please note, complaints and requests for internal review received more
than two months after the initial decision will not be handled.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner at the address given below.
You should do this within two months of our final decision.

If you have any queries or concerns, please contact me using the details
provided in this letter and including the request reference number.

Further information on the Freedom of Information Act is available from
the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

SK9 5AF

01625 545700

[2]www.ico.org.uk

[3][email address]

Kind regards,

Janine Small

Data Protection and Freedom of Information Adviser

University College London

Legal Services

Data Protection: [4][email address] FOI: [5][UCL request email]

References

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4. mailto:[email address]
5. mailto:[UCL request email]