Social work team managers (FOI)

​Request

I wish to have the following relating to Social Work Team Managers:

All correspondence, and subsequent responses, requesting that job evaluations be carried out by HAY, as mentioned in the Root Cause Analysis published on 10 December; and for the "three different job evaluation consultancies" as mentioned in the letter to staff from Jonathon Donovan dated 10 December.

Response

To answer this question would require significant work in the collation of the information requested, some of which is not held in a manner which is conducive to easy understanding and / or interpretation. Manipulation of the data held would be required.

It is considered that to retrieve and extract the information in reference to your request would exceed the cost limit provisions allowed under article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 and the 12.5 hours maximum allowed under regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.

It is also the view that the principles of the OIC Decision notice of 19 December 2018 apply. The Decision Notice is available at the following link:

OIC Decision Notice of 19 December 2018

Article applied

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.

Regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 allows an authority to refuse a request for information where the estimated cost of dealing with the request would exceed the specified amount of the cost limit of £500. This is the estimated cost of one person spending 12.5 working hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

Internal review request

I wish this response to be reviewed for the following reasons:

• this seems to be a stock response to any information requests relating to job evaluations which cannot be applied in this case and I contend that my request has not been given due consideration

• the request was for “correspondence” which is in the form of emails or letters which are conducive to easy understanding and interpretation. It does not constitute data that requires manipulation

• the information exists in the form of email trails or written correspondence that would be held by one department or one individual and would not need to be extensively “retrieved or extracted” therefore Article 16 does not apply

In addition the principles of the Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) Decision Notice do not apply and is not relevant to this request:

• the correspondence requested would not contain the personal data referred to nor would it contain raw data

• the request is in relation to a group of staff, not details which are personal to each individual employee, for which the grading level is in the public domain, their pay scales are available on the States of Jersey website and are even stated when posts are advertised. There are no consequences to releasing such information already in the public domain

• the information isn’t for a large amount of data on a spreadsheet, JITs or even scores, it is for correspondence requesting three or four organisations to carry out a review and their responses

• this review was not part of the Work Force Modernisation (WFM) process nor part of any ongoing negotiations

To clarify, my request is for

• correspondence to HAY and the 3 unidentified “job evaluation consultancies” requesting that they review the grading for Social Work Team Managers. I wish to see who those organisations were and the terms under which the review was to be carried out

• correspondence back from HAY and the 3 unidentified “job evaluation consultancies” giving the grading arrived at

Internal review response

This review has been completed by a senior staff member of the Government of Jersey, independent of the original decision making process:

It is noted that the final response provided was not entirely appropriate to the request posed and the points raised by the requester have been acknowledged.

With regards the application of the time cost limit, the Scheduled Public Authority (SPA) notes that clarification and guidance should have been provided in relation to the original response in order to narrow the focus of the request, as required by Article 12 (Duty of a scheduled public authority to supply advice and assistance) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 (FOI Law).

The SPA reviewed the response provided and would clarify this as follows:

• any search the SPA undertakes for correspondence must have clear parameters. This includes the sender/recipient, specific date range and specific keywords.

As originally posed, the request for information, as follows, was too broad:

All correspondence, and subsequent responses, requesting that job evaluations be carried out by HAY, as mentioned in the Root Cause Analysis published on 10th December; and for the "...three different job evaluation consultancies..." as mentioned in the letter to staff from Jonathon Donovan dated 10th December.

A search on terms alone is not feasible.

The SPA would also like to explain that searches of emails in relation to FOI requests are performed within a specific search function to ensure that such search retrieves an auditable result.

This request was therefore refused as the terms were too broad to allow for a response to be provided within the cost limit provisions allowed under Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 and the 12.5 hours maximum allowed under regulation 2 (1) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.

• the response should also have explained that any correspondence held by an SPA in relation to these evaluations could carry exemptions under Article 25 (Personal Information) and / or Article 30 (Employment) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

After due considered the Internal Review ultimately upholds the application of Article 16 for the above reasons.