PR and communications staff costs in States departments 2013 and 2014 (FOI)

​​​Request

Please can I have a breakdown of what each States department spent in 2013 and 2014 on PR and communications staff costs. This should include just staff costs and not marketing and advertising. Please could it be broken down by department and include details of the number of positions and their nature, i.e. if they are full or part time or external consultants. Please include also a brief explanation of their job description, task and purpose they were employed for.

Response

Whilst it is important that we are transparent about the use of public money, the duty of transparency must be balanced against the personal rights to privacy of employees. Therefore the data has been presented in a way that will not identify employees as this information is personal information and so is exempt under Article 25 of the Freedom of Information Jersey) Law 2011 (the “FOI Law”), which refers to personal information. The information cannot be disclosed because its disclosure to a member of the public would contravene one or more of the data protection principles, which are set out in Part 1 of Schedule 1 to the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005. As a public authority, the States of Jersey must observe all of the data protection principles when processing personal data. The exemption from the duty to disclose personal data, where to do so would breach a data protection principle, is an absolute exemption, therefore the public interest test in Part 2 of the FOI Law does not apply.

However, we are able to provide you with the following table, which identifies the internal and external costs incurred on annual basis for 2013 to 2014, as any further breakdown may enable an employee to be identified.

Exemption

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 2005. 
(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 2005; and

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