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Culture, learning and assurance

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This module considers how public authorities meet the requirements of section 12 in terms of the culture of openness and transparency and advice and assistance, the review of practices, training and lessons learned, and how monitoring helps improve compliance. The appropriate use of section 12 protects your ability to carry out your public functions. When used correctly it provides a balance between transparency and the protection of resources.

Criteria

Good:

  • The public authority has a culture of openness and transparency. Where reasonable to do so, they always offer advice and assistance to help people access the information they are looking for.
  • The public authority regularly reviews their practices and procedures in relation to searching and estimating.
  • The public authority regularly reviews section 12 training arrangements and requirements. Staff keep up-to-date with changes to procedures or practices.
  • The public authority regularly monitors section 12 cases.
  • The public authority always identifies and shares lessons to be learned and these lead to improved compliance with section 12.
  • Leaders and staff at every level of the authority are accountable for the provision of helpful, meaningful and timely advice and assistance and recognise it is central to the public authority’s FOI procedures and practices.

Adequate:

  • The public authority tries to have a culture of openness and transparency. They sometimes offer advice and assistance to help people access the information they are looking for.
  • The public authority sometimes reviews their practices and procedures in relation to searching and estimating.
  • The public authority sometimes reviews section 12 training arrangements and requirements. Staff sometimes keep up-to-date with changes to procedures or practices.
  • The public authority sometimes monitors section 12 cases.
  • The public authority sometimes identifies and shares lessons to be learned and these lead to improved compliance with section 12.
  • Some leaders and staff at some levels of the authority are accountable for the provision of helpful, meaningful and timely advice and assistance and recognise it is central to the public authority’s FOI procedures and practices.

Unsatisfactory:

  • The public authority does not have a culture of openness and transparency. They rarely offer advice and assistance to help people access the information they are looking for.
  • The public authority seldom reviews practices and procedures in relation to searching and estimating.
  • The public authority rarely reviews section 12 training arrangements and requirements. Staff are not kept up-to-date with changes to procedures and/or practices.
  • The public authority rarely monitors section 12 cases.
  • The public authority rarely identifies and shares lessons to be learned and misses opportunities to improved compliance with section 12.
  • Few staff are accountable for the provision of helpful, meaningful and timely advice and assistance or recognise it is central to the public authority’s FOI procedures and practices.
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The public authority should promote awareness of FOIA and EIR internally to all staff for compliance and reputational reasons. When FOI staff refuse a request under section 12, they should be competent in providing adequate explanation and meaningful advice to requesters.

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The public authority needs to review their practices and procedures for locating and retrieving information at regular intervals to ensure that they remain effective and compliant with the legislation, eg in the light of technical innovations or storage changes.

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Training, along with the necessary policies and procedures, should be up-to-date, regularly reviewed and provided to all appropriate staff in order to comply with the legislation. The section 45 Code of Practice makes it clear that “searches should be conducted in a reasonable and intelligent way based on an understanding of how the public authority manages its records”.

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Regular internal monitoring should ensure that an adequate process of searching, estimating and providing advice and assistance is carried out by staff. This approach will ultimately save time in conducting internal reviews and providing evidence to the Commissioner.

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Quality assurance checks and internal reviews are seen as an opportunity to assess whether section 12 was applied appropriately and consistently including the provision of any advice and assistance.

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Public authorities have a duty under section 16 of FOIA to provide requesters with advice and assistance. Best practice would involve engaging with the requester from the outset. Consideration should be given as to how you can provide advice and assistance to help an applicant narrow, reform or refocus their request, although there will be occasions where there are no obvious alternative formulations of the request.