The Fine Art of Colouring In

When you ask for information under FOI, sometimes details have to be held back. What's reasonable, and how should it be done?

On 5 February this year, a requester called Nick Wintour wrote to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, via the What Do They Know website. He wanted to know the cost of the winning tender for a promotional video the service had commissioned, along with a breakdown of the costs and a copy of the tender document.

Their response was provided almost a month late, on 15 April. The video, he was told, cost £11,370 but the details could not be provided for reasons of commercial interest; and he was given, as requested, a copy of the tender document.

It was 50 pages long.

Most of the pages were blacked out - 39 pages in their entirety.

It's quite frustrating to receive a response like this. But is it justified? And how do you do it?

Marker Time

There are two kinds of FOI enquiries which take up a lot of time. One is where an exemption has to be claimed, which requires analysis, argument and careful judgement. That's often hard work, but it's usually interesting.

But there are other enquiries where most of the information is provided, but some needs to be withheld. And that means one thing.

It's chunky black marker time.

Redacting bits of information from a document is laborious and time consuming. It usually involves reading through the paperwork very carefully and obscuring details, usually with a black marker - what my counterparts in the University of Edinburgh used to call 'colouring in'.

It takes ages, after a while the words swim confusingly in front of your eyes, and if you're sitting in a small room, you will find yourself getting high from the marker fumes (some people see this as one of the perks of the job; I couldn't possibly comment).

Getting it right, in these circumstances, is difficult. And yet, it's also essential.

Traps for the unwary

(If you're an FOI requester, sorry about this bit, it's for FOI practitioners and it won't help you - the section you want comes next)

First up, have a big supply of black chunky markers and discard each one the moment it begins to give out: your marking needs to be black, not gray.

Second, don't send the requester a scan of the document: the light from a scanner can often reveal the underlying text. You may end up giving away more than you intended. Photocopy the marked document, and send a scan of the copy.

Thirdly, even blanked out details can be useful. If you're blanking out the names of Professor Hu and Professor Csikszentmihalyi in a document, it won't be too difficult for the requester to figure out who Professor XX is. Try and randomise your blanking.

Fourthly, don't use correction fluid (Tippex, Snopake etc). This can be scraped away to show what's underneath.

Finally, if you want to redact details from an electronic document, do it properly. Don't just put a layer of black boxes on pages of a PDF. Use proper redaction software (such as Adobe Acrobat) and if you have a Word Document with comments turned on, print it to PDF and send this.

What not to redact

Bearing in mind the tediousness of redaction, it's not surprising that FOI officers err on the side of caution - it's easier to blank a whole page than individual words, and there's less chance of missing something. You don't have much time to make decisions, so your process is likely to follow a simple rule: if in doubt, blank it out.

For this reason, if you think the information in your document has been wrongly redacted, don't hesitate to request a review or repeal.

Many organizations prefer to withhold complete documents rather than produce a redacted one, but very often most of the document can be provided with just some withheld. But what can you reasonably expect to be withheld?

The video contract mentioned above is a good example, and it's actually been properly done - each page is marked with the relevant exemption to show why it was withheld. This is good practice - often you get pages blacked out without reasons given.

In the contract, some redactions are very justifiable. It includes details on the personnel, their backgrounds and experience. Unless the company are using an Oscar-winning director, or inexperienced interns, there's no reason for you to have their personal details. It's not important. (Personal data is one of the most redacted items. Since most FOI officers also work in data protection, they're particularly cautious about this. In the case of animal research, withholding a person's name may protect them from injury.)

Secondly, information about the company's pricing is probably correctly withheld: it's specialist information of use to competitors and suppliers.

Not so clear is why the company's methodology is secret: making a video is a fairly straightforward process and there's not a great deal of room for different methods. Besides, the results would be plainly seen in the end product. I think someone's been overcautious here.

One particularly bad example of redaction happened to Irish journalist Gerard Cunningham (@faduda on Twitter). He asked for data on the government's Jobbridge scheme which allows companies to take on unpaid interns in receipt of social welfare benefits. The relevant department replied, but refused to disclose the company ID numbers - they said this would allow someone to log on and access the company data. He didn't mind, but he wanted to be able to match companies to jobs they were offering. He suggested they use a simple algorithm to replace the real number with a new one. They refused, saying they were not required to create new information. But of course this isn't creating information, it's obscuring it, in exactly the way you do with a black marker.

