FOI refusals in Barnet - Hiding behind Capita

Since Barnet Council changed its website, some information sources have been completely inaccessible or have dead links that lead nowhere. In particular it has been impossible to look at previous Freedom of Information requests and the responses provided. If you click on the link on the website it  takes you to a page where you can fill in an FOI form but not see previous requests.  I drew this to the attention of the Council who promised to get it fixed but, as with so much the Council says, it was an empty promise.

Looking via Google at cached searches I managed to find the previous FOI's and one in particular caught my eye. It asked for Information relating to Fixed Telecommunications and Internet Services, an issue that has been the source of problems in the past.

So what was Barnet's response?

I am writing to inform you that the requested information is not held by London Borough of Barnet (the council). The council has outsourced its IT services to Capita under a 10 year contract. Information about the outsourcing can be found on the following page of our website:
http://www.barnet.gov.uk/info/940431/customer_and_support_group_csg_formerly_nscso_contract/1142/customer_and_support_group_csg_formerly_nscso_contract

I then looked at another FOI request which related to IT training. It was a detailed question and clear expressed concerns about money being wasted. So what was Barnet Council's response - yes you guessed it:

I can confirm that the requested information is not held by London Borough Barnet (the council). The council outsourced its IT services to Capita as part of the Customer and Support Group (CSG) contract. Details of the contract can be found on the following page of our website:
http://www.barnet.gov.uk/info/940431/customer_and_support_group_csg_formerly_nscso_
contract/1142/customer_and_support_group_csg_formerly_nscso_contract

The same answer is given for  FOI requests about Servers,  IT maintenance and ICT strategy, although a request about printers does get an answer even though it acknowledges the contract is provided by Capita.

This represents a major problem and undermines genuine transparency about costs of operating ICT. The council maintain that they have signed a ten year contract with Capita and therefore they don't need to worry about costs. That seems mad to me given that the cost of ICT equipment has plummeted over the past 10 years and may continue to change, develop and be sourced at a lower costs over the next ten years. Without the public being allowed to question how much  is being spent on this very expensive cost centre, we don't know whether or not Capita and making excessive profits from this area of their contract payments.

Prior to Barnet contracting with Capita, the Council would have had to answer these questions and indeed they were asked and the answers showed what a complete mess the Council's IT department was in back in July 2011 http://barneteye.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/barnet-council-datacentre-at-risk-of.html 

Now I'm not the only one who thinks hiding behind a contractor is wrong. The Information Commissioner Office (ICO) has written a report specifically on this subject Transparency in Outsourcing: A Roadmap which says:

"We do feel there is a strong case for designating outsourced services as falling under FOIA when they are of significant monetary value and long duration: for example, those over £5 million in value or continuing over 5 years or where the contractor solely derives its revenue from public sector contracts". That would definitely apply to Capita's contracts with Barnet.

With the Children's, Education, Libraries and Safeguarding already in the process of being outsourced (see the tender here), there will be virtually no services that are not provided by a contractor and everything will be hidden behind the cloak of commercial confidentiality.

Transparency Downgrade - Barnet's Rotten Website

On Friday evening, after work, I was going through Barnet's website as a vigilant resident when I noticed that the open data page had changed. This is where you can usually find important data about the council's performance. It includes things like the supplier payments and freedom of information requests.

Below is a screen shot of what you used to see on the FOI page:

A clear summary with a button you could click on to see more information.

What you get now is this:

You can't click for more information and the downloadable file simply down loads the summary as shown on the screen. There was also a disclosure log where you could sort through previous FOI requests but now all you get is:

Moving on to supplier payments this has also changed. In addition to being buried away it is now only downloadable in CSV format whereas previously it was also downloadable in excel and PDF format which are more familiar to most people.

Interestingly the supplier payments for August 2014 which were previously published have now disappeared and it is very difficult to find previous years' supplier payments as there are no links on the current year's page. 

Some may say I am paranoid but I do get a feeling that the changes are being made so that it is much harder for residents like me, the other bloggers and engaged residents to challenge the council on their spending, especially under the Capita contract. 

I have contacted the council so time will tell if they actually do something about restoring the limited transparency we previously received.

