BIOLOGY COMMITTEE DOCUMENTATION GUIDELINES
Preparation, storage and accessibility
The Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts mean that we must change the way that we administer the affairs of our committees to ensure that we can fully and efficiently comply with the requirements of these two acts.
In future, all committees will have two classes of information - public information
and exempt information (roughly equivalent to those previously classified as
non-starred and starred documents but with significant changes in the latter
type of information as described below).
Public documents : (whether in electronic or hard copy format and including
agendas, circulated papers as well as minutes) must contain no personal information
[see Biology Data Protection Act Policy] but must contain all other information
that cannot be legitimately withheld under the FOIA. The intention is that all
public documentation will be conveniently and freely available, within and out
with the department, via the web. Documents will normally be made available
via the web as soon as conveniently possible but under some circumstances publication
on the web might be delayed (see conditions later).
Exempt documents : must only contain personal information and/or information
that can reasonably be regarded as exempt under the FOIA. The person responsible
for writing the exempt minutes must be able to justify the inclusion (in a preface
of the Exempt document using a proforma) of every item of information in the
document on the grounds of the FOIA exemptions or the DPA criteria. If the producer
of a document has doubts or questions about compliance with the Acts, the DIC
(Departmental Information Co-ordinator) should be consulted for a provisional
opinion and advice. The normal FOI process will be followed every time a request
for access to the exempt information is received from individuals who have no
authorised access. The fact that exempt information has been withheld must be
noted within the related public documents relating to the same meeting, with
a statement identifying the topic of the exempt minute but not its substance.
The Freedom of Information Act came into force at the beginning of January 2005 and establishes that it is in the public interest for information relating to the affairs of public bodes to be freely accessible. This means that nearly all of the information the department holds on the affairs of its 40+ committees (agendas, discussion papers, minutes, etc.) should be made available to any interested person. The Biology Department has also accepted that there is a need to improve the delivery of information to its own members. As a first step in developing improved access to departmental documentation it is proposed to make as much as conveniently possible freely accessible via the web. Consequently, in future, all departmental documentation must be prepared with this intention in mind. Exempt documents will have to be prepared, stored and made accessible in more structured way than currently.
All or any meeting conducting or considering the affairs of the department and where something is committed to paper. Thus the guidelines apply to all Departmental Committees, related sub-committees and working groups or other ad hoc groups. The current list of Department Committees is available on the web (www.york.ac.uk/depts/biol/dept/comms/DeptOrg/DeptOrg.htm)
All information (whether electronic or hard copy) associated with the Committee - minutes, agenda, and circulated and tabled papers.
Sub-committees and short-term working groups are often formed to consider specific topics and only the summary findings are often included in the documents of the main committee that they report to. In these cases, the full documentation relating to the work of the sub-committees and working groups must also be retained and archived in the manner defined by the ICDB.
Will depend on the nature of the work of the committee. The following guidelines apply to departmentally maintained records only. Current guidelines are:
4.1 Teaching and Course Committees
To be kept in perpetuity:
To be kept for 10 years:
To be kept for 5 years:
4.2 Admin and Research Committees
To be kept in perpetuity:
To be kept for 10 years:
To be kept for 5 years:
The document retention policy for each committee must be clearly stated in the Terms of Reference of the committee. While the above should be considered as general guidelines, Chairs and Secretaries should review each document before disposal to determine whether there are specific items that should be retained, for example background or a statement of a key piece of Departmental policy. A routine agenda item to consider the minutes to be destroyed could be considered. Once departmental information is readily available on the web, individuals will be encouraged to destroy the hard copies of any documents they have been given once they have lost their immediate value. However given that the documents will have been released into the public domain it is accepted that copies of out-of-date documents might remain in the department but such documents will be regarded as personal copies and not departmental information.
The committee Chair is responsible for ensuring that the appropriate information storage and publication processes are complied with. The Secretary of the committee shall be responsible for ensuring that committee members have the appropriate information available to them for considered deliberation and that copies of all documentation are stored and distributed appropriately. The Secretary and Chair shall jointly ensure that the affairs of the committee are accurately and fairly recorded in a timely fashion and made appropriately accessible.
New document handling systems are being explored within the Department. In the meantime, a standard working practice is to be adopted by all Committees. Separate documents covering the public and the exempt information will be produced in an agreed format. The public documents should note whether any exempt items were discussed and provide a reference to the exempt document and an indication of the exempt topics. The Exempt documents should use the standard preface proforma (see section 9) that identifies the grounds for inclusion of items under the Exempt category.
All the public documentation relating to each committee or group should be made available by the web and shall be stored in electronic form in locations and format agreed with the Information Committee of the Department of Biology (ICDB). The overall control of the maintainance of the committee/meeting web pages shall reside with the DIC. Although the DIC will control the placing of information on the web (to provide a compliance check), the DIC can delegate some authority to place certain public information on the web to other members of the department.
All public information about the affairs of a committee should normally be
made available as soon as the minutes have been approved by the committee. If
a committee or group meets very irregularly, the person producing the minutes
should discuss the publication date with the DIC within 8 weeks of the meeting
with the presumption that the minutes will be published at that time.
Under certain circumstances minutes or documents that are intended to be public
at a later date can be restricted to members of the Biology Department for a
defined period, initially up to one year. For example minutes that require formal
approval by a committee can be withheld until after approval at a meeting. There
may be other circumstances that give legitimate ground for delaying publication.
A case for delayed publication can be made by the Chair of any committee to
the DIC and the Chair of ICDB. If it is accepted that there are valid grounds
for delaying publication, a date for publication or reconsideration shall be
agreed. However, the existence of such documents must be acknowledged in the
public list of documents assocated with a committee despite the fact that the
documents themselves will not be publically accessible at that time. The IMSG
will reconsider these guidelines in the light of experience before the end of
2005.
The starting expectation of the Freedom of Information Act is that all documentation relating to all committees should be published and made publicly available (i.e. is "non-exempt"). Exempt information is therefore either personal information that is covered by the Data Protection Act and/or information that can reasonably be regarded as exempt under the FOIA. For the latter, the information has to fall into one of the 23 exemptions provided by the Freedom of Information act, key ones being:
Papers or text that are proposed for exemption should be flagged as such when
they are created and the document should include a standard preface recording
the grounds for exemption and the proposed duration along with any other notes.
Some example of how to go about this are available in the main University guidelines,
part of which is reproduced in Appendix 1.
Should there be any exempt items, then reference to their existence should be
made within the public papers.
Even if an item has been classified as exempt by the committee, it is important
to understand that this proposal must be verified through the full FOI procedure
in response to a specific request for information.
Exempt information shall be kept by the designated administrator.
It is expected that all members of the Department's committees should agree to their names being published in both the Terms of Reference and where they are referred to in any other documentation produced by the committee - unless specific exemptions apply to an individual item in which case the whole item would be classified as exempt.
The only current exceptions to this are:
However, consideration should be given to avoiding identifying someone by name within the minutes by using either more generic terms ("It was reported that….") or referring to offices/posts where appropriate.
Biology FIOA website http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/biol/dept/FOIA
Biology Data Protection Act Policy : see the ICDB committee documents
University guidance on document retention : http://www.york.ac.uk/recordsmanagement/dpa/dppolicy2002.htm#Appendix%202
University guidance on committee papers (to be available shortly)
John Pilmoor
Richard Firn
14/02/05