FOI request (FOIR-102654313)

FOI enquiry about you FOI systems

Requested Wed 16 January 2019
Responded  Fri 25 January 2019

1. Please could you inform us what system(s) your authority uses to handle information requests? For clarity that includes FOI, EIR, CAFCAS, etc. requests for information, as well as SARs/GDPR requests and also complaints handling.

2. Please provide the name of the vendor and country or origin of the software.

a. Name of the system(s) where there is a brand name that differs from the company name.

b. Do you use system(s) that are internally developed and maintained by your development staff rather than purchased?

c. Amount paid approximately (split into a. set up and b. ongoing costs)

d. Date of end of contract with the present supplier(s).

e. Is the system running in house on your servers or is it provided SaaS ('Software as a Service' i.e. hosted externally on a supplier's servers)

3. What did you pay for system(s)?

a. Set up

b. Ongoing (please state if per year or per month)

4. How many requests did you receive in each of 2016, 2017 and 2018

5. What is the URL for your Public Disclosure Log - i.e. where the public can see the information requests and answers (obviously excluding private ones such as SARs)?

6. How long does it take (officer/manager hours) to log a request and inform the relevant officers that they must respond? (Please assume this email is an example of a low complexity average FOI request with only one or perhaps two departments required for the multi question response.)

a. Five minutes - mostly automated with the incoming email creating the case reference/ auto acknowledgement to the requestor and the only human intervention is to vet the request to see if it is valid and then allocate the tasks to the officers concerned with pre configured auto emails going out to them.

b. About an hour - as above, but done manually.

c. Some other length of time - if so what and why is it so long/short, etc.

7. Does your system automatically create a public disclosure log and reports for the Information Commissioner or does someone have to update spreadsheets manually?

8. Can you use the same system for all your complaints and other citizen and internal and external enquiries.

Response

Q1 - We use a custom system that was developed in-house.

Q2 - Not Applicable

Q3 - Not Applicable

Q4 -

2016 - 813

2017 - 843

2018 - 982

Q5 - https://www.hastings.gov.uk/my_council/freedom_of_information/date/

Q6 - Ten minutes

Q7 - Yes

Q8 - We have a separate customer complaints process (based on FOI)