If you get a redacted document in response to an enquiry, it's difficult to avoid the feeling that the small amount of information blacked out is exactly the vital information you need. Sometimes it is - but sometimes even though it isn't, it just stares at you, taunting you. The chances are that it's been correctly withheld. But you should certainly been given reasons for the redaction and you should be prepared to challenge any you feel are not justified.

What Do We Know Now? - April 2013

Some recent queries answered on the What Do They Know website:

The Police Service of Northern Ireland cannot say how many referrals it has from the Central Investigation Service of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. It would take 3,600 hours to find out.

Body Cameras are not worn in any capacity in Banbridge District Council.

Personal statements are not used to determine entry to Medicine courses in Queen's University Belfast, but they may be used as evidence of mitigating or extenuating circumstances.

The following stories were featured on the @FOIreland twitter account:

The PSNI say there are around 1099 people on the sex offenders register in Northern Ireland, but they don't have a record of how many re-offend. They also reveal that Tasers were used 630 times in the last five years, but it would take too long to work out details of age or ethnicity of those tasered.

Finally, the Department for Employment and Learning revealed the names of 215 organisations and businesses who had employed people using the Youth Employment Service over the past five years. The list includes ASDA, Barnardos, Carrickfergus Borough Council, Halfords, Jollyes Pet Shop, McDonalds, Premier Inn, Sacred Heart Primary School, Sinn Fein, and Subway.

25 Things We Know Now about Northern Ireland

The website What Do They Know allows people to send Freedom of  Information requests direct, online, to public authorities. Here is a selection of things we know now about Northern Ireland, based on recent requests using What Do They Know.

1. The  Northern Ireland  Civil  Service does  not  have  a  policy  on people  in  a  close  personal  relationship  working  together.
2. Craigavon Borough Council asks such staff to declare such relationships, but does not record them despite this being proposed as a policy in a report highly critical of the council.
3. The Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland has a policy – apparently – of neither confirming nor denying whether individuals identified in their investigations are police informants. But if such a policy exists, it is not actually written down.
4. Newry and Mourne District Council (‘SAVE PAPER! PLEASE THINK BEFORE YOU PRINT!’) have 3-4 Lever Arch files of material on the naming of a playground after hunger striker Raymond McCreesh … which they printed out and sent to the requester.
5. In the last financial year, the Northern Ireland Policing Board had 22,623 words translated into Irish, and only 32 words into Ulster Scots.
6. Northern Ireland uses around 246 million carrier bags a year. The Department of the Environment’s levy on carrier bags is expected to raise £2.3 million in a year.
7. The Police Service of Northern Ireland had arrested 195 and charged 164 in connection with flag protests by 20 February.
8. Northern Ireland Housing Executive tenants are not specifically prohibited from flying flags on their homes.
9. Belfast City Council did not charge the company managing the Christmas Market in City Hall any fee when they extended it by three days, to make up for the impact of flag protests on traders. They did this because they believed it would attract people back into the city centre.
10. The Council considers it would take 24 hours of staff time to find the names of all the companies approached since 2006 to tender for developing its website.
11. Peter Tallack, a dog expert in the case of the ‘pit-bull type’ dog Lennox, which was put down last year by Belfast City Council, was paid a total of £10,598.57 in respect of training, court appearances, dog examinations and travel.
12. Banbridge Borough Council have still not responded to a request from last November about dog fouling statistics.
13. Belfast Education and Library Board has still not replied to a query about construction projects.
14. Lisburn City Council has two non-white employees, out of 525.
15. Civil Service departments spend quite a lot of money on media monitoring, from the Department of Social Development which spent £7,340.43, to the Department of Education which spent £15,884.88. The Department of Justice, however, was way out of line: it spent £60,667.
16. In 2012, Queen’s University Belfast made 412 offers to students for its 262 places in Medicine.
17. The University has a scoring system for interviews for its dentistry courses. However it believes it is not in the public interest to disclose how it works. Definitely not.
18. The Deputy Chief Constable of Northern Ireland does NOT have a superinjunction of any kind.
19. The Northern Health and Social Care Trust has paid out more than £8 million in legal settlements for clinical negligence over the past 5 years.
20. On 27 December last, in Accident and Emergency at Causeway Hospital, between 5.30pm and midnight, the average time before triage was 35 mins, and then 168 minutes before seeing a doctor (Category 4).
21. In the last five years, 5 out of 17 grievances and 6 out of 8 dignity at work cases in the Department of Education were fully or partly upheld.
22. The highest-paid staff member of the University of Ulster is paid nearly fifteen times as much as the lowest-paid.
23. There are 24 children in Belfast primary schools whose home language is Somali.
24. Ballymoney Borough Council has issued just two Fixed Penalty Notices for dog fouling since 2005.
25. Two Health and Social Care Trusts in Northern Ireland have bought toilet rolls direct from a supplier, possibly because of shortages in the regional warehousing.

