UK Government Instituted Automatic Email Deletion Program Right Before Its Freedom Of Information Law Came Into Effect

from the AUTOBURY dept

Loads of politicians continue to skirt the requirements of open records laws by using personal email accounts to handle official business. Others simply implement voluntary/poorly defined data retention policies that ensure nothing of interest will be handed over to the public. Given a short enough retention period, any request can be stonewalled until the autodestruct has rendered responsive files unavailable.

This is what the UK government is doing. Tony Blair, the prime minister behind the implementation of the UK's Freedom of Information laws, has publicly lamented ever inviting the public into the conversation. It now appears they'll still be mostly excluded from any email correspondence. (via slashdot)

Weeks before Tony Blair’s Freedom of Information (FOI) act first came into force, Downing Street adopted a policy of automatically deleting emails more than three months old, resulting in a system described by those who worked under it as ‘dysfunctional’. Campaigners have described the timing of the IT policy as ‘not a coincidence’.

Any emails retained past this point have to be saved by the recipient. The deletion system works so efficiently and thoroughly that some government employees thought they'd been issued faulty devices.

One former permanent secretary told the newspaper that he thought there were problems with his BlackBerry when he noticed his emails kept disappearing.

The public might call this system opacity at its finest. But it's apparently not all that popular with those on the inside, either. It's one thing to be on the outside and attempting to peer in with a stack of FOI requests. It's quite another when government employees often experience email-induced early-onset dementia. The "90 Days or it's Deleted!" policy has been referred to as "extremely frustrating," especially when no one's able to verify what was agreed upon in meetings held only three months ago.

On top of 10 Downing Street's disappearing act, there's a concerted effort by other staffers and lawmakers to keep emails out of the public's hands. Some delete theirs almost immediately after reading. Others avoid discussing anything "interesting" in official emails.

The problem obviously traces back to Blair's hesitant implementation of the law. A promise of new openness was immediately undercut by a deliberate email retention policy change. When the leadership openly regrets and resents new avenues of accountability, the rank-and-file will only be more than happy to follow. In his memoirs, Blair called the FOI law a "weapon" in the hands of "journalists," showing just how deep-seated the government's disdain for openness actually is.

There's not a government on the planet that welcomes the scrutiny of the public. Fortunately, some legislators have recognized this as an unhealthy attitude. The battle over the freedom of information didn't end with FOI laws. It was only the beginning. The UK government -- like ours -- still has plenty of "weapons" of its own to deploy in the interest of opacity. Destruction of "retention" policies, easily-abused exemptions, stonewalling, disingenuous search efforts, exorbitant fulfillment fees -- all of these are the tools the government uses to remain in its natural vampiric state of living off the income of others while recoiling from the sunlight.

Filed Under: email, email deletion, foia, freedom of information, retention, tony blair, uk

UK Government Belated FOI Transparency Lamented By The Man Who Pushed For It, 'Cash-Strapped' Agencies

from the stupid-public-keeps-demanding-something-in-return-for-its-tax-dollars dept

The UK's Freedom of Information law was a long time coming. In contrast to the United States government, which (begrudgingly) (and only sort of) threw open its filing cabinets for its citizens' perusal in 1966, the UK's version didn't go live until 2005, after nine years of legislative maneuvering. Tony Blair, who started the push as an opposition leader, was already expressing his regrets five years later.

“Freedom of information,” he wrote in his 2010 memoir, “A Journey.”“Three harmless words. I look at those words as I write them, and feel like shaking my head till it drops off my shoulders. You idiot. You naïve, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop.”

And why wouldn't he? It's a wonderful tool of transparency and accountability. But it's also this:

The requests come in to local councils with appalling regularity: “How many residents in Sutton own an ostrich?” “What procedures are in place for a zombie invasion of Cumbria?” “How many people have been banned from Birmingham Library because they smell?”

In Wigan, the council was asked what plans were in place to protect the town from a dragon attack, while Worthing Borough Council had to outline its preparations for an asteroid crash.

That's the unavoidable side effect of allowing the public to request information from their government. These requests are referred to as "vexatious" and a waste of government funds. But the alternative is to "go dark." There's no middle ground that won't ultimately be misused by government agencies to withhold more information than they already do. And judging from what's been uncovered so far thanks to the UK's FOI law, there's nothing many government entities would like more than additional exceptions and exemptions.

A slew of political scandals have come to light under the act. It was Ms. Brooke’s F.O.I. request that ultimately led to the parliamentary expenses scandal in 2009, resulting in the imprisonment of five Labour members of Parliament and two Conservative peers.

More recently, Jeremy Hunt, the current health secretary who formerly was culture secretary, was embroiled in controversy after F.O.I. requests revealed his close relationship with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire during News Corp’s approximately $12 billion bid for the broadcaster BSkyB. And Eric Pickles, the minister for communities and local government, landed in hot water for spending about $110,000 on tea and biscuits in a single year.

Smaller government bodies are the ones doing the most complaining about the costs of responding to FOI requests. The complaint is partially legitimate. Less funding means stretching tax dollars further. But it also leads to some disingenuous proclamations.

At Buckinghamshire County Council, workers last year spent 11,276 hours handling more than 1,700 requests, costing the taxpayers more than $400,000. The leader of the council, Martin Tett, complained of the cost in “times of austerity.”

“This is money we could be spending on other vital services, like children’s services or care for the elderly,” he said.

There's a solution to that problem, and it doesn't involve a return to greater secrecy. It's a national law, and funding to cover requests should be made available by the UK government itself if smaller locales find themselves cutting children's services to handle FOI requests. Sure, there's not an infinite amount of funds available, but what's being spent on handling FOI requests is basically a rounding error.

Between October 2013 and September 2014, central government departments received 48,727 requests, which would put the approximate annual cost of freedom of information at over $20 million.

Still, as advocates point out, that represents about 0.0019 percent of the budget — and $20 million is less than what the British taxpayer has paid for the travel expenses of Prince Andrew, the Duke of York.

While ostriches, asteroids and dragons may be "wasting" local funds, the amount spent handling requests is almost nonexistent. Local governments should be petitioning the national government for FOI funding assistance, not claiming that increased transparency is robbing the elderly of proper care or taking food out of children's mouths. It's "think of the children," slightly rephrased. Whenever funds run low, government agencies never take a look at the $110,0000 spent on tea and biscuits. They'd much rather generate outrage and sympathy by pointing the fiscal gun at the heads of retirees and schoolchildren.

Considering the amount of fiscal impropriety FOI requests uncover (despite the best efforts of government agencies to thwart them), it can easily be argued that this transparency pays for itself -- especially when it only has to cover .002% of the national budget to break even.

Filed Under: freedom of information, tony blair, uk