FOI officer questions #

I just got here from bottom of an FOI request, what is going on? #

VreauInfo is a service run by a charity. It helps ordinary members of the public make FOI requests, and easily track and share the responses.

The FOI request you received was made by someone using VreauInfo. You can simply reply to the request as you would any other request from an individual. The only difference is that your response will be automatically published on the Internet.

If you have privacy or other concerns, please read the answers below. You might also like to read the introduction to VreauInfo to find out more about what the site does from the point of view of a user. You can also search the site to find the authority that you work for, and view the status of any requests made using the site.

Finally, we welcome comments and thoughts from FOI officers, please get in touch.

Why are you publishing responses to FOI requests? #

We think there are lots of benefits. Most importantly it will encourage the public to be more interested and involved in the work of government. We also hope that it will reduce the number of duplicate requests on any subject that a public body will receive. Given that Freedom of Information responses contain public information, which anybody could easily request again from the public authority, we think there should be no reason not to publish it widely.

Are the people making requests real people? #

Yes. For the purposes of keeping track of responses we use computer-generated email addresses for each request. However, before they can send a request, each user must register on the site with a unique email address that we then verify. You can search this site and find a page listing all requests that each person has made.

An email isn't a sufficient address for an FOI request! #

Yes it is. In the UK, this letter from the ICO to Rother District Council gives guidance on the matter, specifically in the context of requests made via WhatDoTheyKnow, a similar site to VreauInfo.

Aren't you making lots of vexatious requests? #

VreauInfo is not making any requests. We are sending requests on behalf of our users, who are real people making the requests.

Look at it like this - if lots of different people made requests from different Hotmail email addresses, then you would not think that Microsoft were making vexatious requests. It is exactly the same if lots of requests are made via VreauInfo. Moreover, since all requests are public it is much easier for you to see if one of our users is making vexatious requests.

I can see a request on VreauInfo, but we never got it by email!#

If a request appears on the site, then we have attempted to send it to the authority by email. Any delivery failure messages will automatically appear on the site. You can check the address we're using with the "View FOI email address" link which appears on the page for the authority. Contact us if there is a better address we can use.

Requests are sometimes not delivered because they are quietly removed by "spam filters" in the IT department of the authority. Authorities can make sure this doesn't happen by asking their IT departments to "whitelist" any email from @vreauinfo.md. If you ask us we will resend any request, and/or give technical details of delivery so an IT department can chase up what happened to the message.

Finally, you can respond to any request from your web browser, without needing any email, using the "respond to request" link at the bottom of each request page.

How do you calculate the deadline shown on request pages?#

The Freedom of Information Act says:

A public authority must comply with section 1(1) promptly and in any event not later than the twentieth working day following the date of receipt.

The nerdy detail of exactly how weekends are counted, and what happens if the request arrives out of office hours, is just that - detail. What matters here is that the law says authorities must respond promptly.

If you've got a good reason why the request is going to take a while to process, requesters find it really helpful if you can send a quick email with a sentence or two saying what is happening.

FOI officers often have to do a lot of hard work to answer requests, and this is hidden from the public. We think it would help everyone to have more of that complexity visible.

But really, how do you calculate the deadline?#

Please read the answer to the previous question first. Legally, authorities must respond promptly to FOI requests. If they fail to do that, it is best if they show the hard work they are doing by explaining what is taking the extra time to do.

That said, VreauInfo does show the maximum legal deadline for response on each request. Here's how we calculate it.

• If the day we deliver the request by email is a working day, we count that as "day zero", even if it was delivered late in the evening. Days end at midnight. We then count the next working day as "day one", and so on up to 10 working days.
• If the day the request email was delivered was a non-working day, we count the next working day as "day one". Delivery is delivery, even if it happened on the weekend. Some authorities disagree with this, our lawyer disagrees with them.
• Requesters are encouraged to mark when they have clarified their request so the clock resets, but sometimes they get this wrong. If you see a problem with a particular request, let us know and we'll fix it.

The date thus calculated is shown on requests with the text "By law, Liverpool City Council should normally have responded by...".

How can I send a large file, which won't go by email?#

Instead of email, you can respond to a request directly from your web browser, including uploading a file. To do this, choose "respond to request" at the bottom of the request's page. Contact us if it is too big for even that (more than, say, 50Mb).

Why do you publish the names of civil servants and the text of emails? #

We consider what officers or servants do in the course of their employment to be public information. We will only remove content in exceptional circumstances, see our take down policy.

Do you publish email addresses or mobile phone numbers? #

To prevent spam, we automatically remove most emails and some mobile numbers from responses to requests. Please contact us if we've missed one. For technical reasons we don't always remove them from attachments, such as certain PDFs.

If you need to know what an address was that we've removed, please get in touch with us. Occasionally, an email address forms an important part of a response and we will post it up in an obscured form in an annotation.

What is your policy on copyright of documents?#

Our Freedom of Information law is "applicant blind", so anyone in the world can request the same document and get a copy of it. If you think our making a document available on the internet infringes your copyright, you may contact us and ask us to take it down. However, to save tax payers' money by preventing duplicate requests, and for good public relations, we'd advise you not to do that.

My response to an old request on VreauInfo has been bounced!#

After six months of inactivity, VreauInfo limits who can respond to a request to stop spammers targeting old requests. At that point, the request can only be responded to by someone who's from the authority. After twelve months, the request is closed to responses from anyone. If you need an old request to be re-opened so that you can respond to it, please contact us.

If you haven't already, read the introduction -->
Otherwise, the credits or the programmers API -->