Process for updating datasets and copy of full year data for 2016/17

The request was partially successful.

Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,

On your website you have links to performance data in the form of raw datasets. An ICO response to an earlier FOI request explained that these are in lieu of more user-friendly quarterly summaries. Service users, researchers, journalists and busy Parliamentarians (for example) may process the datasets for themselves in order to try and determine how the ICO is performing its core duties.

The page is listed at:-

https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-inf...

At the foot of the page there are links to three datasets:-

https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/d...
https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/d...
https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/d...

By examination, the first two links appear to show the whole years 2014/15 and 2015/16, for cases that "Finished" from the beginning of April to the end of the of March (gleaned to be the ICO reporting period, as tucked away in an annual report). The final link appears to have been updated at the end of April 2016, nearly a year ago. It hasn't changed in many months.

With reference to the second sentence of the page, which reads:-

"We update these reports each month with the information relating to work completed three months earlier."

1) Please can you detail the policy and process used to ensure these reports are generated and published in a timely manner? This recorded information may be in form of an automated computerised deamon and user configured tables to execute scheduled commands (such as cron), an inbuilt alert ruleset in the case management database, a yellow Post-It(R) note stuck to the fridge etc.

2) Please also provide the full dataset for the ICO's reporting year from April 2016 to March 2017.

Yours faithfully,

D Morris

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.

 

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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Information Commissioner's Office

2 Attachments

5 May 2017

 

Case Reference Number IRQ0675927

 

Dear D Morris

Request for Information
 
Thank you for your correspondence dated 4 April 2017, in which you have
referred to the casework data published on our website and asked:

"1) Please can you detail the policy and process used to ensure these
reports are generated and published in a timely manner? This recorded
information may be in form of an automated computerised deamon and user
configured tables to execute scheduled commands (such as cron), an inbuilt
alert ruleset in the case management database, a yellow Post-It(R) note
stuck to the fridge etc.

2) Please also provide the full dataset for the ICO's reporting year from
April 2016 to March 2017."
 
We have considered your request in accordance with the requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. This entitles you to information held by
a public authority
 
Response

Please find attached a copy of all the process documents we hold in
relation to the proactive publication of our casework statistics.
 
We no longer intend to publish these datasets annually but are publishing
monthly datasets. The April 2016 dataset was published in March 2017
and we are currently in the process of preparing the monthly datasets from
May 2016 to present.

For this reason we are refusing the second part of your request in
reliance on section 22(1) of the FOIA.

Section 22(1) of states:

“Information is exempt information if –
(a)    the information is held by the public authority with a view to its
publication, by the authority or any other person, at some future date
(whether determined or not),
(b)    the information was already held with a view to such publication at
the time when the request for information was made, and
(c)    it is reasonable in all the circumstances that the information
should be withheld from disclosure until the date referred to in paragraph
(a).”
 
I can confirm that the information within the scope of this part of your
request is held with a view to its publication. It is therefore necessary
to consider whether it is ‘reasonable in all the circumstances’ that the
information should be withheld until it is published.

The ICO wishes to control the date of release of this information to
ensure it is fair to those who have an interest in the information.
Premature release may be seen as unfair, and discourage further engagement
by organisations involved, impacting on our overall ability to improve
information rights.
 
As described above, it is necessary to consider the public interest in us
providing this information early in response to your request.
 
In this case the public interest factors in disclosing the information
are;
 
•       providing information regarding public authorities on whom
complaints have been made regarding their compliance with the FOIA and
encouraging openness.
 
The factors in withholding the information are; 
 

* by releasing this information at this time the ICO may be seen as
unfair (and this may discourage future engagement).
 
* the ICO has committed to publishing relevant datasets which will
include the relevant information in the near future (and at that point
the information will be in the public domain anyway).
 
* the best use of public resources lies in putting this information
together and publishing it in a consistent and comprehensive format,
in line with planned processes.

 
The process of compiling this information and preparing it for publication
is a lengthy and complicated one that requires the input of a number of
different teams. It would not be an appropriate use of our resources if,
in addition to this, we were duplicating our workload to respond to
individual requests.  I also consider that the delay that would be caused
by reliance on section 22 would not create significant disadvantage.

