[wdmmg-discuss] Still no joy with HMRC

Mon Apr 26 19:07:50 UTC 2010

I can definitely help with a pseudo-MDX query that will mean something
to the Terasolve consultants. Shall we do it tomorrow?

On 26 April 2010 20:05, Julian Todd <julian at goatchurch.org.uk> wrote:
> Reminds me.  I need help to draft my appeal to my FOI request for 23
> records.  The answer they gave was "we don't know what you mean by 'a
> record'".
>
> Julian.
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 4:48 PM, Lisa Evans <lisa.evans at okfn.org> wrote:
>> My reply is at the bottom of the email.
>>
>> On Wed, 14 Apr 2010, Donovan Hide wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I just got off of the phone with Vilosh Brito, the CEO of Information
>>> Edge,
>>> the company that created Terasolve and Camelot/Prove, which is the
>>> platform
>>> that COINS sits on.
>>>
>>> He was very helpful and agreed to forward on an email from me to an
>>> official
>>> at the Treasury, to see if it would be ok for him and Information Edge to
>>> assist with the design of an extract of the data which meets all the
>>> caveats
>>> that have been specified in the previously denied FOI requests.
>>>
>>> Apparently, the relevant people at the Treasury are bored of spending all
>>> their time with lawyers! So it makes a lot of sense, if permission is
>>> given,
>>> for the designers of the system to build a simple query (a rough quote of
>>> 1/2 day's work) that excludes all the sensitive data.
>>>
>>> This might include:
>>> - public corporations
>>> - military spending
>>> - secret service spending
>>> - future forecast data
>>> - "what if" modelling data
>>> - data that is known to be incorrect
>>>
>>> Information Edge had issues with the schema of the database being
>>> released,
>>> because that represents their intellectual property. That seems fair
>>> enough
>>> really, seeing as they have designed a system that lets you run a
>>> country!!!
>>> What this means is that some of the dimensions could well be stripped
>>> away.
>>> But as long as the fact data, ie. the transactions, are kept, then it will
>>> still be useful.
>>>
>>> Another issue was that the data would almost definitely not reconcile with
>>> the national accounts without that IP being present. I think this explains
>>> the Treasury's belief that people would complain as a result of the data
>>> being released. I think clear notices of this fact when the data is
>>> presented would mitigate that risk.
>>>
>>> The data could potentially be extracted as an XMLA file, but Information
>>> Edge might have a better suggestion.
>>>
>>> So, I've got to describe to Vilosh, in detail how he can help us, so that
>>> he
>>> can get permission to do so. Does anyone have anything they want me to
>>> include?
>>
>> This is excellent Donnovan, thank you for this great help.
>>
>> If it's not too late, I'd like to ask Vilosh how we can best ask for:
>>
>> - all spending associated with the current programme objects.
>> - a small number, let's say 23, complete COINS records.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>