Understanding Nothing

The DSD have finally provided me with the information I requested back in October (although they seem to have internally classed the request date as 9 November!) relating to the awarding of the department’s advertising account (including design and placement of advertising, event management, PR, marketing, and general communications support) to Navigator Blue back in 2002.

Although they have provided much of the information relating to this, they have withheld the original tender documents and the costing and pricing information – again citing Section 41 – Information Provided in Confidence.

They say that they have consulted Navigator Blue, who do not consent to the information being released. There is no comment to say whether they likewise checked with Anderson Spratt, AV Browne, or GCAS, (who were also shortlisted), or any of other firms who may have replied to the tender but were not shortlisted.

All of the notes from the various pitches made by these firms have been provided, as well as emails discussing why some of them were unsuccessful, but names of the companies have been redacted from each. (So I can’t tell yet which of them was listed as seeming “a bit naive” on PR!)

My appeal will presumably be almost identical to the one made to DETI.

Incidentally, this was the definitely the best presentation of material in response to an FoI request from one of these departments! Although they didn’t supply any of the information electronically, they separated the material into 24 sections of documents, each of which was in a clear plastic folder, all neatly bound together. Most of the other departments just dumped a pile of several hundred documents in an envelope and posted them!

Yesterday evening, whilst processing the minutes of the Belfast City Council Policy and Resources Committee from 18 March 2005, I noticed that they referred to a report into the Council’s strategic approach to communications – including a review of the Council’s corporate identity, the development of the website as a key communications tool and a review of the Council’s approach to graphic design, advertising, publications and leaflets. This sounded interesting, but, unlike most reports presented to the committees, this one wasn’t included with the minutes. So, at about 5:30 yesterday evening, I sent off a Freedom of Information request for it.

At about 10:30 this morning, I received a copy of it in email! This is probably the fastest result of a FoI request I’ve had yet!

If anyone else finds it interesting, I’ve added the report to the nigov wiki.

The section on the City Council website is a little bland:

Belfast City Council’s website needs to be properly resourced and positioned so that it plays its part in disseminating the council’s key messages. It also needs developed in terms of providing information and, even more importantly, services to ratepayers. The website is vital to the council’s reputation not only at home but overseas. A proposal is going before P&R to properly resource this operation and it needs to work closely or as part of Corporate Communications to ensure opportunities are maximised.

I’ve sent a follow-up request for the proposal.

On 4th October 2005, I made a Freedom of Information request in relation to DETI’s “Production of an E-Business Strategy” consultancy award to Cap Gemini Ernst & Young in December 2000. As part of my request I asked for copies of the unsuccessful tender submissions. This request was passed to the Central Procurement Directorate, who declined my request under the Section 41″Information provided in Confidence” exemption, due to a confidentiality clause in the Terms and Conditions of Contract.

As you are no doubt aware, the guidance on this issue from the Information Commissioner, particularly in the documents on “Public Sector Contracts”, and “Awareness Guidance No 2: Information provided in confidence”, states clearly that a public authority cannot contract out of its responsibilities under the Act and unless information is covered by a specific exemption it must be released if requested.

In relation to a Section 41 exemption, the guidance states that the authority must be satisfied that an actual obligation of confidence exists, and that there is no veto given to third parties who merely object to disclosure. In addition the information withheld must not be trivial or readily available by other means.

I would suggest that even if some portions of the documents in question might indeed have this necessary “quality of confidence”, the majority would not, and that suitably redacted versions could be provided.

I would further argue that it is in the public interest test to release this information. This contract was highlighted as “Case Study G” in the Northern Ireland Audit Office’s report into the use of consultants by the Northern Ireland Civil Service, where it was noted that due to substantial changes to the original specification, and a number of extensions to the project, the cost rose from the original £30,000 to a total of £183,000. It would certainly be in the public interest to discover whether any of this remarkable over-spend was due to issues that should have been ascertained at an earlier stage, and particularly whether any of the unsuccessful tenders had raised any of these issues.

I would therefore ask that you conduct a formal review of the refusal to release these tender submissions. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Dear Mr Bowden

I refer to your E-Mail dated 13 November 2005 in which you requested information regarding an exhumation to be carried out in the City Cemetery as per the minutes of the Parks and Amenities Sub-Committee of 11 October 2005.

Having sought advice from the Police Service Northern Ireland and BCC Legal Services I can inform you that we are not in a position to release the information requested as the exhumation is a part of an ongoing criminal investigation.

This morning I received a letter from the Central Procurement Directorate in relation to one of my Freedom of Information requests. When I requested information on the DETI “Production of an E-Business Strategy” contract (contract price £30k, actual spend £183k), one of the things I asked for was the unsuccessful tenders. This was passed to the CPD, who are withholding the information due to confidentiality clauses:

I am writing to advise that the Department has decided not to disclose the information you requested on 4 October 2005.

Your request to be provided with copies of the unsuccessful tender submissions in respect of the contract for the ‘Production of an E-Business Strategy’ commissioned by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment has been treated as a Freedom of Information request and processed accordingly. However, I would advise that the Terms and Conditions of Contract’ contain a confidentiality clause to which all suppliers have signed up.

