DCA draws blinds on FoI review

DCA draws blinds on FoI review

The Campaign for Freedom of Information (CFoI) has published details of the DCA's refusal and its own appeal against the decision on its website.

A spokesperson for the campaign told GC News on 1 November 2006: "We don't think they are justified in refusing the request."

Last month the DCA published a review of FoI which claimed the average request cost 254 per hour and took 7.5 hours to process, and proposed that any costing more than 600 could be refused.

The CFoI filed an FoI request for the raw data behind the report, aiming to establish how the DCA came to these figures. The DCA has refused, claiming the information is exempt from FoI as it relates to the formulation of government policy.

In its appeal, the DfoI has emphasised that it asked for factual information and the DCA's analysis, and claimed the department has disregarded its own advice to Whitehall on how to handle requests.

---