Slow trade
Which government departments are slowest at dealing with complex and tricky freedom of information requests?
The worst laggard is the Department of Trade and Industry, according to government figures released today. The other slowest departments are the Treasury, the Foreign Office and the Home Office.
These departments have the worst record for extending the time limit allowed to assess whether it is in the public interest to release information. They are the most likely to extend the initial period allocated of 20 working days by a further 40 working days or more, thus taking around three months or even longer to answer a request.
The requesters involved often find this a very frustrating experience, as they receive a stready stream of letters saying that the department expects to take another (say) ten days to answer the request, followed ten days later by another one, and so on.
In contrast those departments with a much better record on this are Work & Pensions and Education & Skills, both of whom managed not to extend any request by that amount last year.
This information is contained in the Ministry of Justice's , published today. Much of the data in this annual report has already been issued in previous quarterly publications, but the departmental split on the use of time extensions is new.
However there is no information published on how many extensions go on for even longer periods. Some requests can take six months or more before being answered.
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Could you tell us what the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú's record is in this area
I thought I should respond to Ed as the answering of FOI requests on behalf of the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú is my responsibilty, not Martin's. The beeb keeps the asking and answering of request completly separate to ensure there is no confilct of interst between our jounalsitic role and our role as a public authority.
In 2006 the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú received 758 requests for information. The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú extended the 20 day time frame to further consider the public interest in 10 cases (which amounts to just 1.3% of our FOI cases). 7 reviews were completed within an extension of 60 days (3 of these within 20 additional days). 5 of the cases revolved around matters of commercial sensitivity and 2 of the cases were surrounding s36 arguments surrounding information that the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú claimed was exempt as it may further impede free and frank discussion. These two inquiries were extended by 186 days, far longer than the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú believes was desirable, but they became caught up in legal issues following a an Information Tribunal ruling on section 36 at the beginning of this year. The Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú has now adopted new guidelines for the processing of s36 cases via the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Trust and is also developing guidelines around how to best expedite matters where information requested is considered commercially sensitive. We don’t think that if section 36 issues arrise in the future they will be delayed significantly.