Policy on accepting complaints via What Do They Know

The request was successful.

Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,

I understand that the ICO does not accept complaints from applicants via What Do They Know, where an applicant is unhappy with the response from any public authority to a request for information.

Please provide your policy on accepting complaints via What Do They Know.

Please provide any correspondence with What Do They Know/My Society or UK Citizens Online Democracy (the charity which ultimately runs the site), prior to the decision being made that the ICO would not accept complaints via What Do They Know.

Yours faithfully,

J Taylor

AccessICOinformation, Information Commissioner's Office

Thank you for contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office. We confirm
that we have received your correspondence.

If you have made a request for information held by the ICO we will contact
you as soon as possible if we need any further information to enable us to
answer your request. If we don't need any further information we will
respond to you within our published, and statutory, service levels. For
more information please visit [1]http://ico.org.uk/about_us/how_we_comply

If you have raised a new information rights concern - we aim to send you
an initial response and case reference number within 30 days.

If you are concerned about the way an organisation is handling your
personal information, we will not usually look into it unless you have
raised it with the organisation first. For more information please see our
webpage ‘raising a concern with an organisation’ (go to our homepage and
follow the link ‘for the public’). You can also call the number below.

If you have requested advice - we aim to respond within 14 days. 

If your correspondence relates to an existing case - we will add it to
your case and consider it on allocation to a case officer.

Copied correspondence - we do not respond to correspondence that has been
copied to us.

For more information about our services, please see our webpage ‘Service
standards and what to expect' (go to our homepage and follow the links for
‘Report a concern’ and ‘Service standards and what to expect'). You can
also call the number below.

For information about what we do with personal data see our [2]privacy
notice.

If there is anything you would like to discuss with us, please call our
helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Yours sincerely

The Information Commissioner’s Office

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Find us on Twitter at [4]http://www.twitter.com/ICOnews

 

References

Visible links
1. http://ico.org.uk/about_us/how_we_comply
2. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice/
3. http://www.ico.org.uk/tools_and_resource...
4. http://www.twitter.com/ICOnews

Information Commissioner's Office

8 November 2018

 

Case Reference Number IRQ0799554

 

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your recent request for information. We received your
request on 5 November 2018.
 
We will be considering your request under the Freedom of Information Act
2000. You can expect us to respond in full by 4 December 2018. This is 20
working days from the date we received your request. If, for any reason,
we can’t respond by this date, we will let you know and tell you when you
can expect a response.
 
If you have any questions please contact me using the IRQ case reference
number above or by replying to this email and leaving the subject field
unchanged.
 
Thank you for your interest in the work of the Information Commissioner's
Office.
 
Yours sincerely
 
 
 
 
 

Alexis Karlsson-Jones
Senior Information Access Officer, Risk and Governance Department
Corporate Strategy and Planning Directorate
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 0330 313 1886 F. 01625 524510  [1]ico.org.uk  [2]twitter.com/iconews
For information about what we do with personal data see our [3]privacy
notice. Please consider the environment before printing this email

References

Visible links
1. http://ico.org.uk/
2. https://twitter.com/iconews
3. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice/

Information Commissioner's Office

2 Attachments

29 November 2018

 

Case Reference Number IRQ0799554

 

Dear Sir/Madam

I write in response to your request of 4 November 2018 through the
whatdotheyknow.com (WDTK) website, in which you submitted a request for
information to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Your request
has been dealt with in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA).

Your request

You asked:

“I understand that the ICO does not accept complaints from applicants via
What Do They Know, where an applicant is unhappy with the response from
any public authority to a request for information.
Please provide your policy on accepting complaints via What Do They Know.
Please provide any correspondence with What Do They Know/My Society or UK
Citizens Online Democracy (the charity which ultimately runs the site),
prior to the decision being made that the ICO would not accept complaints
via What Do They Know.”
 
Our response
 
I can confirm that we hold some information which may fall within the
scope of your request. As you will be aware, WhatDoTheyKnow.com is a
website built by mySociety, designed for the purpose of helping people
making requests for information to public authorities under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 and having the responses published online.
 
As the statement atop the [1]profile of the ICO page on the site states:
 
“WhatDoTheyKnow.com is only for making requests for information. Any other
correspondence, including complaints about the way public bodies have
handled requests for information, should be made directly to the
Information Commissioner.”
 
This follows a decision we took back in 2014 to no longer accept content
from the site which was not a FOIA request, regarding which we liaised
with WhatDoTheyKnow.com. However I can confirm that the correspondence
regarding this which falls within the scope of your request is no longer
held. Our privacy notice includes details of the length of time that we
keep information in line with our retention schedules.
 
Nevertheless, we did respond to an information request in 2016 on this
subject and can direct you to [2]our response to that request, which
disclosed a copy of the internal Manager’s Briefing regarding the change
from August 2014. I hope this is helpful.
 
To the extent that they fall within the scope of your request I can also
disclose a copy of the relevant section the ICO’s Information Access
Team’s post instructions. Because the site is used to make FOIA requests,
the emails from the site are directed to the [3]mailbox for this team and
the team’s instructions handling post contains information regarding the
handling of non-requests that have come through the WDTK route.
 
We can also disclose a copy of the template letters, referred to in those
instructions, which we will base our correspondence on when handling
non-FOIA requests such as complaints or enquiries as received via the
site.

This concludes our response to your request. I hope the information
provided has been helpful.

Next steps

I hope this response is clear. If you would like me to clarify anything
about the way your request has been handled please contact me.
 
You can ask us to review the way we have handled your request. Please see
our review procedure [4]here.
 
Following our internal review, if you remain dissatisfied with the way we
have handled your request, there is a statutory complaints process and you
can report your concern to the regulator. I have included information
about how to do this separately.
 
Your information
 
Please note that our [5]Privacy notice explains what we do with the
personal data you provide to us and what your rights are.
 
This includes entries regarding the specific purpose and legal basis for
the ICO processing information that people that have provided us with,
such as an [6]information requester.
 
The length of time we keep information is laid out in our retention
schedule, which can be found [7]here.
 
Yours sincerely
 
 
 
 
 

Alexis Karlsson-Jones
Senior Information Access Officer, Risk and Governance Department
Corporate Strategy and Planning Directorate
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 0330 313 1886 F. 01625 524510  [8]ico.org.uk  [9]twitter.com/iconews
For information about what we do with personal data see our [10]privacy
notice. Please consider the environment before printing this email

References

Visible links
1. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/ico
2. https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/p...
3. mailto:[ICO request email]
4. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
5. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice...
6. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice...
7. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
8. http://ico.org.uk/
9. https://twitter.com/iconews
10. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice/