Blowing the whistle at defra

Well it seems some people have been blowing the whistle internally at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs….

Following an FOI, Defra have laid bare their whistleblowing procedures and revealed that there have been two internal complaints made by employees. Take a look here for the full document.

The one that tickled my fancy was Complaint 1. The anonymous employee in this case made three allegations:

1. That the types of activities undertaken by a senior manager brought the Civil Service into disrepute and de-motivated staff;
2. That there was dubious or preferential treatment of certain contractors, breaking procurement law;
3. That bullying and harassment of a senior manager had taken place.

The allegations led to an internal investigation and the resulting report was deemed serious enough that a copy was passed on to the Permanent Secretary.

Whilst the report found that the complaint ‘appeared to be personal and malicious’ its other conclusions led to a contractor being removed with immediate effect, a ban on all off-site meetings under the area of responsibility of the senior manager and an examination of the resourcing of the whole team with a view to reducing contractor support where possible.

The harassed team was treated to a two day team build with a programme of follow-up sessions as well as 1:1 coaching sessions. The senior manager in question was told to instigate a frank discussion with his ‘de-motivated’ staff so they could air their frustrations and concerns to him directly.

It does make me wonder how effective this all is given that the complaint was anonymous suggesting that a frank discussion about the problems was not really possible…

I also wonder what happens to discredited contractors…does government keep a central database of these unscrupulous contractors so that other departments can be aware of their previous misdemeanours?

With the amount of surveillance and data collected on UK subjects (slip of the tongue meant to say citizens) you would have thought a database of this sort would be held somewhere…the cynic in me suspects not but I live in hope.

Met to pay Google £42,000 to promote Anti-Terrorist Hotline

The Metropolitan Police (Met) has put aside £42,000 to promote their Anti-Terrorist Hotline through Google’s AdWords facility this year.

 

Google AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on its search pages, enabling advertisers to specify the words that will trigger their advert as well as the maximum amount they are willing to pay for each click on their ad. 

 

The advert or ‘sponsored link’ takes surfers to the Metropolitan Police Service website where information on the force’s Anti-Terrorist Hotline can be found alongside definitions of ‘suspicious activity’ which may be worth reporting to the specialist counter-terrorism police officers manning the phones 24/7.

 

Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter also offer a similar service, but Google is the only search engine to form part of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Campaign.

 

The revelation is a result of a Freedom of Information request made by Guy Freeman on the FOI website www.whatdotheyknow.com. The website has been created by mySociety and enables the public to make their Freedom of Information Requests online so that progress can be tracked publicly and released information can be archived centrally.

 

It was all very interesting so hats off to Guy Freeman, I do however have a few more questions…

 

• What are the search words that the Met decided should trigger their ad on Google?
• How much is the Met prepared to pay-per-click on each of these words?
• What was the budgeted figure for last year and did the actual figure paid to Google fall within this or were there more or less clicks than expected?

Gloomy FOI statistics at the FSA

FOI Statistics released by the Financial Services Authority via a Freedom of Information request show that over 50% of requests for information made in the past year were rejected in part or in full.

 In the period between 1 November 2006 and 31 October 2007, 217 requests were made to the FSA. Of those, 24 requests were answered in full (11%), 32 were answered in part (15%) and 110 requests (51%) were rejected in part or in full.

 The independent non-governmental body also broke down the exemptions used most during that period. The most popular exemptions used were absolute exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act with the section 44 exemption prohibiting disclosure having been used 50 times.

The FSA Freedom of Information team seems to have been steadily developing a reputation for being “staggeringly pompous” and unhelpful:

http://www.citywire.co.uk/Blogs/Entry.aspx?VersionID=93441

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/general/121310-fsa-letter-master-rolls.html

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/sitemap/t-109188.html

I hate to say it but my experience echoes these sentiments – it seems that the notion of public information may not yet have sunk in entirely. The few unfortunate times I have found myself seeking information from the FSA I have generally found it to be an uphill battle with the team delaying as much as possible – it’s no surprise to me that FOI is said to cost as much as it does if FOI officers waste so much time trying to prevent the release of material or avoid giving guidance to those who wish to make a request forcing the entire process to take double or triple the time it should and could.

The only explanations I can think of are:

1. That the FSA FOI team is understaffed and unable to cope with the volume hence they  are trying to fob off as many requestors as possible

2. The team is deliberately trying to avoid releasing public information for some misguided reason or

3. That over 50% of all the requests for information made really couldn’t be answered positively or in full.

The complaints above make me suspect that explanation three may be being too optimistic sadly… 

 For those of you who download the full response you will notice that there are some discrepancies with the figures, as if you add up all of the FOI responses detailed the total comes to 170 FOIs meaning that the fate of 47 requests is yet to be clarified by the FSA.

Weak-i Leak?

A site that enables whistleblowers to leak documents anonymously and expose corruption within states and multinational corporations (which are sadly all too often untouchable) sounds great in theory but on closer analysis Wikileaks.org has been dogged by problems.

 Outed before it had even published its first leak, by Steve Aftergood of Secrecy News and criticised by seasoned leaker and writer of Cryptome.org , John Young, the Wikileaks project has been nothing short of controversial. Young, who refused to sit on Wikileak’s advisory board, not only outlined his reasons but with characteristic irony also published (or should I say leaked?) the email traffic exchanged between himself and Wikileaks.org and in true form unmasked “the perps” behind wikileaks soon after by publishing more mail traffic as well as some of their identities here.

Young and Aftergood are not alone in their criticism, Alex Padalka in To Wikileak or Not to Wikileak has outlined some of the main flaws that can be found in the Wikileaks.org project. Listed briefly they are as follows:

 1. The site’s authors remain anonymous and as such unaccountable

2. It is questionable as to whether it is actually possible for Wikileaks to ensure complete anonymity to all users. As discussed on the Wikileaks blog there are no plans for the Wikileaks system to strip out embedded EXIF meta data from picture files. EXIF meta data contains the camera model and serial number which in turn may be used by camera manufacturers to help trace the photographer.

3. It will be near impossible to verify that leaks on Wikileaks are not forged leaks and the inherent nature of public wikis means that Wikileaks can never be trusted to be 100% accurate or authentic.

4. Wikileaks is currently hiring editors meaning that whilst documents will be “uncensored” they will not be “unedited”.

5. Wikileaks will potentially be exposing people very much in danger of physical harm yet there is no guarantee that this exposure will be done responsibly 

I shall add my own qualm…how will wikileaks evaluate their sources/leakers? - not all leakers are whistleblowers as the “Scooter” Libby-Judith Miller case illustrates. Some individuals could be leaking on behalf of a government or corporation in a bid to silence, intimidate or perhaps even worse, eliminate another.

A final practical problem, also discussed on the Wikileaks blog, is the inability of the system to check for hidden “track changes”. Over the years the “track changes” facility has been extremely useful regardless of whether the changes have been left by accident or on purpose by a whistleblower wishing to expose whilst protecting him or herself by being able to claim honest mistake.

 Can it be said that with all the above faults Wikileaks.org is a complete disaster? In my opinion the answer is no with a caveat that it should be viewed questioningly and not treated as an authoritative source let alone used as a primary source.

Wikileaks provides an additional voice for those who cannot or do not know how to get their information out, it still has a lot of work to do and improvements to make and it remains to be seen whether it will truly “become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act.”

Nevertheless the aim of empowering whistleblowers to expose corrupt practices and encourage democratization is sound.