What do we know now?

A roundup of disclosures from recent FOI requests in Northern Ireland on What Do They Know.com

Here are some things we know now that we didn't know a month ago, from the website What Do They Know?:

Northern Ireland Water paid £7,277 for maintenance and repairs to security and fire alarm repair systems, and thinks creditors should be paid a minimum of £40 when public service debtors fail to settle within 30 days.

Queen's University Belfast revealed that they admitted 26 international students to study Medicine in the last academic year; however, neither the grading system nor the criteria for selection at interview were disclosed, to avoid giving an advantage to students in future interviews. (Unlike, say, the University of Aberdeen, which provided the interview scoring sheet, and the University of Edinburgh, which pointed out that they do not interview applicants for Medicine).

We also know that there are four people who have lifetime Security Passes to the Northern Ireland Assembly, and Antrim Borough Council has spent a mere £13,315 on maintaining its website over the last seven financial years.

A Fragile Flower

How serious are Northern Ireland’s First Minister and Deputy First Minister about transparency? Not very, it seems. To take 320 days to answer a request might be a one-off error; but foot-dragging in a number of recent FOI responses suggests the Ministers approach disclosure with all the enthusiasm of a sulky teenager scribbling homework on the way to school – and nobody seems to be doing anything about it.

The long delay to Jeffrey Dudgeon’s request, finally delivered a day before they would have been forced to disclose by a court, was clearly not a case of mere sloppiness, a fact no doubt evident to the Information Commissioner, whose growing exasperation at the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) can be read through the polite lines of repeated Decision Notices:

12 May 2011 – after an internal review was still uncompleted after more than 70 days:

“The Commissioner would also expect a public authority to inform a complainant if the internal review was going to take longer than 20 working days and explain why. The Commissioner would remind the public authority of its obligations in this regard.”

24 May 2011 – a January request was still under consideration by the Minister’s Private Offices. The Office was unable to say when it would be able to respond.

“The Commissioner would … remind OFMDFM that the Act does not provide for such an extension to the statutory time limit. The process of seeking such approval must be completed within the time limits set out in the Act.” 

4 July 2011 – An enquiry from the previous October had resulted in a review for ministerial approval by January, but nothing more was heard until a request from the Commissioner in June, when it was promptly provided.

“The Commissioner notes that this is the third Decision Notice he has issued in three months relating to a failure by OFMDFM to respond to a request. The Commissioner has expressed his concern to OFMDFM and will consider whether further action is necessary.”

26 September 2011 – a July response was still outstanding after two months.

“Prior to this decision the Commissioner has issued three Decision Notices in the past six months which record OFMDFM’s failure to comply with the Act in respect of timescales for response. The Commissioner expects this pattern of non-compliance to be addressed by OFMDFM.”

24 October 2011 – four long-overdue requests. Three were from September the previous year, the other from December.

“Prior to this decision the Information Commissioner has issued at least three decision notices in the previous six months which record the failure of OFMDFM to comply with FOIA in respect of timescales for response. The Information Commissioner expects this pattern of non-compliance to be addressed by OFMDFM.”

(By the standards of decision notices, that’s pretty much steam coming out of the Commissioner’s ears)

12 December 2011 - two months later, another failure to meet the statutory timetable.

"despite agreeing to disclose the financial information OFMDFM did not do so until three months later. The Information Commissioner reminds OFMDFM of its obligations in relation to the statutory time limits in the FOIA."

16 July 2012 – after six months of quiet, the Commissioner feels compelled to raise his voice again, with a request from January was still uncompleted:

“The Commissioner is particularly disappointed that OFMDFM has failed to respond to his correspondence regarding this complaint. The Commissioner considers it important to give public authorities an opportunity to reconsider its handling of the case before issuing a decision notice. Many public authorities take this opportunity to rectify procedural failings, or provide additional explanatory information to the complainant. However that has not happened in this case”

The Commissioner, in such circumstances, is entitled to call upon a public authority to sign an undertaking to improve their behaviour, like this one from the Welsh Assembly. But instead, he again simply “reminds OFMDFM of its obligations in relation to the statutory time limits in the FOIA.”

