Glasgow - Spam, Spam, Spam (01/02/18)

Regular readers will recall that officials in GCC had the bare-faced cheek to try and blame me recently for the council's internet security arrangements turning an FOI Review Request into 'SPAM'.

I am pleased to say that the Scottish Information Commissioner has decided that the council was wrong to use this ridiculous excuse and has upheld my appeal by finding that Glasgow did not comply with its obligations under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

I'll publish the decision later today, but in the meantime here is my recent letter of complaint to Glasgow''s chief executive, Annemarie O'Donnell.

  

From: Mark Irvine <markirvine@compuserve.com>
To: annemarie.odonnell <annemarie.odonnell@ced.glasgow.gov.uk>
Sent: Mon, Dec 11, 2017 9:28 am
Subject: Glasgow City Council - FOI Review Request

Dear Ms O'Donnell

Glasgow City Council - FOI Review Request

I refer to the letter I received from Glasgow City Council dated 8 December 2017, a copy of which is attached for easy reference.

The key section of this letter (from the Council's IT Department) is highlighted below:

"Email received 08/12/17 from the Council’s IT Department

"I’ve had a look into this and I can confirm it was received however, the email was quarantined as spam; normally you would receive a notification for this but as it was sent to a generic mailbox, you wouldn’t have.

"The message is held for a maximum of 14 days and then deleted. I’ve added the mailbox to a group which allows you to receive notification when a quarantined spam email is received; the mailbox will receive a digest at 10am, 1pm and 4pm (if any further quarantined mail has been received).

"This issue occurred due to the way compuserve.com manage their outgoing mail."

The letter confirms that my FOI Review Request was received by Glasgow City Council on 9 November 2017 (i.e. the same day it was sent), but goes on to state that my email was diverted into a 'spam box'.

To be quite frank, the Council's 'spam box' is not my problem and as far as I am concerned my FOI Review Request was properly delivered and received.

I have used the same AOL (Compuserve) account and server for many years. In the recent past I have used this account to send emails to a wide variety of people and organisations, without any incident, including:

1 The Leader of Glasgow City Council, Cllr Susan Aitken

2 Ministers of the Scottish Government including the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon

3 The Lord Provost of Glasgow City Council, Cllr Eva Bolander

4 Elected members of Glasgow City Council

5 The chief executive of Glasgow City Council, Annemarie O'Donnell

6 Glasgow's MSPs and MPs

7 Glasgow's FOI mailbox at the following email address: foi@glasgow.gov.uk

8 Glasgow's FOI Review Request mailbox at the following email address: FOIReviews@glasgow.gov.uk 

I operate a 'spam filter' on my AOL (Compuserve) account and check this regularly, for obvious reasons. I have to say that I find it very odd that the 'spam' arrangements operated by Scotland's largest, best resourced council are so second-rate and clearly inferior to my own.

In any event, I regard my FOI Review Request to have been properly received more than 20 working days ago and the City Council to be in breach of its obligations under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act which required a response by no later than 7 December 2017.

I am not prepared to re-start the process and I now expect the City Council to provide me with the information requested in my FOI Review Request dated 9 November 2017 by return, especially as the 'missing' Minutes of the Corporate Management Team (CMT) ought to have been provided in the response to my original FOI Request.

If you are not prepared to do this, I will submit an appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner.

I also plan to share this correspondence with all Glasgow councillors, MSPs and MPs as a further illustration of the 'shambolic' way that Glasgow City Council is run these days. 

Kind regards

Mark Irvine