Openness and transparency Mr Pickles? - Not in Barnet

 Today Eric Pickles announced legislation to open up Town  Halls to bloggers and armchair auditors. Well Eric let's hope it gives Barnet Council a kick up the a**e because frankly they need it.

Having asked for information which is available at the touch of a button and it not being supplied I complained and was told that they would need 20 day to conduct an internal review. This afternoon I have been told that 20 dfays is not enough and they need more time . Well Barnet I can tell you whose laptop the information is on and in 15 seconds it could be printed off. Why are you making me wait 2 months to hand it over? Because you hate people asking awkward questions, because you think bloggers don't deserve to be told anything or because if you can make people wait you will.

Fellow Barnet Blogger Vicki Morris had an article today on the Guardian's website about disengagement with communities. Barnet are experts at disengagement and stalling information which is readily available for months is just one of the many and well used tactics in their disengagement repertoire.

Why Barnet Hides Behind FOI Act in the Battle for Transparency

Barnet Council have produced a chart, commonly known as the “Graph of Doom”, which purports to show how, over the next 20 years, children services and adult social care will eat up every single penny of Council Tax revenue. I don’t like the title of this chart as it is hugely pejorative and demeaning to those in receipt of care. However, this chart has been widely publicised and reproduced in the national press. It appears to underpin some of the key decisions Barnet are taking to change how the most vulnerable receive care in our borough so I thought it was only reasonable to ask a little more detail about the actual figures and assumptions used.

My first port of call was Person One at Barnet Council who prepared the chart. “Could I get a quick briefing on the figures in the chart and what assumptions were used?” Person One quickly sidestepped this request suggesting I contact Person Two at the Council. A polite email to Person Two; 

“I would like to understand the figures that were used to compile this graph. Please could you provide me with the raw data and the assumptions which underpin this graph. I am more than happy to come to NLBP if it is easier for you to explain the assumptions in person. Thanks for your assistance and I look forward to hearing from you.”

Person Two then sent a polite response saying I would have to submit my request as an FOI enquiry but that it should not take long as much of the information was ready to hand. Ok, so I submit an FOI request. Knowing how literally these requests are taken I was very clear to spell out exactly what I wanted which included the data for each year shown in the graph. I thought that it would be more accurate rather than trying to measure off the scale on the chart especially when the numbers involve hundreds of millions of pounds.

Ten days later Person Three at Barnet Council sends me a response with quite a few of the questions answered but only the data for the first year of the chart and not the other 19 years. I sent a polite response back to Person Three saying they may have simply overlooked the figures in error as they had only sent me one year of data. I helpfully pointed out that if the chart was created using Excel that simply right clicking ‘add data labels’ would give me all the information I needed.

A few days later I received an email from Person Four at Barnet Council noting that I had asked for an “Internal Review” and that this would take place in the next 20 working days. I swiftly replied to Person Four stating that all I wanted was the data I had originally asked for which I was told was at everyone’s fingertips.  One week later Person Four replied again stating that as I was not satisfied with the response it had to be treated as an internal review.

I am still waiting for the information I originally requested. Not difficult information, not time consuming to gather; data that is sat on someone’s laptop. This could have easily been resolved with a ten minute meeting at the Council offices but it has now involved four officers and a month later I still don’t have the data.

Barnet Council talks about efficiency and about saving money. It talks about transparency. However the reality is Barnet does its best to be obstructive and unhelpful.  Key policy decisions are being made on the basis of the conclusion from this chart yet we aren’t even allowed to know the figures. I will be writing further about this chart which I believe is both misleading and divisive but what I find most puzzling is why so many local and national politicians have accepted this chart without every asking to see the basis of the figures and assumptions. I am the only person who checks what they are told before making key decisions?

Barnet Council Members Allowances - top secret?

Barnet Council have yet again shown their utter disregard for the public by withholding the value of allowances paid to member for the year 2010-11. We are now in the financial year 2012/13 and the accounts for 2011-12 were published last September, eight months ago. But what about payments to Councillors. They remain unpublished and a Freedom of Information Request today has told me:

"Information for 2010-11 will be published on our website later in the financial year. This information is therefore exempt under section 22 of the FOIA, which exempts from disclosure information intended for future publication. This response therefore acts as a Refusal Notice".