It’s not just on the Information Commissioner’s website that this can be seen: over at What Do They Know, requesters have been facing the same approach – consistently being told that long overdue enquiries were ‘still under consideration’ – as if they had never heard of the Commissioner.

There’s good evidence that this is not simply incompetence or slack management – in fact, that the culture of the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister is one of resistance to enquiries, and this may well be a product of Northern Ireland’s peculiar politics.

With what Mick Fealty of the Slugger O’Toole website calls the ‘fragile flower defence’, those currently in charge like to claim that the province needs special treatment to defend it: that certain disclosures “could prevent the maturing of the Executive in Northern Ireland” because they would threaten the cohesion of the mandatory coalition government.

The Belfast News Letter, which says the Executive wrote this year to Westminster asked to be allowed, like the government in the South, to charge for requests (which caused an immediate decline in their number there), seems sceptical about this claim, pointing out that the former DUP First Minister, Ian Paisley, criticised what he called ‘lazy journalists’ using FOI after his son’s close business relationship with a developer was revealed using the Act. Interestingly, his Sinn Féin counterpart, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness told the Assembly this year that ‘There is absolutely no doubt that freedom of information allows people to abuse their access to information.’ What this suggests is not a genuine concern for security but rather a grudging approach to transparency.

Finally, in order to find out more, I submitted an FOI request to the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, asking how many requests this year had been overdue and for how long.

Guess what? The response is now overdue.

Ordinary People

One person who has started using Freedom of Information legislation in Northern Ireland to get answers to some issues which concern him is Simon Whittaker, an IT security consultant.

As a regular public transport user, he says, "I see things which aggravate me about the way our publicly funded transport network is run". Observing the difficulties of the Code4Pizza.com project in trying to digitise and publicise timetable information for Translink, which runs the province's public transport network, he formed the opinion that "Translink was quite a closed shop and wasn't really interested in sharing information which it holds". (Note: this may change with the requirements to publish datasets in the Protection of Freedom legislation)

Concerned about security of data in the company's mLink application, which allows users to buy tickets on their mobile phone, he wrote about this in his blog, since it appeared that credit / debit card data was being sent unencrypted. He felt it showed very little thought had been paid to the security of users' data. This now seems to have been resolved.

In March, he wrote to them using What Do They Know.com, asking for details of their internal and external communications relating to security issues. They refused, citing commercial interests (Section 43). I would not expect all this information to be disclosed, since it might (a) reveal commercial secrets of a software supplier, and (b) might reveal a security gap which could be exploited by criminals (this would involve a different exemption). However, knowing that they have taken the issue seriously and have made positive efforts to respond is clearly in the public interest and they really should have provided some of what he requested, with appropriate redactions. He did not pursue it at the time because of other priorities.

On 21 September, he wrote once again through What Do They Know, asking for details of the cost of providing wifi services on the Network. This time he got the information he was looking for: it showed a total setup cost of over £700,000 and annual running costs of a quarter of a million pounds, with the majority going to fitting out the train system; new trains will include wifi as standard. This was picked up within a couple of weeks by a BBC report.

A further enquiry at the beginning of November asked for details of the research which had taken place to assess the likely availability and speed of the service, and to see the Service Level Agreement which had been entered into with the contract. The first part of his question received an answer, but the latter was withheld, once again using the Section 43 exemption. He has asked them to look again at this.

I believe he has good grounds for an appeal, to the Information Commissioner if necessary, though he is hoping to avoid this. "I'm also aware that this costs public money to do and would not undertake this lightly," he told me. Section 43 allows for information to be withheld if its release would damage the commercial interests of the public authority or an outside body. But there needs to be evidence that real harm would occur; examples would be disclosure of sensitive price information or trade secrets. A service level agreement, on the other hand, is exactly the kind of thing FOI is designed for - it allows the public to know that services offer value for money by ensuring that suppliers are penalised for not keeping their commitments. I can't see how a reputable company (or public authority) could suffer commercial losses through the disclosure of such information.

Simon's case is a good example of how FOI is changing the way we do things: as an everyday service user with specialist knowledge, he is exactly the kind of person who can add value to the work of public authorities by asking pertinent questions. Translink's responses have been prompt and helpful but show a wariness of disclosing information on their commercial transactions: not only should this be public data, it ought to help their work to have the public aware and able to comment on how this relationship is managed.

