I would be grateful if you could kindly consider the following request. Should this likely run into a S.12 exemption (or similar) owing to breadth, I would welcome the opportunity to narrow it down before summary rejection. - information pertaining to meetings (I imagine this will take the form of a list) undertaken between senior leadership members of tfl (likely those found in the Chiefs description on the website) and private companies (this could be traditional tech companies, for instance, or those running bike/potential scooter rental schemes, and others) regarding data (which I would take to include, to name a few examples, transfer, security, collection, sharing between tfl and the company and vice versa). For each meeting, I would like to know attendance (in a manner consistent with data protection), date, location, who are represented (e.g. what company, even if names cannot be given), and the purpose of the meeting. Temporally, I would appreciate this going back as far as might be reasonable within a request. Should a date be required, from 2018 -present would be ideal. i'd be happy to restrict further should this be required. Best and thank you for your time,

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TfL Ref: FOI-3556-1920

Thank you for your request, detailed below, received by Transport for London (TfL) on 19^th February 2020.

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.

I can confirm that we hold the information you require. However, it is not possible to provide it within the £450 costs limit for responding to cases as set out in section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. Under section 12 of the Act, a public authority is not obliged to provide information if it would exceed the cost limit to determine if the information is held, and to then locate, retrieve or extract it from other information. This is calculated at a rate of £25 per hour, equivalent to 18 hours work.

Given the wording of your request, there is no particularly easy or efficient way for us to source the information you have requested. As shown on our website (https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/corporate-governance/chief-officers) there are currently 9 Chief Officers at TfL. The only way to find out what meetings they each had over the last 2 years or so (since the beginning of 2018) would be for somebody to look through each and every working day of their Outlook calendars. Given that there are around 250 working days in a year (365 days less weekends and bank holidays), this would mean reviewing 4,500 separate days for the two years in question (250 days multiplied by 2 years multiplied by 9 staff). Even if this could be done at a rate of 30 seconds per day (simply to review each day and note down any meetings that potentially fit the description in your request) this would take 2,250 minutes, or 37.5 hours. Furthermore, a similar process would also need to be undertaken for any individuals who were formerly Chief Officers within this timeframe. However, this would still not answer your request. Rather, it would simply provide a list of meetings that potentially fall within the scope of your request. It is unlikely that there will be enough information from a calendar entry for somebody to necessarily determine whether or not the meeting was with a private company and whether the meeting was regarding ‘data’, and therefore further details about each potential meeting would need to be found, taking more time still. Even then, when any relevant meeting was pinpointed it would take even more time to find out the specific details you have requested. Given all this, we believe that the actual time taken to respond to your request will be far in excess of the £450 / 18-hour limit.

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. If you choose to do so, I would advise that you read the guidance provided by the Information Commissioner on how best to request information from a public body, that can be found on its website here:

https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/official-information/

Note that the advice states that applicants should, “Be as specific as possible about the information you want rather than asking general questions.” Therefore, if you do choose to submit a revised request, I would ask that you not only consider whether you need information for all Chief Officers and for two years (or whether you could narrow your request to specific individuals within a particular targeted period of time), but that you also name the specific “private companies” that you are interested in, and that you define more clearly what is meant by meetings “regarding data”. I would advise that you be explicit – so, rather than use phrases such as “for instance”, “to include”, or “for example”, which are not exclusive, be definite about what exact companies and subjects you are interested in. The more specific the request, the more likely it is that we will be able to respond within the costs limit. However, note from the explanation given above, any attempt to review the calendars of multiple staff for any length of time is likely in itself to be an excessively time-consuming task.

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

Yours sincerely,

David Wells

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

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