Well I say to Barnet Council - PULL YOUR FINGER OUT! If it takes more than a year to publish the allowances paid to 63 councillors then either your systems or the people running them are failing.

Cllr Cornelius and FOI requests that never get answered

In today's Barnet Press Cllr Cornelius has written a piece which, amongst other things, has a go at "an individual" for submitting too many Freedom of Information requests.

Well Cllr Cornelius, I would just like to get my FOI's answered but your officers seem to enjoy avoiding some of my requests. On November 22 last year I submitted an FOI request regarding RM Countryside, a supplier to Barnet Council. My request was as follows:

Please can you provide me with all Delegated Powers Reports that feature council supplier R.M. Countryside Services Limited since 1 April 2005 (with the exception of DPR1419 which is already available) and a list of all Barnet Council tenders in which R.M. Countryside Services Limited were successful since 1 April 2005.

There was a very good reason for submitting this FOI which I will not go into here but it is a serious matter and definitely not frivolous.

Receipt of my FOI request was acknowledged on 1 December 2011 and since then Barnet Council have refused to answer or even acknowledge any follow up requests on 3 January, 30 January and 8 March. Forget 20 days to get a response, I've waited 20 weeks and I still have not got an answer.

Cllr Cornelius needs to understand that the reason people submit FOI request is because Barnet is a deeply secretive organisation and one which seem to thrive on withholding information. Cllr Cornelius may recall that I asked him a question during public questions section at a council meeting last year. His response was "well perhaps you should submit a Freedom of Information Request". Not very helpful or constructive!

The scrutiny process in Barnet if flawed. There is no scrutiny whatsoever of the One Barnet Programme and residents are forbidden from asking questions on such matters at residents forums. Submitting FOI requests is the only way to try and get information out of the council and, baqsed on my experience, even that doesn't work.

On Monday I will be submitting a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office about the Council's refusal to comply with the Freedom of Information legislation, something which will take time and cost money for the council - but what alternative do I have?

In future I suggest Cllr Cornelius stops moaning about FOI requests in the local paper and start sorting out the obsessive, secretive and obstructive culture that exists within the Council.

The Kafkaesque World of Barnet Council FOI's

With the introduction of the draconian new rules on what questions could be asked at Residents Forums and the rejection of one of my questions, I submitted a Freedom of Information request on 19 September 2011 as follows:

For the six residents forums held in June and September 2011 please could you provide me with the following information:

1. How many questions were submitted by the public?
2. Of the questions submitted, how many were ruled invalid for failing to meet the new criteria for question submission.

As so often happens to Barnet bloggers, the council failed to answer my question within the required 20 days so I sent a reminder. Six days after my reminder I did receive a reply which set out the how many questions were asked at the residents forum (not as I had requested the number of questions submitted) but declined to supply the information for question 2 on the basis that the council does not hold this information. That came as somewhat of a surprise to me given that a Council Governance officer had emailed me to tell me that one specific question I had asked did not cover “the type of issues to be discussed at Residents Forum meetings” and therefore would not be included on the issues list.

I know that other residents also had questions rejected so I immediately submitted a request for an internal review on 25th October. This should also be completed within 20 days – Not in Barnet. Following several follow up reminders I eventually received a response on 10 February, more than 2 months late.

Surprise, surprise the reply had a distinct whiff of the Kafkaesque about it.

The number of questions submitted by the public which were refused is not recorded. By way of further explanation, I would like to clarify our initial response to your first question. The figures which were provided to you were the number of questions and petitions submitted and considered by the Residents Forums. These statistics came from the published minutes of each of the Forums concerned. The purpose of these minutes is to record the matters dealt with at each of the respective meetings. As the minutes only cover the Forum Meeting’s actual proceedings, neither the number nor nature of questions which were not considered at the meetings, are not recorded in the meeting minutes.

So there you have it. Because something is not in the official minutes of a meeting it doesn’t exist. I have been offered the opportunity to ask about a specific question I submitted and why it was rejected but this does not tell me how many other residents had their questions rejected. What is really sad about this situation is that a 2 minute telephone conversation to the Council’s governance officers who deal with residents forums would have elicited this answer as recorded in the relevant emails. But not in Barnet. There is something increasingly sinister about the way Barnet Council deals with any resident who seeks to in any way challenge the authority of the Council.

