People who work in the public sector, what Freedom of Information Act requests would turn up some *very* interesting results?
Posted by SouthernCoyote247@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 15 comments
I sometimes see FOISA requests relating to my work, and it often frustrates me slightly that outsiders will usually unknowingly fudge the wording a bit and give the organisation an easy out. What, and how, should people ask about your workplac?
imperfect_and_tense@reddit
For your child/ren's school: "What percentage of your teaching staff are qualified teachers?"
TachiH@reddit
Is this still a big problem? I work in a school and most of the schools in my local authority ignored the permission to hire teachers who aren't qualified. They still require Qualified Teacher Status.
imperfect_and_tense@reddit
Academy schools (over 80% of secondary) can effectively employ whoever they like to stand in front of the class. And yes, some of the unqualified are among the best, some of the qualified are among the worst.
Prasiatko@reddit
Wouldn't that conflate classroom assistants, Special needs supports etc?
Resident_Ebb_9354@reddit
I’d be interested to know how many people who are on PIP actually work as the accessors to decide who gets PIP I know of one woman who gets full PIP, the car and everything and her role is to asses others for the same! She defo doesn’t need it all either but knows the system inside out
OdinForce22@reddit
Have you medically assessed her yourself to know that?
CurvePuzzleheaded361@reddit
Not sure what you mean. Pip can be claimed while you work. I have claimed pip and worked. Also had a car. The assessors dont decide they assess and decision makers read the report and decide. You judging invisible illness with none of the facts.
Beginning-Annual-860@reddit
Troll
Scarred_fish@reddit
What is your target budget for pothole repairs presented to elected members.
What is the budget they approve.
MountainMuffin1980@reddit
If people just knew to ask for something specific they'd be much more likely to get an answer.
Not going to out the area I worked in but we'd get ones like this (pretending I worked in the NHS)
"I would like a list of all breaches of health and safety regulations in the NHS". It's too broad and would immediately meet the threshold for being too onerous and expensive to respond to.
If someone wants to dig dirt on their local hospital, and wants to do so due to how their family were treated in 2022, then just narrow the scope of the question like that!
Adventurous-Idea1473@reddit
i dont work public sector but i often read my local councils FOIs. the main thing ive spotted is that people are usually unaware of what info is already published or publically avaialable. if they knew and had checked that stuff first theyd probably be able to ask more targeted questions.
RedTheWolf@reddit
This is so true, I used to answer FOISA requests years ago for my health board and the number of people who simply didn't check the website to see that we had already published the info under the publications scheme was... a lot.
Plus half the requests were from lazy 'journalists' who would do this so they could add a little snidey 'using information we obtained under FOI' sentence to their story (as if they had fought us to get to some hidden data or something) when all I did was reply to them with a link to where the info was already publicly available 🤣
IranianAlan@reddit
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ The issue with it is was Sales companies would use it for obviously getting insider info some of the would be like err no fuck off stuff like Can you tell me how much you spend on Satalite Phones with what provider in the event of an emergency, how many phones do you have and who has them etc? or Can we have a full map of your network including suppliers, vendors, number of sites etc. Utterly stupid requests
bluejackmovedagain@reddit
Average case loads /patient assignments or other workload metrics are almost always misreported across health, social services, probation and similar.
You need to be specific about the role you are interested in and that you want full time or full time equivalent numbers. Otherwise the average is significantly reduced by part time staff and even if you specify something like case holding / patient facing / front line, that will be interpreted as widely as possible and include students and managers who have their name on one or two files. It's also worthwhile asking for the lowest, highest, median, 25th and 75th centiles, rather than just asking for the "average" as this generally gives you more representative data.
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