The information commissioner has ordered the disclosure
of "highly sensitive" papers about a meeting at Downing Street that
led to the launch of the UK's largest IT-based project, the £12.4bn
NHS national programme.
The ruling is a breakthrough in favour of openness about how
Whitehall and Downing Street take decisions that lead to the award
of large contracts on risky IT-based programmes.
And it vindicates
Computer Weekly's campaign against excessive secrecy over the
National Programme for IT -
a
complaint made by many in the IT industry including the British
Computer Society.
The ruling comes two and half years after Computer Weekly made a
request under the Freedom of Information Act for details of a
seminar on NHS IT at Downing Street in February 2002, which was
chaired by the then prime minister Tony Blair.
The meeting set in train events that led to funding for what
became the NHS's National Programme for IT (NPfIT). It was attended
by several ministers, the chief secretary of the treasury, the
secretary of state for health, the chief executive of the Office of
Government Commerce, the e-Envoy, business consultants and
others.
The Cabinet Office, on behalf of Downing Street, twice rejected
our request for information about the meeting. It claimed the
information was exempt from disclosure under the Act. We appealed
to the information commissioner Richard Thomas in July 2005.
The Cabinet Office argued said that some of the information we
had requested was "used by the prime minister to reach decisions on
the future role of IT in delivering NHS services".
It argued that the "issue of NHS IT was still very much a live
issue at the time the request was made, and the matters discussed
in the documents requested were therefore highly sensitive at a
time when the government was in the early stages of implementing
what is probably the world's largest civil IT programme".
The Cabinet Office also said there was a "clear relationship
between the withheld information and the formulation of
policy".
Its arguments for secrecy resembled those the government has
made to resist rulings by the information commissioner and the
Information Tribunal that early gateway reviews on the ID cards
scheme should be published. Gateway reviews are independent
assessments of high-risk IT-based projects and programmes.
The
Cabinet Office said that disclosure of the Gateway reviews on ID
cards would inhibit frank advice given by civil servants.
The information commissioner Richard Thomas accepted some of the
arguments of the Cabinet Office, but decided that other factors
outweighed them. In an 18-page judgement, the commissioner cited a
summary of Computer Weekly's arguments in favour of
publication.
Thomas concluded that the Cabinet Office had breached the
Freedom of Information Act:
- by failing to give Computer Weekly "adequate written
notification about whether it held information of the description
specified in the request".
- by failing to give a "proper assessment of the public interest
factors in favour of disclosure".
He ordered the Cabinet Office to disclose the information
requested within 35 calendar days of the date of his notice - 13
August 2007. Officials may appeal the decision to the Information
Tribunal within 28 days.