Cabinet Office on ICO ‘watch list’

The Cabinet Office has been slapped down by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – and placed on its “watch list” – over its sloppy attitude to freedom of information (FOI) requests after consistently failing to meet the 20-day deadline.
The ICO is now monitoring the Cabinet Office – as well as the Crown Prosecution Service and Hackney Council – for a three month period after a significant number of complaints were made to the regulator about the timeliness of the authorities’ responses.
The ICO will examine the responses to FOI requests received between 1 January and 31 March 2014. Failure to show signs of improvement during this period may result in enforcement action.
Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said: “Responding to FOI requests within the statutory time limit of 20 working days is basic to delivering transparent and open government. While extensions may sometimes be justifiable for particularly complex requests, these three authorities have been selected for monitoring after serious shortcomings were identified in the time each of them has been taking to respond to FOI requests.
“It is particularly disappointing to see that the Cabinet Office has failed to maintain the improvements recorded three years ago when the authority was also monitored over the timeliness of its FOI responses. On that occasion, the Cabinet Office signed an undertaking to raise their game. Their inclusion on the latest monitoring list should act as a warning to others that lessons learnt from monitoring have to be sustained.”