A good question, but at least this implies a willingness to provide some or all of the information requested, rather than a blanket refusal.
Would it be reasonable to ask for the "official meeting diaries, agendas of meetings, travel and entertainment expenses" from the "Entitlement Card consultation" phase back in 2002 ? The Freedom of Information Act 2000 does allow for past records to be published as well as current ones.
So far as we can remember, Stephen Harrison was involved back in 2002, but Katherine Courtney was not appointed until 2003 and the post of Head of Marketing was not advertised until October 2004, so perhaps this functionary has not yet taken up his or her post yet.
Any suggestions from those of you who are interested or have knowledge of the occurance of meetings which could illuminate the debate on the Government's controversial plans for ID Card and compulsory centralised biometric population register schemes, would be welcome.
The Home Office was one of the two Whitehall Departments which did not or could not, give out figures on how many FOIA requests they have received, out of the 900 requests in the first week reported in the Financial Times. Although this request was not sent in during the first week of January, we will indulge in our usual Home Office kremlinology, to speculate as to whether or not the reference number of this correspondence gives any clues as to how many FOIA requests the Home Office might be getting.
"Reference: 050126IDCFOI/MI/001/5"
There is the reference to "IDC" (ID Cards ?) and "FOI" (presumably Freedom of Information ?). Does "001/5" mean January 2005 or the first such request in the year 2005 or something else ?
The letter from the Home Office, is dated 26th January, postmarked 27th January, and was received on the 29th January 2005 i.e. after only 2 working days, plus postal mail delays - the quickest response to one of our FOIA requasts so far:
N.B. all the telephone numbers etc on this Home Office letterhead are already available on their website. It is unclear if the Identity Cards Programme Team will be moving to the Home Office's new building at 2 Marsham Street soon.
Home Office Identity Cards Programme 3rd Floor, Allington Towers, 19 Allington Street, London SW1E 5EB Telephone: 0870 000 1585 Fax: 020 7273 2065 Textphone: 020 7273 3476 E-mail: identitycards@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk Web Site: www.homeoffice.gov.uk address:
Reference: 050126IDCFOI/MI/001/5
26 January 2005
Dear Mr. XXX
Thank you for your email of 24 January in which you request the official meeting
diaries, agendas of meetings, travel and entertainment expenses involving Katherine
Courtney, Stephen Harrison. and the post of Head of Marketing. Your request will be
handled in accordance with the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as an
information request.In order to help us ensure that we provide you with the right information, I would
be grateful if you could clarify your request, as required by the Act. Please can you state
over what time period you are seeking this information.Upon receipt of this informationwe will be in a position to process your request
further. We will aim to send a substantive reply to your request within twenty working
days of our receipt of that further information. I look forward to hearing from you shortly.Yours sincerely
AAA BBB
Identity Cards Programme Team
BUILDING A SAFE, JUST AND TOLERANT SOCIETY
Be cautious before reply.
If you get the dates slightly out, then they could withhold on the basis that they did not have the dates you specified, and not tell you that this has happened.
Very 'Yes, Minister'!
It seems like a good stalling move on their part. I agree that getting the date range wrong might allow them to easily wriggle out of request in bad faith. I would suggest the simple option is to make the date as broad as possible while allowing the number of returned results to be answerable.
Failing that, you could naturally ask different people to submit the same FOIA requesting different date ranges and then collate the answer: 1 request for 20 months might allow them to say that there are too many documents to service the request. It would seem more difficult to reject 20 seperate requestsby seperate people for only 1 month each without acting in bad faith.
Watching this one with interest...
Such a strategy could fall foul of :
http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00036--c.htm#14
"Vexatious or repeated requests.
14. - (1) Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the request is vexatious.
(2) Where a public authority has previously complied with a request for information which was made by any person, it is not obliged to comply with a subsequent identical or substantially similar request from that person unless a reasonable interval has elapsed between compliance with the previous request and the making of the current request."
In theory, their duty to help does allow a dialogue to help refine an FOIA request to a reasonable level of detail or expense.
We are trying to make sense of what to ask for from the estimated 5000 documents which apparently relate to our " rel="nofollow">FOIA request to the Office for National Statistics regarding the Citizen Information Project