3 January 2012

Don't tell them your name Pike

Mr Mustard ( using his real name ) sent in five FOI questions during the Xmas/ New Year break.

Three of them have been acknowledged in the same way this morning, as follows:



Yours sincerely

Governance Officer Whom ?
Corporate Governance Directorate
London Borough of Barnet, North London Business Park, Oakleigh Road South, London N11 1NP
Tel: 020 8359 7757 this is the phone number of the department not the person.
Barnet Online:
www.barnet.gov.uk

Please consider the environment - do you really need to print this email? that is Mr Mustard's decision not your's Barnet Council. He has to delete this line in order to save ink when he prints.


I expect that you have all noticed the glaring omission. Who exactly is handling this request. It is not a department, it is a person, who answers on behalf of the council. If Mr Mustard should telephone to enquire as to progress of this request who does he ask for? This then means that Mr Mustard has to explain who he is and what the request was all about so that the correct officer can be identified from the council database of requests. All this assumes that the phone gets answered in the first place, not an area in which the council ever score very highly.

So if we don't put our name on FOI requests they can be ignored but if the council don't put a name on the reply that is OK?

Mr Mustard thinks it is a simple case of common courtesy for an "officer" (employee) to state their name and would lead to greater openness, transparency, accountability and efficiency.

Come on Barnet!

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

1 comment:

  1. hmm, I had one of those too. A little upsetting, when I had made the effort to send cheery seasonal greetings to Mr Lustig, Director of Corporate Governance.

    ReplyDelete

I now moderate comments in the light of the Delfi case. Due to the current high incidence of spam I have had to turn word verification on.