UK Freedom of Information Act request suggestions and tracking

| 11 Comments | 2 TrackBacks

We are looking for suggestions for suitable Freedom of Information Act 2000 requests, which we intend to track the progress of and to comment on the quality of the final outcome of each request, here on this web log.

N.B. don't forget the long list of possible exemptions

Email us your suggestions, or comment here.

2 TrackBacks

Will the "Yes Minister" culture of the civil service frustrate the alleged political aims of the Chancellor Lord Falconer, overseeing the Department of Constitutional Affairs, with respect to the deliberatly delayed Freedom of Information Act 2000, whi... Read More

``Spy.org.uk recently asked for suggestions for requests for information to make under the Freedom of Information Act(FoIA). They will take some of the requests they receive and ask for the information via the FoIA procedures and then track the pr... Read More

11 Comments

Let's see the basis on which the e-Envoy's office bought off UKOnline for the rights to use ukonline.gov.uk.

Hmmm. How about the following requests:

  • to find out what biometric technologies the government is considering for their identity cards, who is supplying them, and what the false positive and false negative rates for the biometric scans are.
  • to find out precisely how the government intends to prevent people obtaining multiple identities on the new ID card system.
  • to find out what legal advice the government had regarding the compatibility of the ID cards bill (insert other bills of interest here too, e.g. the CCA) and the ECHR.
  • to find out what sources the government uses for its claims that roughly 1/3 of terrorists have used multiple identities.
  • to find out how much information stored on govt databases has been found to be incorrect during auditing. (Might need to ask specifically for each database, e.g. one request for the PNC, one request for DVLA, etc)
  • to find out what procedures are currently in place for auditing the use of RIPA powers.
  • to find out what mechanisms are/will be in place to prevent someone from hoaxing a declaration of an emergency on the part of a cabinet minister under the Civil Contingencies Act.

If we get solid answers to the above I might consider the FoIA to be worth something...

I'd like to know exactly what information was made available to the OECD for the recent educational benchmarking (PISA) study, and how the decision was taken to pull England out of the study

Matt:

"The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an internationally standardised assessment that was jointly developed by participating countries and administered to 15-year-olds in schools."

http://www.pisa.oecd.org

So the UK seems to have participated in the year 2000 study, but not apparently in the 2003 study ?

When you say "the decision was taken pull England out of the study" do you mean that Northern Ireland is still participating in the 2003 study (and the forthcoming 2006 one) ?

Presumably Charles Clarke was the Minister for Education when this decision was made ?

Is it better to send your FOIA request to the Department of Education or to the Office for National Statistics who were in charge of the project ? Or to both ?

James Hammerton:

"to find out what biometric technologies the government is considering for their identity cards, who is supplying them, and what the false positive and false negative rates for the biometric scans are."

I am not sure that they have actually decided on any of these, hence the plan to request the Office of Gaovernment Commerce Gateway Reviews, which should at least list the aims of the project, and the associated risks and hopefully the architecture of the system that is planned.

Even the use of a "fingerprint" could mean a whole range of different technological systems with vastly different costs - one thumbprint or a full set of 10 digits with palm prints, as per the Criminal Records system ?

The Government is claiming not to be in the formal Procurement phase yet, and they have let the contract for a "Development Partner" i.e. PA Consulting, so perhaps they cannot now weasel out with the "commercial confidentiality" excuse.

Possible exemptions:
Section 35: Formulation Of Government Policy
Section 36: Prejudice to Effective Conduct of Public Affairs
Section 43: Commercial Interests

"to find out precisely how the government intends to prevent people obtaining multiple identities on the new ID card system."

By insisting on the use of multiple Biometric Identifiers of course, to provide an "unforgeable" "gold standard" of identification, of course ... details left vague

Possible exemptions:
Section 35: Formulation Of Government Policy
Section 36: Prejudice to Effective Conduct of Public Affairs
Section 43: Commercial Interests

"to find out what legal advice the government had regarding the compatibility of the ID cards bill (insert other bills of interest here too, e.g. the CCA) and the ECHR."

If the Guardian etc. manage to get the legal advice from the Attorney General on the legality of the Iraq War released, then this one might also be revealed, but I suspect that all purely legal advice will remain hidden.

