Freedom of Information request

[elsiegee40]

Can you ask a school for it's name in an FOI? You can only ask for information that is not in the public domain and has been 'stored' or derived from stored information.

 

It would be a bit daft asking for data and not knowing who it’s from! You do need some method of distinguishing responses!

[Banjo]

I agree - but FOI is about obtaining information that is not in the public domain. Asking for a schools name/DfE etc., may lead to responses such as "This information is in the public domain and published on our school website under Contact Us" FOI isn't a quiz and answer process where you can ask any question and expect the respondent to think of a response.

[elsiegee40]

I agree - but FOI is about obtaining information that is not in the public domain. Asking for a schools name/DfE etc., may lead to responses such as "This information is in the public domain and published on our school website under Contact Us" FOI isn't a quiz and answer process where you can ask any question and expect the respondent to think of a response.

 

I think you’re being a little pedantic here. It’s natural to say who the response is from. Asking for it is not actually be part of the FoI request and I would be stunned if any school failed to supply it.

[Katy]

I agree - but FOI is about obtaining information that is not in the public domain. Asking for a schools name/DfE etc., may lead to responses such as "This information is in the public domain and published on our school website under Contact Us" FOI isn't a quiz and answer process where you can ask any question and expect the respondent to think of a response.

I can see it both ways really - "You sent us the FoI request, you should know who we are...." although if we had to deal with all this FoI stuff* we'd probably fill out a "school name" as part of the response (or if it's an email response, it's there in the email signature anyway, and the sender's domain)

* Independent so we don't have anything to do with FoI.

[enjay]

I think you’re being a little pedantic here. It’s natural to say who the response is from. Asking for it is not actually be part of the FoI request and I would be stunned if any school failed to supply it.

 

Agreed. By that same measure, we could also refuse q7 (the gender of the Headteacher) but it would actually take longer to type "this information is in the public domain, please refer to our website" than it would to type "male" or "female"!

 

I think it is a question of balance - if responding to an FOI which asks 20 requests, one of which is public domain already, I'd be inclined to answer all the questions; if answers to 10 of them were available elsewhere, I might tell you to go do the legwork.

[bmaloney]

You could, you just didn't. Multiple ways to do this, from having a cover page that shows the School Name and postcode that is expected and asking the school to contact you if this is incorrect (another reason a valid email is required) to asking the school to enter their postcode and having them select the correct school from a drop down. But all you are doing is adding complexity and time to an all ready over complicated process, all because you did not want to process the data that you were requesting. You would not have hit the issue of the wrong school using the wrong link if you had used WDTK, if you had allowed email submissions or if you had supplied a template. With data collection/questionnaires/surveys etc, you either make the data easy to input (and deal with any issues yourself) or you don't get all the data.

 

As stated before, the main issue is that you have tried to do a massive data collection on the cheap and tried to get everyone else to do all the work for you and stamped your foot if someone hasn't acquiesced to your whims. Most data collectors will bend over backwards to get the data as that is the gold they are willing to spend time and effort to gain. I have had surveyors from major collection projects make multiple repeat appointments to get data from me as I was willing to give them time but I was busy. You can not easily get 20,000 data respondents easily with no work. Well if you can contact MORI or any other data collection company and they will be willing to throw money at you for that technique.

 

I don't think anyone here has been against your implied aim, many have actively supported you or offered advice. I think take that as a positive, that you have active support and build on that, rather than feeling embattled and that everyone is out to get you. This was a grand project that a company would have spent a lot of time and money getting right, so the responses you have got are a great thing for the resources you have had at your disposal.

 

Actually I have a bone of contention with q7. That may not be obvious from the website, nor may it be something that the individual wants discussed.

 

These days there are too many people who identify as a gender other than the one on their birth certificate and Mr may well have been born Ms or vice versa.

 

So how do you answer q7 when it’s nobody’s business where the staff member concerned is with their gender?

 

As far as I am aware there are only two legal genders, male and female. If you want to change the procedure involves surgery and sterilisation, you then need to get a certificate from a medical professional to confirm your sex change and then you can go through the legal procedure.

 

A number of schools have put "prefer not to say" on the grounds of data protection, i.e. it's someone's personal information, but there's a picture of the headteacher on their website with Mr., Mrs., Miss or Ms. as their title, so it's already in the public domain. My impression of schools who behave like this are they are being deliberately awkward for no good reason, but I could be wrong!