I want to add at this stage that I do not think all of Barnet Council is bad. Indeed, my direct experience is that many of the front line staff are exceptionally helpful, constructive and polite, something which I feel will be difficult to maintain once many of council's services are outourced later this year.

Today I shall be making a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner, my first, but definitely not the first concerning Barnet.

Incompetence, pedantry or something more sinister?

The new residents forums have perplexed many people in Barnet. The draconian new rules have meant that a number of questions that have been submitted by members of the public have been declined as not meeting the remit of the new rules. Indeed I was subject to one of these refusals for the September forum when I received this response from one of the Governance officers at Barnet Council:

"I confirm receipt of below email. Please note that full Council at its meeting on 17 May 2011 agreed the type of issues to be discussed at Residents Forum meetings as per below in italics. As Issues 3 does not cover public works, I will not be including this on the Issues List".

I heard from a number of other people who had their questions refused so on 19 September I submitted a freedom of information request asking

"For the six residents forums held in June and September 2011 please
could you provide me with the following information:

1 How many questions were submitted by the public.

2 Of the questions submitted, how many were ruled invalid for
failing to meet the new criteria for question submission."

FOI requests are supposed to be answered promptly and within 20 working days as a maximum. Good old Barnet council don't stick to the rules so after some prompting, on 25 October I received a response:

"I can confirm the following:

Chipping Barnet

23 June 2011 – 6 questions and 3 petitions

20 September 2011 – 7 questions and 2 petitions

Finchley and Golders Green

23 June 2011 – 4 questions and 5 petitions

14 September 2011 – 25 questions

Hendon

23 June 2011 – 5 questions and 4 petitions

12 September 2011 – 17 questions and 1 petition

Part 2

I can confirm that the Council does not hold information for the second
question".

Now I didn't think I'd asked a particularly difficult question. The governance officers who deal with these forums could have answered these question is a matter of minutes. Why it took so long I cannot understand.

What I find so disturbing is the denial that Barnet Council holds any information on how many questions were refused. Is this incompetence, pedantry for not asking exactly the right question, or is it something more sinister. Is this a Stalinist approach to the facts, denying the existence those that are inconvenient.

I have asked for an internal review so we shall have to see what this turns up but I see this response as yet another example of the council's autocratic, controlling and high handed approach to residents.

An open letter to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

Barnet Bloggers are fed up with the lack of transparency at Barnet Council, particularly their attitude to Freedom of Information requests. Set out below is an open letter to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government

Dear Mr Pickles,

In June last year, as part of your stated policy of commitment to the principle of ‘localism’ and greater accountability by local authorities to the communities they represent, you issued the following statement:

New era of transparency will bring about a revolution in town hall openness and accountability

“Getting council business out in the open will revolutionise local government. Local people should be able to hold politicians and public bodies to account over how their hard earned cash is being spent and decisions made on their behalf. They can only do that effectively if they have the information they need at their fingertips.

“The public should be able to see where their money goes and what it delivers. The swift and simple changes we are calling for today will unleash an army of armchair auditors and quite rightly make those charged with doling out the pennies stop and think twice about whether they are getting value for money.”

As part of your programme of action to make local authorities more accountable you have created an obligation for them to disclose details of expenditure and have expressed the intention to compel councils to allow citizen journalists to film, photograph and tweet reports of council meetings.

In conjunction with these new directives, you have expressed the wish that residents use existing legislation in order to scrutinise the processes of local government, including, most importantly, the rights given in the Freedom of Information Act of 2000.

All of these suggestions are commendable, and should indeed further extend the powers of scrutiny to local communities.

It is deeply regrettable, therefore, that here in the London Borough of Barnet, rather than embrace a policy of greater transparency, the Conservative administration is making every effort to resist any obligation to be more accountable to its electorate, and is, in direct opposition to your wishes, obstructing the efforts of the armchair auditors that you so applaud.