Possible exemptions:
Section 35: Formulation Of Government Policy
Section 36: Prejudice to Effective Conduct of Public Affairs
Section 42: Legal Professional Privilege

"to find out what sources the government uses for its claims that roughly 1/3 of terrorists have used multiple identities."

The original claim was that "the Security Service" MI5 was the source for this, made before the Home Affairs Committee.

Nobody has yet got answer from David Blunkett, Des Browne, Peter Hain, Charles Clarke etc. about wether this figure refers to multiple British identities, which is all that even a perfect UK ID card scheme could possibly affect.

Multiple identies is not the same as multiple false identities (many people have legal dual nationality).

Even taken at face value, the statement says that over two thirds of terrorists (or serious organised criminals) use their real identities anyway.

Possible exemptions:
Section 23: Information Supplied by, or Related to, Bodies Dealing with Security Matters
Section 24: National Security
Section 35: Formulation Of Government Policy
Section 36: Prejudice to Effective Conduct of Public Affairs

"to find out how much information stored on govt databases has been found to be incorrect during auditing. (Might need to ask specifically for each database, e.g. one request for the PNC, one request for DVLA, etc)"

It depends on what you mean by "incorrect". The audit exercise regarding the Criminal Records Bureau, which was given as evidence to the Bichard Inquiry deliberately did not even attempt to look at incorrect Address information, as this was considered to be too difficult, so they only found 5% or so of the records to be innaccurate - still a massive number if applied to the National Identity Register.

The Audit Commission report into Crime Recording published just before Christmas concluded that 60% of Police forces had not met the Home Office standards for data accuracy.

The Police report about the success of Automatic Number Plate Recognition technology noted that up to 40% of the DVLA details were wrong, and were actually getting worse during the 6 month trial of the technology.

This one could take a long time to establish

Possible exemptions:
Section 33: Audit Functions (really for financial auditing)

"to find out what procedures are currently in place for auditing the use of RIPA powers."

Do you mean that you are not totally satisfied with the Annual Reports to the Prime Minister or Parliament by the various Commissioners ?

http://www.spy.org.uk/cgi-bin/commissioners.pl

Possble exemptions:
Section 23: Information Supplied by, or Related to, Bodies Dealing with Security Matters
Section 24: National Security
Section 30: Investigations And Proceedings Conducted By Public Authorities
Section 31: Law Enforcement
Section 40: Personal Information

"to find out what mechanisms are/will be in place to prevent someone from hoaxing a declaration of an emergency on the part of a cabinet minister under the Civil Contingencies Act."

They do not appear to have even thought about hoaxes, or providing a proper audit trail of decisions for a future independent public inquiry.

There are various offences under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act relating to real or imagined biological or chemical "noxious substances" threats and external hoaxes, but there is nothing to prevent an insider mole from exaggerating the seriousness of any threat intelligence, or for a combination of people to reach that conclusion e.g. the "45 minute" WMD claim, or the "dodgy intelligence dossier" based on an old Ph.D candidates thesis found on the internet.

Possible exemptions:
Section 24: National Security
Section 35: Formulation Of Government Policy
Section 36: Prejudice to Effective Conduct of Public Affairs

Lord Flatbush:

In theory the background to the UKOnline website name debacle should now be available, but of course the Office of the E-Envoy is no more, it is now the e-Government Unit

What was so wrong with open.gov.uk anyway ?

Possible exemptions:
Section 43: Commercial Interests

I like your response to my suggestions. It highlights one of the key features of the so-called Freedom of Information Act, namely that the list of exemptions is so broad that the govt can refuse to answer just about anything if it wants to.

E.g. just exactly what is meant by "Prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs"? This is a phrase vague enough to cover just about anything.

Still perhaps if we asked what colour the Information Commissioner's notepaper is we might actually get the answer.

As I said before if we got solid answers to my list I might begin to believe this Act was worth something.

And no I'm not entirely happy with the reports of the Commissioners ;-).

James Hammerton:

"E.g. just exactly what is meant by "Prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs"? This is a phrase vague enough to cover just about anything."

According to the Department for Contstitutional Affairs:

http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/guidance/exsumm/sec36.htm

"Section 36: Prejudice To Effective Conduct Of Public Affairs
Section 36 exempts information whose disclosure would be likely to have any the following effects:

a) prejudice collective Cabinet responsibility;
b) inhibit the free and frank provision of advice and exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation; or
c) prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs.

