| IR/Job | Information request (AKA Job) is a request for information coming in by various allowed media including email and letter. |
| Activity/ (sub)Task | Part of the work of responding to an IR that is allocated to a person to do. Not a department, a person. A dept must allocate responsibility to a “dept Rep”. |
| Request Status | This is the status of the request as it is processed. For example, Logged, Clarifying, Allocated (to Dept Reps), Information Collated, Redaction, Legal sign off, etc.) Some of them change the day duration remaining count. |
| Request Type | Refers to various types of request with different day counts for response, days included (Weekends or bank holidays) inclusion on Public Disclosure Log, etc. |
| IRMs/IRM | Information Request Management system AKA Job Tracker or Case Management or ticketing system. |
| IRO | Information request owner – responsible for allocating tasks and collating the response and obtaining its approval before sending out the finished answer to te applicant. Also responsible for choosing what is public disclosure log material and for expediting the job. Should also store adequate notes for re-usability of that work. |
| Dept Rep | The person in a department/ directorate who is responsible for providing facts from that business unit for the owner. May also send response in some organisations. Then takes on and has to be trained for the IRO responsibilities above. |
| FOI 2000/FOISA 2002 | Freedom of Information / Freedom of information Acts in England Wales and NI and in Scotland respectively. |
| EIR | Environmental Information Request. |
| FOIR | Freedom of Information Request. |
| SAR | Subject Access request. |
| Calendar Days | Any day of the week. For example, SARs need to be answered in a calendar month – normally translated as 28 days – potentially adjusted in certain circumstances. |
| Working days | EIR and FOI requests have to be answered in 20 ( with extensions in certain circumstances) working days. These are defined as excluding weekends and bank holidays in the organisation’s jurisdiction. |
| Bank holidays | These are defined differently in different countries and hence are managed in each client’s system individually. |
| Reviews and Appeals | A small proportion of IRs may not meet the satisfaction of parties involved and the IR may be Reviewed and there may be an Appeal. |
| Complaints | Both complaints about FOI and general complaints and other information requests may be automated through the system each process having appropriate template documents for automated and semi automated responses. |
| Auto Acknowledgements | Automatic correspondence to confirm receipt of the IR to the Applicant ( and often inform them of response times, conditions, processes and their rights to complain if they wish). |
| email alerts (Triggers) | automated emails specified by the public sector body for how applicants, dept reps, IROs are messaged in order to expedite the IR and any sub tasks in a timely fashion. |
| Mail merge documents | Templated documents that merge in contact details of the applicant or dept rep and information about the relevant request, response, deadlines, references, etc. |
| Public Disclosure Log | A publicly available, searchable presentation of information about the EIRs and FOI requests’ responses to reduce duplication of work as well as for transparency. |
| Applicant Blind | A dept rep who may see only the information required for collecting the data required to respond and cannot see information about the Applicant. |
| Super User/ Systems Admin | Person(s) responsible in your business for making sure the users have appropriate authorities granted (including adding users and retiring user accounts when they leave). Also has access to to old for changing many systems parameters – status drop downs, vocabulary, document standard templates an many other items. |
| OIC | Office of the Information Commissioner (refers to any where in UK except Scotland). |
| OSIC | Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner. |
| .Information Commissioner Reports/OSIC Reports | Reports that must be provided to the respective Information Commissioner for your jurisdiction. |
| Spam or vexations requests | Requests which do not meet criteria for a “real” request. |
