Dear All,
As you may know under the FOIA, an organization has to provide a statutory service to provide a response to a request to written information. If the applicant is dissatisfied with the response, they can appeal to the regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).
When the ICO does an investigation, the apply the standard of "the balance of probabilities". The standard is less than what is required in a criminal case which is based on "beyond a reasonable doubt". As one can imagine, the amount of work to achieve the former is much less than the latter.
In that light, how do archivists approach queries by the public either paid or free. Is the service provided on the basis that the response is beyond a reasonable doubt that you have exhausted all of your holdings looking for the information? Or do you provide it on the basis of the balance of probabilities as there might be material that is not catalogued, the finding aids are incomplete, or the contents of any collection might be incomplete.
Finally, has anyone reviewed their approach and considered whether they need to move from one to the other, either offer a higher standard of proof or provide a lower standard of proof.
I look forward to hearing from you either on or off the list.
Thanks
Lawrence Serewicz
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