The confidentiality clause states that each party will treat all information obtained from the other party in connection with the contract as confidential and that none of this information can be disclosed without the prior written consent of the other party.
Section 41 of the Freedom of Information Act (Information provided in Confidence) states that where a person who holds information is under a duty to keep that information confidential there will be a breach of confidence if that person makes an unauthorised disclosure of that information.

Accordingly, Central Procurement Directorate (CPD) has approached the unsuccessful tenderers to seek their consent to disclosure of the requested information. All have indicated that they do not wish their tender documents to be released as the information contained therein relates to their innovative/creative approach to undertaking the requirement. Consequently CPD has taken the decision not to release the information sought by you.

You have the right to request a formal review by the Department in respect of this decision and if you wish to do so, please write to the Departmental FOI Appeals Manager, Information Management Unit, 1st Floor Rosepark Annex, Upper Newtownards Road, Belfast, BT4 3NR.

If after such an internal review you are still unhappy with the response, you have the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, CHESHIRE SK9 5AF, who will undertake an independent review.
If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

As far as I can remember the Information Commissoner provided guidance for just this sort of thing, which states that blanket confidentiality clauses in public sector contracts are a Bad Thing(tm). Now I need to go do some research …

The clear winner of the FoI speed race was the DEL who acknowledged the response the next day, asked for a postal address, and sent the information pretty much straight away! Some of the other departments still haven’t even acknowledged the response, and no-one else yet has sent the information. The speed of the DEL is even more striking as it turns out they weren’t even the primary originator of the contract I enquired about. It had been a LEDU contract which they had persuaded the DEL had agreed to pay half the costs of!

Of the ones who have responded, DCAL have been the least helpful so far, informing me approximately a week after their initial acknowledgement that the information I requested would cost too much to obtain. I’ve tried to narrow this down, but I’m not entirely convinced they properly understood the original request.

I’ll try to keep this table up to date as the departments respond.

The request date for all departments was 4th October, so 20 working days takes us to 1st November.

* The most unexpected response to date has been from the OFMDFM who, due to an email glitch, didn’t get my original request, but who contacted me in relation to discovering my request via this post! This was followed a few days later by a similar email from the DSD!

** These departments gathered the information, but there was so much that I agreed to go see it, rather than have them send it.

In June 2004 the Northern Ireland Audit Office published a report on the “Use of Consultants by Northern Ireland Government Departments”

This is a rather scary look at how the eventual costs of consultants are often significantly higher than that originally agreed, often by a factor of two or three. A while back, I made a Freedom of Information request to the NIAO to get further details on the almost 100 contracts examined as part of this report: who the consultants were, what the contract was, how much it was originally for, and how much was eventually paid.

This way I was able to discover, for example, that it was Cap Gemini Ernst and Young whose £30k for “Production of E-business strategy” eventually mushroomed to £183k.

But the real fun comes now when I request more details on each of these sampled contracts in turn. So this afternoon I took an hour and requested further information from each of 11 different Northern Ireland Government Departments. Most of them have forms on their website for making FOI requests, but I prefer to do this by email where possible so that I have better records of my requests. Actually finding an email address for doing this was rather tricky in many cases. Each department has a website that is arranged completely differently to others. Most have their main FOI link on their home page, but only a few actually list an email address there. Some have an explicit FOI contact on their ‘Contacts’ page instead. Others hide it in their Publication Scheme details. A few I wasn’t able to find at all, and had to just use a general email address.

It’ll be interested to measure the speed of responses compared to each other.

DETI, DRD, DCAL, DENI, DHSSPS, DSD, DOE, DEL, DARD, DFP and OFMDFM: the race is on.

I refer to your request for information, in your e mail dated 10 April 2005 (our ref. 14/05).

In response to your enquiry, the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO) does not produce a measure equivalent to that of the National Audit Office. NIAO does, however, measure the impact of its work and the results of this exercise can be found in the NIAO Corporate Plan, which is published on our website at www.niauditoffice.gov.uk.

According to a recent issue of Private Eye, the independent auditors for Newtownabbey Borough Council found a number of unlawful policies and practices, such as:

* “in lieu” payments to officers who didn’t take their full leave entitlement
* using council credit cards to run up thousands of pounds of personal expenditure
* paying compensation (in excess of 100,000 pounds) to officers for premature retirement or redundancy, without appropriate consideration

I can’t find this report anywhere, so I’ve written to the Department of the Environment, who appoint the auditors for local councils, to see if I can get a copy.

In report sproduced by the National Audit Office in England there is a statement to the effect that the work of the NAO saves the taxpayer at least eight pounds for each pound spent running the office.

The Northern Ireland Audit Office make no such claim. So I’m wondering if they calculate it and don’t print it, or don’t actually know.

Accordingly I’ve made a request to the NIAO to find out. I should probably also make one to the NAO to find out how they calculate theirs…