It's also a good example of how the Republic has fallen behind on the use of FOI: in the south, Simon would by now have forked out €45 for the information, with much bigger costs should he have to go to the Information Commissioner for help. "It was interesting," he says, "that it took me as an individual to ask these questions as opposed to them being asked by any reporters or audit offices". With reports that the Northern Ireland Executive wants to be allowed to charge for requests, this is an important point and one Simon feels strongly about: "In my view this makes a nonsense of the FOI act by ensuring that only the wealthy, companies and journalists have access to the information which makes our country run."

A Big Doggy Mess

Back to the continuing sad story of Lennox the dog. It turns out to be a big mess.

Lennox was a sort-of-but-not-quite pit bull, seized by Belfast City Council as a dangerous dog and eventually put down despite worldwide protests and two court hearings. The council had complaints from all over the world, including 214,687 signatures on an online petition. Even the First Minister intervened - but to no avail.

The Council's official position is here. 

The website of the Save Lennox campaign is here.


Say nothing

The Freedom of Information Act was one way in which those interested attempted to get involved. The Council faced a flood of letters, emails, and Freedom of Information requests. There are at least 50 on the issue on the What Do They Know website alone. Just between July and August this year, 152 requests were received.

It looks like the Council were completely unprepared for the storm of protest and concern that met what was a fairly routine activity. They say that the dog was violent and unpredictable, that their staff were threatened, and one councillor received a death threat. As a former local government officer, I'm sympathetic to their plight. But their FOI response is not a good example of how to respond.

To judge by the What Do They Know requests, their main approach seems to have followed the well-known Northern Irish slogan: 'Whatever you say, say nothing'. Many were left long unanswered. Of the July and August requests, about 80% received no response; the 32 which did get an answer were told their request was 'vexatious' - a very unsatisfactory interpretation of the vexatiousness provision. Between June 2010 and July this year, there were no vexatious requests; in the month of August, there were 60.


The Council responds - eventually

On 14 November, the Council eventually got around to sending out responses, in what appears to have beena mass mailing, due no doubt to the sheer volume involved. Here are five examples of their responses which show a very varied pattern of approaches:

On 14 July 2012, Stephanie Lowe from the USA asked for a series of documents about the council's decisions. This response came on 11 October and did not answer the questions but referred to the Council's official statement on its website.

On 22 July 2012, Patricia Sarko asked for 'complete' documentation, including details about the dog wardens. Receiving no reply, she wrote back on 21 August and 1 November. She got one of the 14 November replies, a very detailed response which refused to provide the information, saying it did not hold some and had decided not to provide the rest. This was on the basis that:

(a) disclosure about relations with vets and kennels would 'damage the Council’s credibility and reputation with the providers of these services' - no section of the act is cited, but presumably the claim is that this would prejudice the Council's commercial interests (Section 43) by making such companies reluctant to trade with them;

(b) that some information was exempt because it was held for the purposes of a criminal investigation (Section 30) not specified, but presumably under the Dangerous Dogs Act) - even after applying the public interest test, by which some exemptions can be overruled;

(c) details of the dog wardens were exempt as personal data (Section 40) - information identifying individuals, which they would not reasonably expect to be disclosed;

(d) communications with lawyers were exempt as covered by legal privilege (Section 42);

On the whole, this is a good and thorough response,  however belated. I'm not convinced all the correspondence needed to be withheld - some could have been provided with names redacted to protect individuals and companies. Nor is the criminal investigation exemption entirely convincing - the public interest is strong (there is an argument that the Dangerous Dogs Act was ill-thought out and rushed through for political reasons). And although personal data of dog wardens should certainly be withheld, experience about their qualifications and experience could be provided without identifying anyone (and some was already disclosed in 2010). In the interests of transparency, the public should get more information than this - and it should help to clarify the issue.


On 19 July 2012, Tracie Green wrote: 'hi i would like the daily mirror newspaper to give me the name of the kennels that lennox the dog was being held'. The Council replied on 26 July that 'we do not hold any information within the scope of your request' since they are not the Daily Mirror. This was completely unhelpful - it is both a clear request for specific information, which the Council does hold. A certain amount of common sense would have been appropriate here. Ms Green had already asked for 'all the files' on the case on 14 July, and having no response by 7 September she asked for an internal review - which she was entitled to, and should have got. There was no response. A request by her on 26 July for the location of the kennel was also ignored, and again on 7 September she asked for a review. She finally got a response on 14 November to the last question, which ignored her review request and cited the 'credibility and reputation' point. She responded the next day, again asking for a review; I am following this to see if she gets one.


