| IR/Job | Information request (AKA Job) is a request for information coming in by various allowed media including email and letter. Often a single IR will have many sub-requests and these may be sent off to experts in different departments. |
| Activity/ (sub)Task | Part of the work of responding to an IR that is allocated to a person to do. Not a department, a person. A dept must allocate responsibility to a “dept Rep”. |
| Request Status | This is the status of the request as it is processed. For example, Logged, Clarifying, Allocated (to Dept Reps), Information Collated, Redaction, Legal sign off, etc.) Some of them change the day duration remaining count. |
| Request Type | Refers to various types of request with different day counts for response, days included (Weekends or bank holidays) inclusion on Public Disclosure Log, etc. |
| IRMs/IRM | Information Request Management system AKA Job Tracker or Case Management or ticketing system. |
| IRO | Information request owner – responsible for allocating tasks and collating the response and obtaining its approval before sending out the finished answer to te applicant. Also responsible for choosing what is public disclosure log material and for expediting the job. Should also store adequate notes for re-usability of that work. |
| Dept Rep | The person in a department/ directorate who is responsible for providing facts from that business unit for the owner. May also send response to the applicant in some organisations in which case they take on and must be trained for the IRO responsibilities above. Also called Service Coordinators department coordinators and may more names. |
| FOI 2000/FOISA 2002 | Freedom of Information / Freedom of information Acts in England Wales and NI and in Scotland respectively. |
| IR | Information Request hence information request management system (IRMS) |
| Information Governance (IG) | Information Governance – generally refers to a function or short for the department or team that manages the function. This often sits in corporate or legal within a public body or large organisation. Usually, it does not come under the ICT area. |
| Information Security (IS) | Normally sitting within ICT this is the technical area of protecting electronically held data from external hacking or exposure internally outside proscribed data compartments. |
| EIR | Environmental Information Request. |
| FOIR | Freedom of Information Request. |
| FOISA | Freedom of Information Scotland Act (2002) FOI requests are frequently referred to as FOISAs in Scotland. |
| SAR | Subject Access request. There are several different types defined elsewhere but the common ones are “Access” when an applicant asks to see what information an organisation holds on them, “rectification” (where they want information corrected) and “erasure” (where they invoke their right to have their data deleted). Some are restricted by other statutes. For example, HMRC may need to audit an ex-employee’s pay up to six years after the event. The purpose and retention periods for personal information are generally stated before collection from the individuals. |
| Proof of Identity (POI) | If you exercise your rights to, say, see information about yourself through a SAR, you will be requested to provide Proof of Identity. If the SAR is for a dependant or other third party, the organisation will also ask you to provide evidence that you have the right to ask n behalf of that person. |
| Calendar Days | Any day of the week. For example, SARs need to be answered in a calendar month – normally translated as 28 days – potentially adjusted in certain circumstances. The “clock” stops during the period where an applicant provides PoI. |
| Working days | EIR and FOI requests have to be answered in 20 ( with extensions in certain circumstances) working days. These are defined as excluding weekends and bank holidays in the organisation’s jurisdiction. This “clock” stops if “Clarification” is requested. If the request will be costly to research and/or must be delivered in an expensive medium then a charge may be quoted. The “clock” will be paused until they pay. |
| Bank holidays | These are defined differently in different jurisdictions and hence are managed in each client’s system individually. |
| Reviews and Appeals | A small proportion of IRs may not meet the satisfaction of parties involved and the IR may be Reviewed and there may be an Appeal. These processes have their own “clock” and must be tracked up to their deadline, too. |
| Complaints | Both complaints about FOI and general complaints and other information requests may be automated through the system each process having appropriate template documents for automated and semi automated responses. |
| Auto Acknowledgements | Automatic correspondence to confirm receipt of the IR to the Applicant ( and often inform them of response times, conditions, processes and their rights to complain if they wish). |
| email alerts (Triggers) | automated emails specified by the public sector body for how applicants, dept reps, IROs are messaged in order to expedite the IR and any sub tasks in a timely fashion. |
| Mail merge documents | Templated documents that merge in contact details of the applicant or dept rep and information about the relevant request, response, deadlines, references, etc. |
| Public Disclosure Log | A publicly available, searchable presentation of information about the EIRs and FOI requests’ responses to reduce duplication of work as well as for transparency. |
| Applicant Blind | A dept rep who may see only the information required for collecting the data required to respond and cannot see information about the Applicant. |
| Super User/ Systems Admin | Person(s) responsible in your business for making sure the users have appropriate authorities granted (including adding users and retiring user accounts when they leave). Also has access to to old for changing many systems parameters – status drop downs, vocabulary, document standard templates an many other items. |
| OIC | Office of the Information Commissioner (refers to any where in UK except Scotland). |
| OSIC | Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner. |
| Information Commissioner Reports/OSIC Reports | Reports that must be provided to the respective Information Commissioner for your jurisdiction. |
| PII | Personal identifying information would include name and emails and telephone numbers as well as many other data points and files with private information about an individual. Exposure will certainly be damaging. The organisation has collected it for a specific purpose and has undertaken to protect it and only use it for that purpose. |
| Redaction | Once any document or response is ready to be sent out to an applicant or processed by the next department some information may need to be removed. normally, this is PII. |
| Retention Period | The length of time a piece of data will be held. For example, a typical retention period for FOI and EIR requests and their applicants might be three years for a public sector organisation. For SARs it would be six years. The six year limit also applies to FOI/EIR requests that have a Review or Appeal. |
| Exemptions | Although the transparency of information is an overriding principle, there are many “exemptions”. For example, information that could cause a breach of public security & Honours lists before public announcement. Private personal data is another example as it is protecte by GDPR |
| Spam or vexations requests | Requests which do not meet criteria for a “real” request. These could include sales approaches or those from imaginary applicants. |
| Information not Held | It is a perfectly reasonable allowable response to a request to state that your organisation does not hold the information requested by the applicant. |
