I was reading your 2017 Annual Report (link attached) and at p152 you refer to the Oyster Click Model. Please would you provide me with a copy of the Oyster Clicks Model(s) covering the period 1 January 2015 to present. http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-annual-report-and-statement-of-accounts-2017-18.pdf

---

Dear

TfL Ref: FOI-2194-1819

Thank you for your emails asking for information about the Oyster Clicks Model (OCM).

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and our information access policy.  I can confirm we do hold the information you require.

However, we are refusing your request under section 14(1) of the Act. After reviewing the scale of the task of providing the data and outputs from the Oyster Click model, we consider it would place an unreasonable burden on us. Just four weekly period contains about 20GB of travel data. Providing you with the requested data that the model uses and the outputs since Aug 2016 would not be reasonably possible. We are only able to email up to 20MG of data at a time. As 1GB contains over 1000MGs, we would have to send you thousands of individual emails to answer your current request.

Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London and we consider that answering this request would represent a disproportionate effort. It would be a significant distraction from our work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already limited resources and placing an unacceptable burden on our technical team. We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that your request falls under section 14(1) of the FOI Act, this does not reflect a conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our resources.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance states that one of the indicators of a request which may fall under section 14(1) is that it “appears to be part of a completely random approach, lacks any clear focus, or seems to have been solely designed for the purpose of ‘fishing’ for information without any idea of what might be revealed.”

The ICO guidance provides the following examples of a ‘fishing expedition’ request which may fall under section 14(1) if it:

- Imposes a burden by obliging the authority to sift through a substantial volume of information to isolate and extract the relevant details;

- Encompasses information which is only of limited value because of the wide scope of the request;

- Creates a burden by requiring the authority to spend a considerable amount of time considering any exemptions and redactions.

We consider the burden of retrieving and supplying the data would be disproportionate to the benefit of providing it. Therefore, we are refusing it under s.14 of the FOI Act. If you would like to re-submit a more specific request then we will, of course, consider it.

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

Back to top

---