Freedom of Information costs (FOI)

Request

I am concerned that the cost of running the Freedom of Information (FOI) service is spending a lot on unimportant or frivolous matters, or is being used by businesses as a means to create a need (that they can fulfil) by asking questions on matters that add no value, for example a FOI request on the cost of running some leadership training. So, I would like to see an analysis of FOI request volumes, and costs to fulfil (if easy to produce a reasonably accurate sum), categorised as follows:

A

By requestor category (media, business, politician, individual).

B

if corporate (media / business) then analysed by individual body.

C

By subject area.

D

Preferably every request item and title.

Response

Outside of the Central Freedom of Information Unit (the CFU), there is only one full time Freedom of Information employee. All other departmental staff undertake Freedom of Information responses as part of their further role.

Further information about the staffing / processing of Freedom of Information requests is available within the following link:

Freedom of Information processing and staffing (FOI)

More recent statistics, in relation to volume, are also available on the Freedom of Information webpage on go.je at the following link:

Freedom of Information data and statistics

A project to collect costing data on Freedom of Information requests has been running since October 2018. The majority of Freedom of Information requests involve input from multiple individuals, often multiple departments, creating uncertainty over the accuracy of the collated costing data. Nevertheless, it is collated, monitored and held for management information purposes.

A

Data is collated by requester category and annual volume by requester category is represented below:

Volumes by requestor type

Data is collated by requester category and an average cost by requester category is represented below:

Average cost per request by requestor type

B

Further breakdown by corporate body will not be provided as such information would identify those who have submitted requests. Article 25 (Personal Information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has therefore been applied.

C

Volume by topic is represented as follows:

Volume of requests by topic  

N.B More than one topic can be applied to a request, therefore the volume of requests by topic is higher than the number of requests completed.

Cost by subject area has been extracted, using the topic categories applied by the CFU when recording a new FOI, and is represented below.

Volume FOI cost by topic

N.B More than one topic can be applied to a request. For the purposes of this question, the primary topic only has been referenced within the table.

D

Freedom of Information requests are logged by CFU and cost data is held at this point under a unique reference number. Title allocated to a request is not applied until this is loaded onto the online disclosure log. To cross reference all titles with costs would take in excess of the time allowance applied under the Freedom of Information Regulations (Jersey) 2014.

Articles applied

Article 16 A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the

request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Article 25 Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and

(b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.