Our Ref:         FOI-2094-2021

Thank you for your request received on 18 January 2021 asking for information about members of staff disciplined for IT misuse.
 
Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require.
 
However, to provide the remainder of the information you have requested would still exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
 
Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with a request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. This is calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.
 
We have estimated that it would cost in excess of £3500 to provide a response to your current request. This is because it is estimated that it would take over 140 working hours to retrieve and compile the information you have requested.
 
In the record of all Disciplinary Cases there is a section in the ‘additional fields’ that records the cause of the breach – wherein there is a further option to select specifics including ‘social media’. However there is nothing specific for ‘misuse of IT’. This would be generically recorded under ‘Code of Conduct’ - which can be used for any action where a member of staff is considered to have broken TfL's staff Code of Conduct. We have identified 587 disciplinary cases that have been recorded as ‘Code of Conduct’ issues over the requested two year period. In order to identify which of these cases relate to IT misuse we would need to manually review all of the case files, and then summarise and extract the requested information.
 
To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450 limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. For example, by narrowing the timeframe.
 
Although your request can take the form of a question, rather than a request for specific documents, TfL does not have to answer your question if it would require the creation of new information or the provision of a judgement, explanation, advice or opinion that was not already recorded at the time of your request.
 
Please note that we will not be taking further action until we receive your revised request.
 
In the meantime, if you have any queries or would like to discuss your request, please feel free to contact me.
 
If you are considering submitting a further FOI request please think carefully about whether the request is essential at this current time, as answering FOI requests will require the use of limited resources and the attention of staff who could be supporting other essential activity. Where requests are made, please note that our response time may be impacted by the current situation.
 
Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.
 
Yours sincerely

Gemma Jacob
Senior FOI Case Officer
FOI Case Management Team
General Counsel
Transport for London

[email protected]