FOI and diaries – long read

Paul Gibbons, aka FOIMan, considers the Commissioner and Tribunal’s treatment of requests for diaries. Paul is a Member of the Examination Board for the Practitioner Certificate in Freedom of Information (www.foiqualification.com)

FOIMan’s latest article for PDP’s Freedom of Information Journal explores how requests for diaries of public officials should be handled.

Paul said, in his blog, A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about FOI and diaries in response to an article in the Guardian. Coincidentally I had just written a piece for PDP on the same subject and I promised to publish it here when it was published.

Here is it, in full. (PDF 4pp)

Thanks to publishers PDP for allowing this which I read in the British Library (hard copy) yesterday (10 January 2019). Very interesting and informative.

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None of our business? Private emails, FOI and lawful interception

an article by Jonathan Baines, Information Governance Office in the Legal and Democratic Services Team at Buckinghamshire County Council, examines the issues surrounding FOI and lawful interception published in Freedom of Information Volume 8 Issue 2 (November/December 2011).

And at that point I come to a thundering full stop. There is no abstract to this article. The two introductory paragraphs could be taken to constitute one (see below) although they aren’t really. This journal is not listed on DeepDyve nor does there appear to be any way of accessing a single article without subscribing to the whole journal for a minimum of a year.

This policy is, to my mind in this day and age, short sighted but then I'm not the publisher trying to make money!

Introductory paragraphs

There was much discussion in the media recently about reports that the Information Commissioner was to investigate the education secretary, Michael Gove, and his close advisers at the Department for Education (the Department). The Department has since denied any impropriety, and has stated that private email was being used to conduct party political rather than government business.

These stories provoke some interesting questions. Firstly, to what extent can information contained in “private emails” be caught by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)? Secondly, to what extent might a deliberate attempt to evade FOIA in this alleged manner be unlawful? Thirdly, to what extent can an employers, or a government department, scrutinise its employees’, or an elected person’s email accounts (especially if those accounts are webmail accounts)?

Interesting!!

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The Freedom of Information (Additional Public Authorities) Order 2008

Hazel's comment:
comes at the beginning!
What follows is a copy of the Statutory Instrument which brings several organisations into the remit of the Freedom of Information Act. I presume that the organisations concerned know that they are now subject to this but do the plebs that might want to take advantage of this by putting a question to any of the bodies listed? [see the list at the end].
I've included all the blurb so that you can see how awkward it is sometimes to find out what is going on.

The Secretary of State, in exercise of the powers conferred by section 4(1) and (6) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000(1), makes the following Order:

Citation and commencement
1.—(1) This Order may be cited as the Freedom of Information (Additional Public Authorities) Order 2008.
(2) This Order shall come into force on 2nd June 2008.

Additional public authorities
2. The bodies listed in the Schedule to this Order shall be added to Part 6 of Schedule 1 to the Freedom of Information Act 2000, at the appropriate place in each case.
Signed by the authority of the Secretary of State
Michael Wills
Minister of State
Ministry of Justice
8th May 2008

Article 2
SCHEDULE
The Big Lottery Fund
The Consumer Council for Water
The Legal Deposit Advisory Panel
The Olympic Lottery Distributor
The TB Advisory Group
The UK Commission for Employment and Skills

ICO criticises health body for FOI failures

via UK Freedom of Information Blog by Katherine Gundersen on 27 March

The Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, has strongly criticised Hounslow Primary Care Trust (PCT) for failing to meet its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI). The PCT failed to respond adequately to FOI requests, refused to provide all the relevant documents to the requester, missed several key deadlines for responding to both the requester and the Information Commissioner, and has committed numerous breaches of the Act.

Full press release

See also: PCT threatened with court over fight for information Health Service Journal
Watchdog hits out at NHS trust Financial Times

Hazel's comment:
Basically there's not much to say here, is there? Yet another public sector organisation has "got it wrong".