 

Government's advice on asking for gender: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/design/gender-or-sex

Edited April 17, 2018 by bmaloney

[Banjo]

But a lot of the questions are just 'lazy' where they are expecting you to do their legwork and the information is already in the public domain. I have a .txt file for 'stock' answers that I can ctrl c - ctrl v into responses. A typical 'lazy' poorly constructed question we had recently. I could have answered this in one of two ways.

 

1. a. From 2012 - present, how many children in your local authority were of Primary school age. (ages 5-11). I would like this information broken down by year

[Garacesh]

Just out of interest, @bmaloney, where do you plan to go with this now?

 

Do you think a smaller sample size and fewer questions might be a good place to start? Or are you still thinking you need the large sample and maybe you'll look to hiring an organisation that specialises in this kind of thing?

 

FWIW, I hope you're still going to press forward with this, but I think it's worth putting the past behind us and starting again from the beginning.

[elsiegee40]

The gender identity debate has been moved to this thread.

Is Gender Personal Information? - Edugeek.net

[bmaloney]

Just out of interest, @bmaloney, where do you plan to go with this now?

 

Do you think a smaller sample size and fewer questions might be a good place to start? Or are you still thinking you need the large sample and maybe you'll look to hiring an organisation that specialises in this kind of thing?

 

FWIW, I hope you're still going to press forward with this, but I think it's worth putting the past behind us and starting again from the beginning.

 

I'm not hiring anybody to do this, there's no money in this project, it's non-commercial.

 

PDF forms allow you to ask exactly the same questions in exactly the same way, but delivered by email. You can also add a "Submit" button which will submit the data to a URL using the POST or GET method. My webform currently uses the POST method to submit to the URL. Consequently I can move the exercise to PDF forms with the school's unique link embedded in the form. If they don't want to press the submit button themselves, all they have to do is fill it in and send it back to me and I'll click the submit button. Slightly more work, but entirely manageable. This also gets around the objection to not having a copy of the response, they can keep a copy of the PDF.

 

Of course this won't stop those who like to fill it in, print it off, scan in back in again and send that to me, but as I say some schools behave in a way indistinguishable from being awkward.

 

If you submit the PDF form in acrobat reader you can even return the "Thank you" response message as a PDF dynamically.

[Garacesh]

PDF forms are also a common attack vector. Dodgy invoices and the like. Same with Word documents (malicious embedded macros) etc.

We also warn our staff not to open attachments they weren't expecting.

 

Please, don't use attachments. Just write out your questions in plaintext.

 

but as I say some schools behave in a way indistinguishable from being awkward.

I promise I'm not being purposely disruptive. I'm genuinely trying to offer you some help.

Edited April 18, 2018 by Garacesh

[localzuk]

I'm not hiring anybody to do this, there's no money in this project, it's non-commercial.

PDF forms allow you to ask exactly the same questions in exactly the same way, but delivered by email. You can also add a "Submit" button which will submit the data to a URL using the POST or GET method. My webform currently uses the POST method to submit to the URL. Consequently I can move the exercise to PDF forms with the school's unique link embedded in the form. If they don't want to press the submit button themselves, all they have to do is fill it in and send it back to me and I'll click the submit button. Slightly more work, but entirely manageable. This also gets around the objection to not having a copy of the response, they can keep a copy of the PDF.

Of course this won't stop those who like to fill it in, print it off, scan in back in again and send that to me, but as I say some schools behave in a way indistinguishable from being awkward.

If you submit the PDF form in acrobat reader you can even return the "Thank you" response message as a PDF dynamically.

So long as you provide a return email, you should be fine - sending a file, unsolicited, may result in the same problem of "unverified file" though... As we're all told not to open unknown attachments.

[Ditto]

I'm not hiring anybody to do this, there's no money in this project, it's non-commercial.

Consequently I can move the exercise to PDF forms with the school's unique link embedded in the form.

 

Is this the approach you *will* be going forward with or is it just an option?

[bmaloney]

This is what I'm working on now.

[mavhc]

If it works in Chrome and Edge, would be interesting. Make sure the PDFs have a digital signature so they're less likely to be blocked. But a lot of PDF readers will disable active content by default, and getting normal people to enable it is hard, by design probably. I'd trust a link more than a PDF though, Google is better than Adobe at security

[minimoo]

@bmaloney - can i also suggest considering something you could parse as text e.g. something like:

 

Q.1 Question

1--------------

1========

Q.2 Question

2--------------

2========

 

In terms of PDF's, bear in mind that a number of schools might have stopped installer adobe reader for security reasons. The windows 10 Fall creators update 1709 added support for PDF forms I believe to windows 10 and it's native Edge browser, however with a number of schools likely to do windows 10 updates over the summer holidays, and fall creators coming out last october - you may find that there are some schools where the office staff won't have the software for edit a PDF form just yet. That would be likely to improve over the summer. However you will still hit the issue that people encourage staff not to open attachments / delete emails with attachments unless you know the sender.

