Just a small additional point. We should treat these issues in a common
sense fashion - business as usual unless there is good reason to invoke
FOIA.
I will certainly not be regarding requests in mailing lists / discussion
groups, letters in the press, flyposters, questionnaires sent to me by my
benchmarking partners etc. as FOIA requests.
The bottom line is not to worry about the FOIA if you do not need to. For
these things it should be business as usual. In the discussion list and
similar scenarios if the requester DOES want to play games and use the FOI
he should say so. If he does not we are at the end of the day protected by
our complaints procedure. The requester still has to use the complaints /
appeal procedure before he goes to the IC and at that stage we will know
it is now FOIA and can act accordingly.
If someone simply posts a question and runs to the IC after twenty working
days I would hope and expect him to get very short shrift, not
withstanding the recently given opinion.
|