- Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education
- Submitted 31 Aug 2022
Request
Data packs for IfATE board
By Nick Linford
To reveal the apprenticeship data packs shared with the IfATE board
The IfATE annual accounts say: “Data and reports are routinely provided to all decision-making boards and meetings under the guidance of a nominated Data Scientist. ”Please can I be emailed a copy of the data and reports, as provided to the board for their meetings on 26 January 2022, 15 February 2022, 23 March 2022, 24 May 2022, 13 July 2022 and the meeting in August 2022 (if one was held).
Reply
From IFATE
“We can confirm that IfATE hold some information that falls within your request. The data reports have been identified as Board Data Packs. There was no data pack submitted for the February meeting and there was no meeting in August 2022.”
“We can advise that we have considered disclosure of four data packs:
- 202201 Board Data Pack consists of 3 pages
- 202203 Board Data Pack consists of 3 pages
- 202205 Board Data Pack consists of 4 pages
- 202207 Board Data Pack consists of 4 pages
“All four packs have the same layout.
“IfATE consider the data packs to be exempt from disclosure under Section 36(2)c (prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs) of the FOIA. IfATE have access to the information contained within the data packs under a Data Sharing Agreement with the Department for Education (DfE) the packs contain unpublished DfE data, and we don’t have a right to publish that. We have formed the view that disclosure will prejudice effective conduct of public affairs. Section 36 is a qualified exemption and IfATE are required to consider the public interest test. To do this, we require a time extension of 15 working days.
“We will respond with our final decision on disclosure on or before the 20 October.”
Partial response
From IFATE
We advised that we hold and have considered disclosure of four data packs:
- 202201 Board Data Pack consists of 3 pages
- 202203 Board Data Pack consists of 3 pages
- 202205 Board Data Pack consists of 4 pages (Page 3 contains two lines)
- 202207 Board Data Pack consists of 4 pages (Page 3 contains two lines)
All four packs have the same layout.
IfATE has concluded that it will disclose the information within page 1 of the Board packs which is data collected and owned by IfATE. IfATE has concluded that the material redacted from within the Board packs (at pages 2 – 4 ) should be withheld from disclosure in accordance with section 36(2)c (disclosure would prejudice, or would be likely to prejudice, the effective conduct of public affairs) of the FOIA. IfATE has considered the application of the public interest test in relation to disclosure of the information.
The redacted information incorporates and manipulates data which is provided to IfATE by the Department for Education (DfE) under a wide-ranging data sharing agreement. This is data which is either already published by DfE, is due to be published by DfE or is data which DfE does not routinely publish for reasons of commercial sensitivity or for other good reasons. IfATE depends on access to a very extensive and wide range of data provided by DfE shared under the terms of the data sharing agreement to effectively discharge its statutory functions. The data sharing agreement requires IfATE to hold the data provided in strict confidence and only to process the data for the permitted uses outlined in the agreement. If IfATE’s access to this data was to be removed or limited it would, or would be likely to, impact significantly on the effective conduct of public affairs. IfATE needs to be free to use and manipulate the data in conjunction with its own data and to use it to inform its own decision making and to support the exercise of its public functions. IfATE must avoid the risk of losing access (or having its access limited) to this data by either prematurely disclosing data which DfE intends to share at a later date or by disclosing, in whole or in part, data which DfE has concluded should not be disclosed to a third party or otherwise published.
Internal review request
From Nick Linford
I’ve requested the IFATE undertake an internal review – to reconsider the withholding board data pack pages.
IfATE response
From IfATE
Ref 141.
Thank you for your email dated 20 October requesting an internal review.
Your request has been forwarded for processing.