“A manifestly unjustified, inappropriate or improper use of a formal procedure.” Is how Judge Wikeley in the Upper Tribunal responded recently when considering an appeal which turned on the meaning of “vexatious” in relation to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The ICO has published new guidance on this area today, bringing greater clarity to one of the three circumstances under which an entire request can be rejected (alongside the cost limit rules and repeated requests).

The short answer to that is that the public authority should be asking itself whether the request is likely to cause a disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress.

http://www.mh-p.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/dealing-with-vexatious-requests.ashx_.pdf

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Please don’t forget that your trump card is probably the recent guidelines from the ICO that accepts information stored remotely from a computer on a back-up system is considered to be “Not Held”.

http://www.mh-p.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/determining_whether_information_is_held.pdf

The process and hardware used should be of professional quality which you may have to employ a specialist to install for you. This rules out data sticks which can be notoriously unreliable.

The ICO, in his guidelines, assumes that back-up devices require specialist attention but this small financial outlay is far outweighed by the benefits.

The best process is a combination of software called “Sync-Back” and a Network Attached Storage Drive known as a NAS.

The NAS connects by cable to your internet router and our preference is the “Stora” from Netgear. Your NAS should be configured with two hard drives of sufficient size and set to ‘mirror’, this means that anything stored on the first drive is automatically stored on the second drive giving you two back-ups at the same time.  This means that if one drive fails the second takes over.

The software in then installed on every computer, because the NAS is attached to the router any computer connected by cable or wirelessly to the router can access the NAS and back up its own files.

We use “Sync-Back” because it has many options in how you want it to operate and probably the best is ‘On Windows Shutdown’. This means that at the end of the day when you shut down or log-off your computer “Sync-Back” pauses the shutdown/log-off process and runs the backup.

When you select the files that you wish to back-up make sure you get everything.

Obviously ‘My Documents’ will be on top of the list but don’t forget email and other programs that you use like accounts, allotments, burial ground, PAYE etc. all of which store their data in different places.

A word of warning about email.  Most of us do the bulk of our correspondence via email and the files that store all that information get very large, so, whilst you could use an on-line back-up service like iCloud, Dropbox etc. instead of a NAS  for all your other files, it would be impossible to back-up email this way, in fact backing up email to a NAS over a wireless connection is a lot slower than using a network cable and of course cables and more reliable than wireless.

If you have any comments or questions please use the form below.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/freedom_of_information/guide/~/media/documents/library/Freedom_of_Information/Practical_application/determining_whether_information_is_held_foi_eir.ashx

The important section in these new guidelines is covered by paragraphs 28 to 36 on pages 12, 13 and 14 which, in essence, state:

1. Public authorities are entitled to delete information they no longer require, and indeed they should do so in accordance with good records management practice.

2. Information that resides in a “Recycle Bin” is considered to be held and therefore available if requested.

3. Information that is stored on a “Backup Drive” but has been deleted on the computer is considered to be not held.

The ICO considers information stored on an external hard drive to be in place for disaster recovery purposes and requiring a trained person or external specialist to access the data in the event of such an emergency.

In order to take full advantage of these new guidelines and severely reduce the quantity of information that can be requested I recommend that you implement the following procedures:

1. Set up an external backup drive to your computer with the appropriate software which will automatically copy, at then end of each day, your files and email correspondence from your computer to the backup drive.

2. Delete all information as soon as possible after the matter has been dealt with and use Shift+Delete to remove unwanted information as this bypasses the Recycle Bin.

3. When you reply to an email ensure your software copies the received email into your reply and then delete the received email after your reply has been sent.

4. Ensure you empty your email “Deleted” folder at the start of each day

5. Keep your Freedom of Information Act Inventory up-to-date and store as much council documentation, policies, procedures, reports etc. on your website. If the information requested is available on the website you do not need to provide hard copies.

If you implement these procedures you will drastically reduce the information held on your computer which will improve the performance of the computer and the information that is held and therefore available.

Information held on your backup drive is only considered, by the ICO, to be not held if that information has been intentionally deleted from your computer.