We have therefore decided to withhold the information within this part of
your request as the public interest in withholding this information at
present outweighs the public interest in providing it.

Review Procedure

If you are dissatisfied with this response and wish to request a review of
our decision or make a complaint about how your request has been handled
you should write to the Information Access Team at the address below or
e-mail [1][ICO request email].
 
Your request for internal review should be submitted to us within 40
working days of receipt by you of this response.  Any such request
received after this time will only be considered at the discretion of the
Commissioner.
 
If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right
of appeal to this office in our capacity as the statutory complaint
handler under the legislation.  To make such an application, please write
to our Customer Contact Team at the address given or visit our website if
you wish to make a complaint under either the Freedom of Information Act
or Environmental Information Regulations.
 
A copy of our review procedure can be accessed from our website
[2]here.
 
Yours sincerely
 
Ashley Duffy
Information Access Service Manager
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 01625 545625  F. 01625 524510  [3]ico.org.uk  [4]twitter.com/iconews
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Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Information Commissioner’s Office's handling of my FOI request 'Process for updating datasets and copy of full year data for 2016/17'.

I note, and to a degree empathise with, the respondent's remarks about discouraging engagement through the premature disclosure of case specific information. However, the ICO receives a considerable amount of public money and is the only organisation permitted to uphold UK legislation in this area. There is genuine public interest in being able to see how the Commisioner is able to effectively manage the Office and uphold the regulations in a timely manner.

When I read the pitiful excuse of how their process is " lengthy and complicated.. different teams " I was momentarily transported back to my childhood and reminded of Klunk trying to explain to Dick Dastardly how the whizzo, durp, whistle, spleek was going to help them catch that pigeon, now. The ICO's 2015/16 dataset shows that the ICO "finished" with around sixty cases a day, that's on a par with a small rural GP medical practice. If the ICO has crafted archane systems that prevent it from readily producing a snapshot of the state of its workload then it shouldn't be trying to hide behind portions of section 22. Few publicly traded companies would survive if they cloaked their own performance from their investors and stakeholders.

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

In reviewing this request, I would be grateful if you consider the assertion at the top of the dataset page " "We update these reports each month with the information relating to work completed three months earlier.", so April/May/June 2016 should have concluded/updated concerns from January-March 2016, July/August/September updated to June 2016, October/November/December updated to September 2016 and (at the time of the request) January/February/March 2017 updated to December 2016. As of requesting this review the April 2017 update should have revealed cases to March 2017. That's a dozen failed updates with members of the public intentionally misinformed.

The review should also consider that I was directed to this dataset page by ICO staff when originally trying to find timely aggregated performance pie-charts (which were a lot more readable and side-stepped the issues around premature disclosure/identification). A properly structured case management system should be allow such diagrams to be extracted in a few seconds (at most). You may find the details of that request, and the direction to access the dataset, here:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/u...

Whilst I'm sure you ought to consider this review without considering the applicant's motive, I will note that I became interested in the ICO's performance when I was under-billed by Scottish Power. Following insane rounds of "Computer say no" (trying to get an accurate residential Final bill, with the right amount and not marked Estimated) I resorted to making a Subject Access Request on 7 June 2016 and as the months rolled on became more and more frustrated with the lack of help from the ICO's helpline, poor case management and impenetrable complaints procedure. 343 days later my request has still not been fulfilled (although I was able to identify an octogenarian retired boat repairer some 300 miles away from my home from the information Scottish Power leaked to me). With the advent of the ICO's dataset I was intrigued to see how the case was progressing, and if I'd ever have an explanation of how Scottish Power set two debt collectors to repeatedly try to enforce the same claimed "final" under-billed amount to my place of work.

Yours faithfully,

D Morris

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.

 

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

 

Our newsletter

Details of how to sign up for our monthly e-newsletter can be found at
[2]http://www.ico.org.uk/tools_and_resource...

 

Twitter

Find us on Twitter at [3]http://www.twitter.com/ICOnews

 

The ICO's mission is to uphold information rights in the public interest.
To find out more about our work please visit our website, or subscribe to
our e-newsletter at ico.org.uk/newsletter.