[bmaloney]

@minimoo quite honestly if you don't make it impossible for people to mess up the formatting, there is no hope they will respect the layout or put the responses in the correct places, making an editable email unworkable.

[djrscally]

@minimoo quite honestly if you don't make it impossible for people to mess up the formatting, there is no hope they will respect the layout or put the responses in the correct places, making an editable email unworkable.

 

Why not just a google form? As people have already pointed out, the Adobe idea whilst technically clever is going to result in a lot of responses along the lines of "we don't open attachments from unknown sources".

[enjay]

If it works in Chrome and Edge, would be interesting.

 

That was my thought too. Chrome has its own PDF reading engine, but it can't handle editable PDF files, so people would need to download the file and open it in Reader - this is achievable, but would generate lots of support calls to IT. @bmaloney it would be helpful to us if you included these instructions in your email telling people what to do.

[Ditto]

I'd support a Google Form approach. All the data straight in to a Google sheet csv, perfect for further analysis. Less preferable, but I'll throw it in the ring, a survey based approach, something like SurveyMonkey. Personally though I'd much more be in favour of Google Form.

[Ditto]

That was my thought too. Chrome has its own PDF reading engine, but it can't handle editable PDF files, so people would need to download the file and open it in Reader - this is achievable, but would generate lots of support calls to IT. @bmaloney it would be helpful to us if you included these instructions in your email telling people what to do.

Probably the strongest reason so far not to go this route! There's no way @bmaloney is going to be able to run a support hotline.

[enjay]

Why not just a google form? As people have already pointed out, the Adobe idea whilst technically clever is going to result in a lot of responses along the lines of "we don't open attachments from unknown sources".

 

Agreed. Google Forms, Survey Monkey, What Do They Know - all of these are known and trusted ways of submitting information, including FOI requests. Using any of these would remove a lot of the objections people have raised and get you closer to your goal of obtaining all this information. If you keep re-sending the request in a variety of complex or unusual ways, at some point schools are going to refuse you on the grounds of repeated or vexatious requests! If you actually want to get this information, I suggest you work WITH schools not AGAINST them. As has been said previously, many of the people here sympathise with and support your mission, but have concerns about how you're achieving it. We've even had conversations internally about amending procedure, sparked by your FOI requests.

[bmaloney]

...What Do They Know - all of these are known and trusted ways of submitting information, including FOI requests. Using any of these would remove a lot of the objections people have raised and get you closer to your goal of obtaining all this information.

What Do They Know are email based and when I started in 2016 they did not have the details of all schools in their list of authorities. I started adding them, but doing this with 20,000 schools is not practical. Nor is it practical to inspect the responses from all these schools which would be on their website, not sent to me. What Do They Know is not practical.

 

Unless I'm mistaken Google Forms would require clicking on a link in a website, which would present the same objection. Google Forms does not allow checking between fields such that 3+4+5<= 2, so again more work sorting out the responses from people who can't add up.

[djrscally]

What Do They Know are email based and when I started in 2016 they did not have the details of all schools in their list of authorities. I started adding them, but doing this with 20,000 schools is not practical. Nor is it practical to inspect the responses from all these schools which would be on their website, not sent to me. What Do They Know is not practical.

 

Unless I'm mistaken Google Forms would require clicking on a link in a website, which would present the same objection. Google Forms does not allow checking between fields such that 3+4+5<= 2, so again more work sorting out the responses from people who can't add up.

 

It doesn't really present the same objection. THe problem is your website is unknown and untrusted, whereas Google Forms clearly is not. Far more people will be happy to open that link than would open the one to your website.

 

You point about the validation is of course correct. Some validation is possible but not the example you've given; you could use a nightly script to automatically perform that validation though? And even send a follow up email querying the problem to the school.

[enjay]

Unless I'm mistaken Google Forms would require clicking on a link in a website, which would present the same objection.

 

No it wouldn't. The issue is not with clicking a link but with clicking a link to an unknown site. We know and trust Google Forms. We neither know nor trust your website.

 

Google Forms does not allow checking between fields such that 3+4+5<= 2

 

That's your problem, not mine. Also, you can view the responses to Google Forms in Google Sheets or CSV, where you can add further manipulation as needed.