An email from the Office of Government Commerce:
Subject: Freedom of Information Act request ref 92247
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:20:25 -0000
From: "yyy" yyy @ ogc.gsi.gov.uk
To: xxx @ xxxDear Mr xxx,
Thank you for your request for information dated 1 January 2005, received by OGC on 4 January 2005.
You asked for the information requested to be supplied by 21st January.
This is to let you know that we will be unable to meet your deadline.
We will contact you if we are unable to respond within the 20 working days set out in the Freedom of Information Act.
With regards
yyy
Head of Information Management
Office of Government Commerce
Rosebery Court
St Andrews Business Park
Norwich NR7 0HS, UKTel: +44 (0) 1603 nnnnnn
Fax: +44 (0) 1603 nnnnnnhttp://www.ogc.gov.uk
"yyy" has the same name as can be found in the Microsoft Word properties of the onsite documents describing the OGS's Publication Scheme.
The 21st January deadline was so that the information could be public before the House of Commons Committee stage is completed on Thursday 27th January 2005.
This FOIA request is for specific reports, which can probably be found within a few seconds by the OGC staff on their intranet or the Governmnet's own Knowledge Network.
Has the Office of Government Commerce really had over 90,000 FOIA requests, or is the reference number 92247 some sort of subtle code ?
Does the wording of the reply imply that they will likely manage to comply within 20 working days i.e. by Tuesday 2nd of February ?
The Office of Government Commerce must get some kudos for
a) having an autoresponder on their email system,
b) for having replied with a personalised reply by email after only 11 working days
"Has the Office of Government Commerce really had over 90,000 FOIA requests, or is the reference number 92247 some sort of subtle code ?"
I find it astounding that you can post such a ludicrously paranoid statement on what is basically a sound website. Or am I missing a joke here somewhere?
Yours in amazement.
steve
Paranoid ? Perhaps you are not familiar with the parent weblog Spy Blog ?
8-)
Asking questions about the reference numbering scheme in any replies from a Government department is not being paranoid.
The FOIA is very new, and nobody knows if they are being flooded with thousands of requests or not. If they are, this may be apparent from their reply reference number scheme, and might excuse or explain the time it takes them to reply.
Alternatively the reference number could just be the same as is used for any other correspondence from the department, or there could be a regional coding, or sub-departmental coding, or a specific Freedom of Information Act reply coding.
Perhaps our next FOIA request to the OGC or someone else's, will make things clearer.
It hardly merits an FOIA request asking about the reply reference coding system being used, does it ?
I will admit I'm not familiar with the site but neither am I 'black helicopterist'.
In the event of my making a FoI request, all I would be concerned with would be the accuracy & timeliness of the answer. I couldn't give a monkey's as to how many others the relevant Dept/agency/other may have had.
It's obvious which Depts will get the most requests. Surely all that matters is that they deal with them within the law? How many they receive is trivial.
steve
The Department for Constitutional Affairs is promising to publish some sort of FOIA request statistics quarterly.
Even though the DCA is allegedly coordinating advice on the less straightforward FOIA requests, they do not yet seem to have any plans for a centralised register of requests which you could inspect via a website search engine ,to see if the information you are after has already been requested sucessfully or already been exempted. e.g. the dozens of requests from the media etc. for the legal advice about the war on Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
How the estimated 100,000 public bodies other than Central Governmentt Departments deal with FOIA requests, will no doubt be a bit more chaotic.
Try your own FOIA request, and see how you get on.