On 14 July 2012 Diane Shaw asked the council 18 questions on the issue (including 'why do you call yourself human beings?'). She received one of the 14  November replies: a general answer, assurances the dog was cared for, and a reference to the official statement on the website.

On 14 July 2012 Annette Pappas asked for 'documents, court transcripts including recorded phone calls and emails concerning Lennox prior to his seizure including and beyond the date of his death, and means of death (method and by whom) and how he was disposed of and when??.records before during and after the case and where and by whom he was disposed of'.

Having received no response by 12 September, she asked for a review. Again, her answer came on 14 November. her review request was ignored and she was told the information was being withheld under Section 30 (the criminal investigation exemption) and, as regards the names of those involved, the 'credibility and reputation' point. There was no mention of the public interest test.


A poor response

From experience, I sympathise with Belfast City Council. But all in all, this is a poor response from them. The huge number of enquiries - 152 requests is more than many FOI officers have to deal with in a whole year - and the climate of suspicion and threats of violence certainly made it a difficult situation for any public authority to handle. An unprecedented situation naturally puts pressure on staff. But most of these enquiries were around a very small number of facts and issues.

It is completely unacceptible, both from a compliance and public relations point of view, to ignore requests completely. Even a simple 'we are coping with an unprecedented level of enquiries and we are working our way through them' response would at least allay public suspicion. Silence only feeds conspiracy theories.

Every requester should get an equal level of response. There appear to be different degrees of detail in these letters - the American requester got much less than others - and some requesters seem to get a less thorough reply.

Finally, there is a legitimate public interest in the handling of situations such as these. Information about how decisions are made, what factors are taken into account, and - possibly - what external organizations are involved, are all matters the public has a right to know. Full and early disclosure, within appropriate limits, is generally the best policy.

Otherwise, you end up with a situation like this: a big pile of doggy mess.

An interesting question

A close look at one of the What Do They Know requests for the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM) brings up a fascinating question - without the answer.

On 21 May 2012, an enquirer called Ben Brown asked a series of questions. One, for instance, was about the overseas travel costs of the department for the period 2007-2011; a fairly routine kind of request. But this one had a backstory.

It turns out that this was not the first time it had been asked. On 23 May 2011, this question was asked in the Northern Ireland Assembly by the Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister. On 5 December he wrote about it on his blog, listing it as one of a series of questions in the Assembly which had not been answered despite the 10 working day limit specifed in the Assembly's standing orders. On 17 May this year, a press release on the party's website pointed out that there was still no answer available.

Mr Brown got no reply until 2 July, well past the limit allowed by the law. All the questions were refused, on a single basis: that they were identical to Assembly questions, and to answer them would breach section 36(2)(c) of the FOI Act - that it would prejudice the conduct of public affairs, because it would undermine the workings of the Assembly by disclosing 'unvalidated information'.

That strikes me as a very dubious response. Firstly, in principle an FOI request should be responded to without reference to what might have been asked in the Assembly; the two are separate information regimes. Secondly, it should be answered within 20 working days - which would have been adequate to respond in the Assembly as well. Mr Brown would have been within his rights to ask for a review and if that did not produce the information, take it to the Information Commissioner. Instead, he rephrased his questions and asked for this to be treated as a new request - a tactical mistake, I am afraid. He got a response on 31 October to say his request was 'still under consideration'.

This strikes me as a very poor approach from the OFMDFM. It's annoying to see requesters with a good case palmed off with this. I doubt very much that the Information Commissioner would let them away with it.

Incidentally, Mr Allister finally got his response on 21st September - and not a very helpful one: "Information is not held on the departmental accounting system at the level of detail requested and could only be provided at disproportionate cost." That may well be true, but if so the answer could have been provided in 1 working day!

A very poor showing

A very poor showing this week from the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister:

Stormont department took 320 days to answer FoI request

Apparently, the Office took nearly a year to answer the request and only responded to avoid being forced to do so in court. That's not very encouraging.

A look at the OFMDFM responses on the What Do They Know? website suggests this may not be an isolated incident. Several long-delayed responses, with excuses such as 'We are not in a position to respond to your request at this time as it is still under consideration.' Some poor-quality answers, too.

If so, it's not perhaps surprising: the Deputy First Minister appears not to be a fan of Freedom of Information, telling the Assembly members that 'There is absolutely no doubt that freedom of information allows people to abuse their access to information.'

I have submitted a request to find out how many requests have been received, and how many were overdue. Is this an isolated incident or is there a pattern? I think we should be told.