Hunting the snark

by | Jun 17, 2015 | FOI, ICO | 3 comments

There isn’t any legal requirement to publish a clear public link, explaining how to make an FOI request, but it is obviously in the interests of both applicants and the organisation. The applicant knows where to go, and the organisation directs requests into the hands of those best placed to answer them properly. If there is any organisation that could be relied on to showcase its transparency, it would surely be the Information Commissioner’s Office. So how hard is it to find their FOI email address?

Start with the front page. Have a look. Go on.

Did you find it? I can find two ways to get to the ICO FOI page, and both of them take four steps. If you’re lucky, you guess that the link is in ‘About the ICO’ at the top of the page.

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Then you choose ‘Our Information’, because it’s really obvious, right?

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Now you’re on a roll. On the next page, they actually mention requesting information. They don’t actually say ‘Make an FOI request to us’, but really, is it good taste to say ‘FOI’ in mixed company?

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Yes, it’s on the far side of the page, but I’m here. I can see it. I can almost taste it. Except even when I click on ‘Request information from us’, I have to read THE WHOLE BASTARD PAGE TO GET THE EMAIL ADDRESS.

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BONUS SECTION. If your psychic powers deserted you, and you didn’t guess that it was in ‘About the ICO’, there’s another way in. It starts ‘Contact Us’ right at the bottom of the front page, then ‘Access information about us’, then the last two pages as before.

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I could have used What Do They Know, but that requires me to have specialist knowledge. It’s not a household name, not yet. What does that leave me with? Some FOI experts are a bit sniffy about the tweeted FOI request. I don’t agree with this on its own terms – many people increasingly see Twitter as an email alternative, and if an organisation chooses to open up the channel, they have to expect FOI requests. But if a public body makes it that hard to find their official email address for FOI requests, they only have themselves to blame. I tweeted the ICO last week to ask them a question which they failed to answer, which is how I came to be looking for their email address. Ironically, if they had just given me a quick tweeted response, they wouldn’t be dealing with the much more detailed request I ended up making.