Re : FOI #96800
Dear UK Border Agency,
Re : FOI #96800
In your covering letter to my above FOI request (Ref : 21171/1511) http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ti... you explained that Date of Birth had been omitted because of data protection. Would it be possible for you to provide age instead? Would it also be possible to modify the extract to include the Sponsor ID code? Does the extract include established staff in the ICT figures? Would it be possible to modify the extract to differentiate COS which apply to established staff (or any other categories you use) from new COS applicants?
I would be grateful if you could include the above extra data and re run the extract for the period 01/01/2011 through to 31/12/2011.
Yours faithfully,
S. Lassam
Dear UK Border Agency,
On re reading my request I referred to established staff rather than extensions for ICT staff, I have corrected the request below.
In your covering letter to my above FOI request (Ref : 21171/1511) http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ti... you explained that Date of Birth had been omitted because of data protection. Would it be possible for you to provide age instead? Would it also be possible to modify the extract to include the Sponsor ID code? Does the extract include extensions for ICT staff in the ICT figures? Would it be possible to modify the extract to differentiate COS which apply to extensions for ICT staff (or any other categories you use) from new COS applicants within ICTs?
I would be grateful if you could include the above extra data and re run the extract for the period 01/01/2011 through to 31/12/2011.
Yours faithfully,
S. Lassam
Dear S. Lassam
Thank you for your enquiry of 1 February. This falls to be dealt with
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
I am currently in the process of establishing the information we hold and
will contact you shortly.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Level 5
Vulcan House, Steel
Millsands
Sheffield
Dear S Lassam
Following your enquiry of 1 February, I have been in the process of
establishing the information we hold.
Your request falls to be dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act
2000. Section 1(3) of the Freedom of Information Act provides that a
public authority need not comply with a request for information unless any
further information reasonably required to identify and locate the
information is supplied. I am unclear about the exact scope of the
information in which you are interested. To ensure that we provide you
with the right information, could you please clarify your request, so that
we can process your request.
Please see the information below.
You requested the following information to be added to the statistical
information we disclosed previously (Ref : 21171/1511).
1) Would it be possible for you to provide age instead?
The information is not readily available from our management information
systems. We are therefore not able to provide this information.
2) Would it also be possible to modify the extract to include the
Sponsor ID code?
I am currently unclear about the exact scope of the information you
require. We do not provide Sponsors with a sponsor ID code. Can you please
clarify your requirements?
3) Does the extract include extensions for ICT staff in the ICT
figures? Would
it be possible to modify the extract to differentiate COS
which
apply to extensions for ICT staff (or any other categories you
use)
from new COS applicants within ICTs?
We cannot differentiate between Intra Company Transfer (ICT) data and
extensions as this information is not readily available from our
management systems. We are therefore unable to provide this information.
Can you please clarify question 2. We are unable to provide you with
information in response to questions 1 and 3.
When you provide this information we will aim to send you a full response
to your request within twenty working days of its receipt. I look forward
to hearing from you shortly. However, please note that if I do not receive
appropriate clarification of your request within three months from the
date of this letter, I will consider this request to be closed.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Level 5
Vulcan House, Steel
Millsands
Sheffield
From: NEYH, Freedom of Information
Sent: 02 February 2012 12:41
To: '[FOI #104304 email]'
Subject: Freedom of Information Request - Ref. 21555/1526
Dear S. Lassam
Thank you for your enquiry of 1 February. This falls to be dealt with
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
I am currently in the process of establishing the information we hold and
will contact you shortly.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Level 5
Vulcan House, Steel
Millsands
Sheffield
Dear NEYH, Freedom of Information,
Age is a calculated value, as you have already provided me with the Date COS Assigned and you have the Date of Birth, to provide the Age at the time the COS was assigned you subtract the dates and take the integer value. It is very easy to do in Excel or you could do the calculation before you create the excel file. Would you be able to do that extra step to calculate the age for me?
When a sponsor creates a certificate of sponsorship the id code of the sponsor must be held on the COS record otherwise the next time the sponsor logged on to manage their COS records the system would not be able to find the COS records they had created. For grouping and filtering in excel I require this sponsor id code which will be held on the COS data record within you system.
Yours sincerely,
S. Lassam
Dear Mr Lassam
Thank you for your email of 10 February.
I am currently in the process of establishing the information we hold and will contact you shortly.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Level 5
Vulcan House, Steel
Millsands
Sheffield
Dear Mr Lassam
Following my email of 14 February, I have been in the process of establishing whether we can provide an update of the data table we released previously (FOI 21171/1511) by including a breakdown by age. We believe that we have identified a way of extracting the information from our systems.
You also requested the following information:
"When a sponsor creates a certificate of sponsorship the id code of the sponsor must be held on the COS record otherwise the next time the sponsor logged on to manage their COS records the system would not be able to find the COS records they had created."
As outlined in my email of 9 February, I am currently unclear about the exact information you require and have attached our website link for more information on how to process sponsor applications which may be of help to identify the information you require.
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/busine...
A User ID is provided to the applicant at the time of registration allowing the sponsor to access the Sponsor Management System. Can you please confirm whether you are referring to the User ID?
Please note that this information is information provided in confidence and would not be disclosable under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Your request falls to be dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Section 1(3) of the Freedom of Information Act provides that a public authority need not comply with a request for information unless any further information reasonably required to identify and locate the information is supplied.
