BIS officials' attempts to 'avoid disclosure' subject of investigation

Category: Computer Investigations

24 October, 2012

An investigation has been launched by Whitehall into allegations that officials from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) used private email accounts to avoid disclosure.

During a recent employment tribunal it emerged that civil servants had been using Hotmail and Yahoo! accounts to conduct business, under the belief they could avoid Freedom of Information Act (FOI) requests, the Daily Telegraph revealed.

Head of the Civil Service Sir Bob Kerslake will now examine computer evidence to determine whether the accounts were used to negotiate with staff at Nominet, an Oxford-based non-profit company that runs databases of web addresses ending in '.uk'.

According to the newspaper, former director of policy at Nominet, Emily Taylor showed that BIS had worked with her former company to keep customers and the public in the dark, alleging during a disability discrimination tribunal that Geoff Smith and Nominet's senior policy adviser Martin Boyle had encouraged staff to delete correspondence, because an "FOI is just around the corner".

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