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Staff disciplined for misuse of social media (1362A/21)

Request

Over the last five years, broken down by year.

  • Number of staff disciplined for misusing social media and IT systems.
  • In each incident please detail the platform e.g., Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, work Email, etc
  • Please also detail the nature of the incident e.g. posted confidential data
  • And the outcome e.g. first written warning, final written warning, dismissal etc.

Response

Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).

The reason for this is that the Information in relation to “Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, work Email, etc”, is not a central recording category or is not held in an electronically retrievable format within our (PSD) Professional Standards department. Our PSD recording systems do not have a specific complaint or conduct allegation type that can be searched upon.

Therefore upon review it has been identified that the only way to retrieve results is to use a keyword search.

Keyword searches are notoriously unreliable, the reasons why searches using this method are not reliable include (but are not limited to) the following:-

  1. a) Searches rely on the keywords being spelt correctly with no grammatical errors
  2. b) Searches rely on the keywords actually being mentioned in the summary description of the record – if they are mentioned anywhere else within the record but not in the summary, then they will not feature in any results

Therefore the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.”

I am unable to suggest any practical way in which your request may be modified in order to satisfy your query or bring it within the 18 hours stipulated by the Regulations. I am however willing to consider any refinements that you are able to make to your request, in accordance with Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act.  If you would like to look into refining your request please contact me.

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