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mysociety / alaveteli

Provide a Freedom of Information request system for your jurisdiction
https://alaveteli.org
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Offer a FOI deadline calculator / calendar #5101

Closed RichardTaylor closed 3 hours ago

RichardTaylor commented 5 years ago

Alaveteli can calculate FOI deadlines, and the system informs requesters, and those looking at a specific correspondence thread, of the deadline date but currently the system doesn't:

There will be an opportunity to stress that whatever the deadline a request should be responded to promptly.

The law could be summarised, and links could be provided to the law, and the Government's official bank holidays page. .

See the help text at:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/officers#days

which among other things mentions the special case of schools.

This isn't my idea I'm just noting it.

RichardTaylor commented 5 years ago

Request footers are already long, but they could quote the deadline date and link to a detailed calendar showing the calculation.

mdeuk commented 5 years ago

The tool provided by OSIC might be useful as a starting point for developing the art of possible in terms of an end-user accessible calculator function.

http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/ResponseCalculatorInstructions.aspx

  • Show how a deadline date has been calculated (link from a deadline date to a page showing which holidays have been taken into account, and why).

I especially like this idea. it may be worth combining it with our delivery logs, e.g. to show "We delivered your request to ABC Council on $date; the deadline for response starts…" or such like.

Where possible it may be helpful to use graphics and appropriate colours to help represent the respective states that a request could be in so as to aid interpretation for users who are perhaps less familiar with the inner workings of FoI (and the myriad of other possible legislative mixes).

RichardTaylor commented 2 years ago

Currently users get a message saying eg.

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Department of Health and Social Care should have responded by now

A link to a deadline calculator (or the actual deadline!) would enable the requester to send a more informed, and potentially effective, follow up.

We need to be careful with actual deadlines as things like schools, and public interest tests, can impact them, so the current wording is vague for a reason. The current wording/notices reflect our views as opposed to following the law directly.

HelenWDTK commented 3 hours ago

This issue has been automatically closed due to a lack of discussion or resolution for over 12 months. Should we decide to revisit this issue in the future, it can be reopened.