Prior Knowledge

Want to play chess with me?  I love chess and love playing it.  It’s a great game that I think that can teach you a lot about you and you think.  Don't know anything about the game?  That’s fine.  I can live with that.  I will teach you.  but you know the basics of the game right?  What you didn't know that you played with a board and pieces?  You didn't even know that you moved them around the board?  What?  Jeepers you really don't know…  Look, you need to have a little look at the game because I can't go into this right now.  Maybe when you have brought the right equipment, we will play.

Silly isn't it?  At the same, a good illustration of the FoI to the people on the inside doing your FoI claim.  Remember they only have 18 hours of time to get your claim.  that's just over 2 full working days.  If you can find out some more about the knowledge that you are looking for, then you can help these guys out before you put pen to paper (Or words on the screen.  Your choice).  

If you send in your request with NO KNOWLEDGE of what you speak of, it is going to show up like a rocket and could mean that the people on the inside have some major issues in how to answer you. The FoI request is not a tool to teach you knowledge that you need to know, or should have known before you start asking them questions. Remember they have plenty to do before they even look at your claim.

This is not the whole of the story, however.  A lot of the good FoI departments are actually VERy happy to help you with a lot of the information.  This is a topic which shows up a like a record in their responses (Consistency is something that I will turn to in another blog) and how they deal with you.  

I give two AMAZING example of how, sometimes, these guys really do want to educate you in topic which you have no knowledge of they are:

1. Asking the ministry of defence for files that they have that were made prior to the end of the second world war.  For those of you that do not know, the end of the second world war was August 15 1945 (That was the Japanese surrendered and thus WW2 ended).  This is over the 30 years rules so all files from that time period have now been released.  Or have they?  The short answer is no.  Some of them are still classified (for example, some of the documents relating to Dover castle will not be available for years).  You see, some of them are held up by a Lord Chancellor's Instrument (LCI).  What's that, I hear you cry?  It is:

“permission to retain information beyond the 20/30 year period. The reasoning behind the retention is outlined in a submission to the Advisory commission who decide if this is sufficient to retain the information and for how long. The retentions are requested either of Freedom of Information Act 2000 grounds or Data Protection Act grounds. At the end of the retention period a further submission must be made if the information is still deemed sensitive”

Which is what the Ministry of Defence told me.  See, had I but known that then I could have narrowed the field down a bit!  There we go then