Issue - meetings

(i)       to note that the Chief Officer - Data Insights would circulate by email a response in relation to the origin of the Freedom of Information (FOI) requests;

(ii)      to note that the Chief Officer – Data Insights would provide an update in relation to the number of FOI requests that were received that could have been dealt with outwith FOI legislation; and

(iii)      to note the information provided about the Council’s information governance performance at sections 3.1 to 3.5 and in the Information Governance Report at Appendix 1.

The Committee had before it a report by the Director of Commissioning which presented the annual report in relation to the Council’s Information Governance Performance, which included information about the changes implemented through the Council’s information assurance improvement plan.

The report recommended:-

that the Committee note the information provided about the Council’s information governance performance at sections 3.1 to 3.5 and in the Information Governance Report at Appendix 1.

In response to a question relating the origin of the high number of external cyber incident attempts and how the Council were dealing with them, the Director of Customer Services advised that the majority of the attempts were phishing via email and that the Council had various tools and security protocols to tackle the situation.

In response to a question relating to training for staff to help them identify rogue emails, the Director of Customer Services advised that training was provided to staff with reminders available on the intranet.

In response to a question relating to whether there was a reason for the increase in Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and where the source of the requests had come from, the Chief Officer – Data Insights advised that there was an increasing trend for FOI requests and that he was trying to put in place mitigations so that requests could be responded to without using the legislation due to the information being available. 

The Committee resolved:-

(i)       to note that the Chief Officer - Data Insights would circulate by email a response in relation to the origin of the Freedom of Information (FOI) requests;

(ii)      to note that the Chief Officer – Data Insights would provide an update in relation to the number of FOI requests that were received that could have been dealt with outwith FOI legislation; and

(iii)      to otherwise approve the recommendation contained in the report.