No more Openness at the Cabinet Office
It appears that the concept of Openness at the Cabinet Office has vanished from sight.
The previous contact details for submitting a Freedom of Information Act request, either to the Cabinet Office or to the Prime Minister at Number 10 Downing Street:
Openness Team
Cabinet Office
Room 4.45
Admiralty Arch
The Mall
London SW1A 2WHEmail: Openness.Team@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk
seems to have vanished.
Our reminder email today, regarding this Freedom of Information Act request "Cabinet Office - missing RIPA Commissioner Annual Reports for 2005" which has not been replied to after the statutory 20 working days (even allowing for the Christmas and New Year public holidays) came back with this AutoReply:
Subject: Out of Office AutoReply:
From: Openness.Team@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.ukThis mailbox is no longer in use. This message has not been forwarded and has been deleted.
[...]
Surely the old email address should be forwarding messages to the new one, for a reasonable period of time ? The Out of Office reply message could easily have included the new contact details.
There is now a "secret" Cabinet Office Freedom of Information Act contact details web page dated 16/01/2007:
FOI Team
Cabinet Office
Room 118
70 Whitehall
London SW1A 2AS
However, this is not linked to from the Cabinet Office Home page, or the Contacts Us, or the Site Map or the FOI Publications Scheme pages. You can only find this page after some research using the the website's search facility.
Is this a deliberate ploy to make it more difficult for the public to submit Freedom of Information Act requests ?
Is this how the "Transformation of UK Government IT" is meant to work ?
Comments
Ah yes, the mythical Room 118...
Posted by: Chuck Unsworth | January 25, 2007 4:46 PM
The Cabinet Office website seems to have been updated on Friday, and it does now provide links to the Freedom of Information Act team contact details, from all the places it did not do so before i.e. the Cabinet Office Home page, the Contacts Us, the Site Map and the FOI Publications Scheme pages.
Posted by: wtwu | January 28, 2007 1:21 PM
So has the Cabinet Office actually added the FoI links in response to this blog?
I'm sure they are watching us watching them watching us?
Posted by: Freeman | February 5, 2007 3:59 PM
@ Freeman - they probably did that as a result of the email reminder about the FOIA request after 20 working days, which mentioned the problem, rather than by reading this blog.
Posted by: wtwu | February 5, 2007 5:44 PM