In a speech at the CIPFA conference in July this year you made the following remark:

I was shocked by a recent case in Barnet. The council had hired a private security firm, MetPro, which included “keeping an eye” on local bloggers - at a cost of over a million pounds. The contract had been awarded without a tendering exercise, without a written contract, and no proper invoicing. An internal audit showed there “serious deficiencies in current procurement arrangements”, and there were no guarantees that against a repeat of such practices.

Irony of ironies - this misuse of public money was uncovered thanks to the determination of local bloggers and activists, including Barnet Eye, Mr Mustard, and Mrs Angry (as she had every right to be.) Exactly the same people MetPro snooped upon.

I've got news for Barnet. Live blogging from council meetings. Microjournalism. Call it what you like. It's here to stay. In fact this citizen samizdat - local people reporting on their local council's triumphs and shortcomings - is the perfect counterblast to town hall Pravdas.

As you know, Mr Pickles, here in Barnet bloggers have had to fight for the right to film council meetings, and we have made huge efforts to uncover the ‘deficiencies’ which lay at the heart of the MetPro affair, as well as bringing to the attention of the community a number of other serious issues of concern to all residents.

Earlier this year, in defiance of the move to greater transparency and accountability, and to a more meaningful engagement with citizens, we have seen Barnet’s Conservative administration attack the local constitution, restricting the right of elected councillors to speak at meetings, and worst of all, censoring the local Residents Forums so that absolutely no discussion of any council ‘policy’ may now be raised, nor any issue alluded to within a six month period be submitted for inclusion. These and other draconian and undemocratic regulations are read out in detail at every Forum, and their imposition has caused enormous anger and resentment amongst residents.

Even more worrying, perhaps, is that the culture of secrecy and fear of transparency which is so endemic in this local authority has now extended to the council’s flagrant abuse of the Freedom of Information Act.

Barnet bloggers and armchair auditors – and other residents – who have submitted FOI requests to Barnet Council are increasingly having their enquiries obstructed or needlessly delayed, particularly enquiries on issues of political or financial sensitivity.

Two FOI requests submitted by residents in regard to the MetPro affair, for example, were only answered a few days ago, on 16th September, after an inexplicable delay of several months.

One request had been made in early April, the other in early May. As you will know, the statutory period within which responses must be made is 20 days.

Another request made in relation to potential declarations of interest between senior officers of the council and a major private company was ignored for months and then obstructed on a pretext, despite a current outsourcing tender process for a package of services worth a staggering £750 million in total, in which this influential company is now one of those shortlisted.

In Barnet there is no open declaration of interests, gifts, or hospitality given to senior officers, and one response given to an FOI request by a blogger in regard to such declarations was sent with the identities of donors withheld, invalidating the information and again obstructing the purpose of the enquiry.

The FOI request in regard to the tendering company was reported to the external auditors at a meeting in July: despite an assurance that the issue would be investigated by them under the terms of their remit, we are not aware of any progress in their enquiry.

After struggling to hold the authority to account for FOI responses which were withheld, delayed, or misleading, one Barnet blogger has recently been sent, in reply to a perfectly valid question regarding a hugely over budget IT system, a response refusing to address his request for information, on the grounds that it is ‘vexatious’ and because of the alleged number of previous enquiries.

In Barnet, bloggers, armchair auditors and residents are obliged to resort to making an increasingly large number of FOI requests in response to an obstinate refusal by the authority to comply with the intentions of your stated commitment to greater openness, accountability and transparency, and in order to place the necessary information in the public domain, in a medium easily accessible to all.

Despite the demonstrably inadequate state of preparation revealed by the MetPro audit report, and despite the concerns of so many backbench Conservative councillors, a highly controversial programme of massive outsourcing is being promoted by Barnet’s senior management team and council leadership as the keystone policy of the ‘easycouncil’, One Barnet agenda. There could hardly be a time in which a need for openness and accountability could be more pressing. Public confidence in the governance of this borough is, however, at an all time low, and we, as residents and citizen journalists therefore ask that you, in defence of your stated policy of localism, investigate the obstructive and anti-democratic practices employed by this authority in a sustained attempt to prevent proper scrutiny of its actions and decisions.

Yours sincerely,

Derek Dishman
John Dix
Vicki Morris
Theresa Musgrove
Roger Tichborne