Key points:

Section 36 can only be used if, in the reasonable view of a "qualified person", disclosure of the requested information would have one of the specified prejudicial effects. For most government departments, this means that a Minister of the Crown must decide that the exemption applies before it can be relied on to refuse a request for information;

Section 36 can only be used if section 35 does not apply to the information;

The application of section 36 is subject to a public interest balance."

However, Lord Falconer has been busy in the media today "promising" (is this legally enforceable ?) that this Ministerial veto over the Information Commissioner (if he chooses to uphold the public interest defence) would only apply in exceptional cases, and that in fact the Cabinet as a collective whole would have to sanction such a veto.

Great, the legislation has given us a recursive definition of "Prejudice to the effective conduct of public" affairs.

Time will tell if Falconer's promises amount to much. Even if they do with the present government, ISTM it would involve relying on a convention being established rather than something that is a legal requirement.

Out of curiosity, what criteria will you be using to decide whether a suggested request gets used or not?


"Out of curiosity, what criteria will you be using to decide whether a suggested request gets used or not?"

Too early to say yet, it depends on how many suggestions there are. Obviously the more detailed and specific the request, the better.

Howevert I do not see this website as ever becoming a free RIPA style Single Point of Contact pre-filtering FOIA requests, and the Friends of the Earth campaign website does a lot to provide a form letter / fax / email Request Generator.

Hopefully people reading the discussions here will be tempted to try out their FOIA rights for themselves, and can pick up tips on what seems to work and what gets rejected.

This is an excellent post and may be one that needs to be followed up to see what happens

A buddy e-mailed this link the other day and I am eagerly anticipating your next write. Keep on on the awesome work.

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About this blog

This United Kingdom based blog has been spawned from Spy Blog, and is meant to provide a place to track our Freedom of Information Act 2000 requests to United Kingdom Government and other Public Authorities.

If you have suggestions for other FOIA requests,  bearing in mind the large list of exemptions, then email them to us, or use the comments facility on this blog, and we will see  what we can do, without you yourself having to come under the direct scrutiny of  "Sir Humphrey Appleby" or his minions.

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WhatDoTheyKnow.com

WhatDoTheyKnow.com - FOIA request submission and publication website from MySociety.org

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Campaign for the Freedom of Information

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Yes, Minister Series 1, Episode 1, "Open Government" First airtime BBC: 25 February 1980

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FOIA Links

Campaign for the Freedom of Information

Office of the Information Commissioner,
who is meant to regulate the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Scottish Information Commissioner,
who similarly regulates the Freedom of Information Act (Scotland) 2002

Information Tribunal - deals with appeals against decisions by the Information Commissioners.

Freedom of Information pages - Department for Constitutional Affairs

Friends of the Earth FOIA Request Generator and links to contact details for Central Government Departments and their Publication Schemes

UK Government Information Asset Register - in theory, this should point you to the correct Government documents, but in practice...well see for yourself.

Access all Information is also logging some FOIA requests

foi.mysociety.org - prototype FOIA request submission, tracking and publication website

Blog Links

Spy Blog

UK Freedom of Information Act Blog - started by Steve Wood, now handed over to Katherine Gundersen

Your Right To Know - Heather Brooke

Informaticopia - Rod Ward

Open Secrets - a blog about freedom of information by BBC journalist Martin Rosenbaum

Panopticon blog - by Timothy Pitt-Payne and Anya Proops. Timothy Pitt-Payne is probably the leading legal expert on the UK's Freedom of Information Act law, often appearing on behlaf of the Information Commissioner's Office at the Information Tribunal.

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  • wtwu: "Out of curiosity, what criteria will you be using to read more
  • James Hammerton: Great, the legislation has given us a recursive definition of read more
  • Watching Them, Watching Us: James Hammerton: "E.g. just exactly what is meant by "Prejudice read more
  • James Hammerton: I like your response to my suggestions. It highlights one read more
  • wtwu: Lord Flatbush: In theory the background to the UKOnline website read more
  • wtwu: James Hammerton: "to find out what biometric technologies the government read more
  • wtwu: Matt: "The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an read more
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  • James Hammerton: Hmmm. How about the following requests: to find out what read more

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