I have been planning to write this post for a while, but have been looking for a hook on how to do it. Now I have one. The thing that strikes me with all the FoI request that I send is that each authority is how different they are from the other. Some try to do as much as they can, whilst others don't even care. This does show itself heavily when you are looking at as many different authorities as I have. It also shows with the excuses and way that they present the information. Which is where the fire service comes in…
For those of you that have had a look, I have also all the Council's in Wales and the Police Forces in Wales how much they have spent on software licences. A fairly interesting question, when you get down to it. So to cover all the bases, I decided that I would look at all the fire services in Wales and ask them the same question as I had the others, which were:
1) How much was spent on software licences in 2015
2) Does your brigade use freeware or opensource software
3) Has your brigade investigated the use of the government's G - cloud system
Again, nothing more than was asked for anyone else. And so the answers came back as:
Name
|
Spent
|
Freeware \ Openware
|
G Cloud
|
£446,400.42
|
Yes
|
Yes
| |
See Below
|
See Below
|
See Below
| |
£244,000
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
So far nothing too much out of the normal, is it? BUt Mid and West Wales… Their response is the reason for this post. They basically refused saying how much was spent on software because it was “Commercially sensitive”. Which makes me wonder, is this true? The other authorities gladly gave it up. The other answers to were woolly at best. Which makes me wonder, whats going on in their department.
I can understand the Ministry of defence refusing to answer about number stations, I can understand the police refusing to give the answer to cold cases, but commercial grounds for software, and just on how much they spent? When the buses got back in touch they TOLD me why they couldn't disclose that information.
This is what makes me laugh. Someone once said that when you add humans to the mix on any topic, things become much clearer and much harder at the same time. With this act, we can find out more about our government than at any other time. Yet, it all rests on the people who enforce it… Sounds very deep doesn't it?
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