Some members of staff will be aware that an unsolicited email message has been sent to over 4500 colleagues this week‚ advertising a particular web site and commenting on the University’s handling of Freedom of Information requests.
The University is concerned about the manner in which the author of this email has been able to collect large numbers of University email addresses and we will post advice for colleagues who may have concerns about the gathering of their email addresses and the purpose for which they have been used; we are also concerned about his allegations.
Each year we respond promptly to hundreds of requests for information across the University, and we have an established system for dealing specifically with freedom of information enquiries.
We would like to take this opportunity to remind staff that if they have any concerns, we recommend raising these matters with your line manager in the first instance. If needed, there are also well-established procedures for addressing any concerns or complaints you may have (see below).
Much of our institutional information is already published on our website, including for example, our financial reports; and, as part of our new Strategy, we aim to extend our commitment to access to information. We are currently developing plans to provide a much more extensive range of our data on the Web. For example, we have already submitted our new employability statement for HEFCE (one month early), and by September will be uploading additional information on the utilisation of our student services.
Staff can be assured that the University takes its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act very seriously, but as a public body, we need also to be conscious of the resources involved in responding to large numbers of FOI enquiries, particularly when those enquiries are all made on the same day.
We note that the author of the email made seven significant requests in a single day to us and we believe that he has done the same to 147 other HEIs. Although it is our view that such use of mass FOI requests may distort the allocation of scarce public authority resources and crowd out other legitimate requests, we will nevertheless respond to those requests as appropriate.
We will be writing to the author of the recent unsolicited mass email to confirm that we will be responding as appropriate to his requests. We will also take up a number of data protection and other issues arising from his unsolicited email, and correct his allegation that our response is over two months overdue: his requests were addressed to the University on 26 June (by our calculation we are eight working days overdue).
Links to relevant policies and procedures: