Business interests of CYPES senior employees (FOI)

Request

Please can you answer the following questions.

A

how many heads of service or above in CYPES have private companies where they are registered as a Director or employee?

B

Where this is the case (as in [name redaced]) what safeguards are in place to ensure this does not conflict ethically or practically with their government employment?

Response

A

The information held states there are fewer than five employees in the Department for Children, Young People, Education and Skills who are registered or employed with a private company. Where numbers are fewer than five, disclosure control is applied to avoid identification of individuals. Article 25 (Personal information) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

Information is not held in a central record and to determine whether further information is held would require a manual search of each relevant employee file and therefore Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied. It is estimated that the cost of extracting the data in order to provide a response, would exceed the cost limit provisions set out in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014.

B

All Government of Jersey employees who engage in any other service or business must seek permission from the Employer or the Director General/nominee (as appropriate) to do so. The employee Code of Conduct refers to ‘Other Employment’ (page 6) where it states ‘it is necessary to seek agreement from your manager in advance of taking up any additional employment.’

Where necessary, a conflict of interest is recorded which includes measures taken to mitigate a conflict. This is referred to under ‘Conflicts of Interests’ (page 5) and states ‘care must be taken in taking up any other employment or business that might give rise to a conflict of interest or reduce your ability to carry out your duties fully and effectively.’

Employee Code of Conduct (gov.je)

Any conflicts of interest would be considered on a case-by-case basis depending upon the specific circumstances by the Director General nominee.

Articles 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.

Article 25 - Personal information

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018.

(2) Information is absolutely exempt information if – (a) it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject as defined in the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018; and (b) its supply to a member of the public would contravene any of the data protection principles, as defined in that Law.

(3) In determining for the purposes of this Article whether the lawfulness principle in Article 8(1)(a) of the Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2018 would be contravened by the disclosure of information, paragraph 5(1) of Schedule 2 to that Law (legitimate interests) is to be read as if sub-paragraph (b) (which disapplies the provision where the controller is a public authority) were omitted.