When you provide this information we will aim to send you a full response to your request within twenty working days of its receipt. I look forward to hearing from you shortly. However, please note that if I do not
Receive appropriate clarification of your request within three months from the date of this letter, I will consider this request to be closed.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Level 5
Vulcan House, Steel
Millsands
Sheffield
Dear NEYH, Freedom of Information,
Thank you for finding a way to extract the age at the time the COS was assigned. For the other field I think it would probably be the sponsor id rather than a user id which a sponsor admin user would use to log onto the sponsor management system. If it is problematic including the actual sponsor id in the output would it be possible to encode it so that it bears no relation to the original code but will still be of use for grouping and filtering in excel? You could for example add a fixed value to the sponsor id code and then multiply it to create a new value in the output which would work for such grouping and filtering purposes.
Yours sincerely,
S. Lassam
Dear Mr Lassam
In response to your email of 27 February, I can confirm that we will be able to provide a breakdown by 'Age' under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, however, I am still unclear about the exact information you require regarding the "ID code".
Before a migrant can apply to come to, or remain in the UK to work or study, they must have a sponsor. The sponsor must apply for a sponsor licence in order to employ, or provide education to a migrant in the UK. We issue successful sponsors with a sponsor licence and you may be referring to the unique sponsor licence reference number?
I can confirm that we would not disclose this information as we hold this information in confidence. Although you can request this information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, in this instance, we would not be able to disclose it to you.
The below website link may hold information of interest to you?
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/user/peter...
Can you please confirm that you wish to receive part one of your request - breakdown by age?
When you provide this information we will aim to send you a full response to your request within twenty working days of its receipt. I look forward to hearing from you shortly. However, please note that if I do not receive appropriate clarification of your request within three months from the date of this letter, I will consider this request to be closed.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Level 5
Vulcan House, Steel
Millsands
Sheffield
Dear NEYH, Freedom of Information,
Thank you for the link it looks quite useful. As you cannot provide the sponsor licence reference number or encode it, please could you provide part one of my request with the age information.
Yours sincerely,
S. Lassam
Dear Mr Lassam
Your request for information falls to be dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and we will endeavour to respond within 20 working days.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Level 5
Vulcan House, Steel
Millsands
Sheffield
Dear S Lassam
Please see the attached response and separately attached data table
following your request for information.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Vulcan House Steel
PO Box 3468
Sheffield
S3 8WA
Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.
Dear NEYH, Freedom of Information,
Thank you for providing the additional data. In your covering letter you pointed out that data entry errors by sponsors may show as inflated values and I can see that there are some extreme values in the data you have provided. You also mentioned that this data is corrected at a later stage. Please accept my apologies for not realising this earlier as you did mention this problem in responding to my request in January. However, it seems logical to work with this corrected data, therefore would it be possible to rerun this request again against the corrected data found at the Leave to Remain/Visa stage?
Yours sincerely,
S. Lassam
Dear Mr Lassam
Thank you for your enquiry of 15 March.
We are currently in the process of considering your request for information and will contact you shortly.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Vulcan House Steel
PO Box 3468
Sheffield
S3 8WA
Dear Mr Lassam
Following your request for information of 15 March, I have been in the process of establishing whether we can provide the requested information.
I can confirm that we are unable to extract the requested breakdown from our information management systems at Leave to Remain (LTR) and at Leave to Enter (LTE) stage as requested.
At LTR stage, salary data errors are picked up by case workers when considering applications. Although any discrepancies are recorded at this point, the information is not updated on the Sponsor Management System. We would have to manually search and cross-reference all relevant records to obtain this information which would exceed the cost limit.
At LTE stage, Entry Clearance Officers at British missions overseas record the salary when they calculate the number of points for each application. To extract this information from all the posts would breach the cost limit.
We are therefore unable to provide the requested information within cost.
Your request has been handled routinely in this instance. However, if you like to receive a formal response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 we are happy to provide this.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Vulcan House Steel
PO Box 3468
Sheffield
S3 8WA
Dear NEYH, Freedom of Information,
Clearly any extract that would entail a large manual cross referencing would be prohibitively expensive. However, if we limit my request to electronically held data I believe you should be able to provide the information I have requested within the cost constraints which are applicable.
If case workers validate salaries at the LTR/LTE stage and they record salary discrepancies at that time but not onto the Sponsor Management System what is the name of the system they use to record this information against?
With respect to this corrected data recorded by case workers, would you not be able to run the above extract against this system in the same way as you have already done against the less accurate data held on the sponsor management system? Whilst this system may not hold all of the same data items you extracted for me from the sponsor management system it should hold most of them.
Finally are all COS records validated by case workers?
Yours sincerely,
S. Lassam
Dear Mr Lassam
Thank you for your email of 28 March.
As outlined in my email of 28 March, we are unable to extract the requested breakdown from our information management systems as it will exceed the cost limit. We cannot provide revised data in line with your request.
Information is recorded for internal use primarily. For Leave to Remain applications, case workers record information on the CID database.
I refer you back to my original email which gives an explanation of the two different systems.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Vulcan House Steel
PO Box 3468
Sheffield
S3 8WA
Dear NEYH, Freedom of Information,
Many thanks for the information already supplied. Nb. What is the CID database you mention?
Yours sincerely,
S. Lassam
Dear Mr Lassam
Thank you for your enquiry of 1 April.
I can confirm that the UK Border Agency has a Case Information Database (CID) which case owners use to record decisions and key actions.
Kind Regards
Daniela Walker
UK Border Agency
Vulcan House Steel
PO Box 3468
Sheffield
S3 8WA
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