Wigan Council refused to admit that its staff were hacking peoples e-mails.
After failing to provide the information for 7 months an intervention by the ICO has forced Wigan Council to disclose the information;
Wigan Council have finally admitted to hacking 3 Councillors IT, but fail to identify who they have hacked, how often or who authorised it....
The Council admits it keeps no records of dates and number of times the Councillors records are accessed.
Sent: Thursday, August 21, 2014 5:51 PM
Subject: Freedom of Information Requests - ID 5335
I am writing to respond to
your freedom of information request This request has
been handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
The response to
your request is detailed below.
Examination of how the Council maintained
network and supported devices are utilised is periodically performed by Internal
Audit to assess all staff and members compliance with the Council's Acceptable
Use of ICT and IT Security policies. This includes appropriate examination of
logs in relation to network security, internet, emails and text messages.
Authorisation to perform these functions is contained within the Constitution.
Where any suspected irregularities are identified then further detailed
investigations are conducted and reported accordingly. Internal Audit activities
are reported 6 monthly to the Audit, Governance and Improvement Review Committee
and also in the Council's statutory disclosure document.
In addition to these planned
reviews, ad hoc investigations are also performed where there is suspected
misuse of Council provided IT based services that could lead to disciplinary
action against officers and/or Members and/or referral to the Police for
prosecution where appropriate.
As outlined in your request I
can provide the following information.
Access to specific members
records was as follows:
2012/13 - 2 members
2013/14 - 1 additional
member
The reason for access to all
records was due to investigations.
There is no record maintained
of the exact dates and number of times records are accessed as all occasions
would have been required for the purpose of the investigations.
If you are unhappy with any aspect of this response, an independent
senior officer will review this decision. Please let me know if you would like
to arrange this.You can also complain to the
Information Commissioner, who is the regulator for Freedom of Information. His
website is www.informationcommisioner.gov.uk
and his helpline number is 0303 1231113.
His staff may ask you to
exhaust our internal complaints procedure if you choose to complain to his
office now.
May I take this opportunity to
apologise for the delay in responding to your request, this is due to the high
volumes currently being received.
Yours Sincerely
Data Protection and Freedom of Information OfficerResources Directorate
Legal & Risk
Wigan Council
Town Hall
Wigan
WN1 1YN
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