If you are not the intended recipient of this email (and any attachment),
please inform the sender by return email and destroy all copies without
passing to any third parties.

If you'd like us to communicate with you in a particular way please do let
us know, or for more information about things to consider when
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Information Commissioner's Office

6 June 2017

 

Case Reference Number RCC0682029

 

Dear D Morris

Thank you for your correspondence received 17 May 2017. 
 
This correspondence will now be treated as a request for an internal
review of the response we provided to your recent request for information
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, dealt with under our case
reference IRQ0675927.  
 
We will aim to respond by 15 June 2017 which is 20 working days from the
day after we received your recent correspondence. This is in accordance
with our internal review procedures.
 
Yours sincerely

Ashley Duffy
Information Access Service Manager
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 01625 545625  F. 01625 524510  [1]ico.org.uk  [2]twitter.com/iconews
Please consider the environment before printing this email

The ICO's mission is to uphold information rights in the public interest.
To find out more about our work please visit our website, or subscribe to
our e-newsletter at ico.org.uk/newsletter.

If you are not the intended recipient of this email (and any attachment),
please inform the sender by return email and destroy all copies without
passing to any third parties.

If you'd like us to communicate with you in a particular way please do let
us know, or for more information about things to consider when
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Information Commissioner's Office

15 June 2017

RCC0682029

Dear D Morris

Thank you for your email of 16 May 2017.
 
My name is Helen Ward and I am the Group Manager for Records and
Information Management. I have been asked to carry out this internal
review and have considered your request correspondence to date in doing
so. Further, I manage the Information Access team who manage the proactive
disclosure process.
 
The outcome of this internal review is that I uphold the outcome of the
response provided to you. However, please note that we have since
published the information you requested – the full financial year’s data
from April 2016 – March 2017 is now available to you. Additionally we have
published datasets for April, May, June, July, August and September.  
 
First of all, I apologise unreservedly that we have not updated the
datasets as quickly as we said we would. The purpose of publishing the
datasets is to provide a clear and timely picture of the work that we have
recently completed and I accept that we do not meet that purpose when we
don’t publish them regularly enough.
 
You have referred back to previous performance information, published in
the form of pie charts. Our current casework management system does not
allow us to extract diagrams or charts of data. We can extract raw data
and then manually convert the data into diagrams or charts. I appreciate
that you found those charts useful but they didn’t seem to fully satisfy
the appetite that there was for this information. We were led to proactive
publication because it was clear to us from FOI requests we received, and
queries from the media and customers that there was an ongoing interest in
having this information routinely available in as much detail as possible.
 
However, doing this is not quick work. We are very mindful of all of our
obligations – one of which is not to publish anything we shouldn’t. As you
will have seen from the Privacy Impact Assessment we provided to you, we
have been careful in our consideration of this publication and when we
extract the dataset from the casework system, there is then a manual task
to do to remove any references that we should not publish. As this process
matures, we are getting better at doing it more quickly. 
 
I can assure you that we are working hard to get the publications up to
date and ensure that this is an embedded process. Having discussed this
with my team, we are committed to publishing the datasets to April 2017 by
the end of July. We will then be on target to do the regular monthly
updates as described in the statement on the datasets page.
 
You mention why you became interested in our performance data – I should
emphasise that the datasets reflect details of cases that have been
completed so it wouldn’t show you a snapshot of where an open case is up
to in the casework process. You should be able to get that information
easily from your case officer or by ringing our helpline if the case has
not yet been allocated.
 
Whilst I recognise that you are unlikely to be entirely satisfied by this
response, I hope it provides you with some assurance that we are committed
to the timely proactive publication of this information and that we
recognise the value in us doing so.
 
Thank you for your continued interest in our work.

Yours sincerely

Helen Ward
Group Manager, Records and Information Management

If you remain dissatisfied with the outcome of this review you may make
a complaint to the ICO in our role as the regulator. Please follow this
link for details about how to do this - [1]https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.

 
The ICO's mission is to uphold information rights in the public interest.
To find out more about our work please visit our website, or subscribe to
our e-newsletter at ico.org.uk/newsletter.

If you are not the intended recipient of this email (and any attachment),
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us know, or for more information about things to consider when
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