As a former FoI officer, I realised when doing the job the necessity of
keeping the identity of all requesters confidential.
If an employee works and lives in the area of the Council, he has the same
rights as any member of the public.
When I was working for a PCT we had a request from someone. On making
enquiries to service the request it turned out that the requester was a
member of staff at the Council. The request obviously related to something
that clearly was related to his own situation.
Whether or not we had close relations with the local Council (which we did)
to have made known this person's identity widely within the PCT would have
been a gross invasion of his privacy.
Indeed subsequent to this I kept all paperwork concerning FoI requests in a
locked cupboard and I only let the people dealing with the request know the
identity of the requester.
So I think that it is as or more important to keep the identity confidential
of people making requests from within the organisation than those making
requests from outside.
I think that you should be addressing this to the Freedom of Information
group.
Nick Landau
----- Original Message -----
From: "Graeme Hawley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:56 AM
Subject: [data-protection] Anonymity when making FOI requests of your own
organisation
Hi,
What is the score when an employee makes an FOI request of their own
organisation? I am the FOI officer at our organisation, and have received
a request for info from a member of staff. They have supplied their name
and email address. I am pretty sure that in gathering the information for
this, senior management will ask who this has come from. There isn't
usually a problem when it is external, and I can say something like "a
jounalist from the Telegraph", but it will be clear from the nature of the
question that this has come from inside. Despite being the FOI officer, a
request made for information isn't made personally to me, but rather to the
organisation. I am just the guy that handles them. However, in order to
satisfy the request, there is no need for anyone else to know the identity
of the applicant. On the other hand, the organisation itself has received
this request, so who am I to say who else in the organisation should or
shouldn't know? I feel that if the management knew the identity of the
applicant it may cause awkwardness for them (damage and distress).
Does anyone have any suggestions. In order to withhold the member of
staff's name I think I need some sort of refernece from the DPA. FOISA
doesn't say anything about this.
Cheers
Graeme
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