FOI 41-22: Attempts to access blocked websites at the Northern Ireland Assembly

Information Standards Freedom of Information Response

Our Ref: FOI 41-22

3 October 2022

Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“FOIA”)

I am writing to confirm that the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission (Assembly Commission) has processed your request dated 31 August 2022 in line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. In your request, you asked:

“Please outline for each of the past 2 years, attempts that have been made to access blocked websites at the Northern Ireland Assembly on their internet service.

Please breakdown for year, and on Wi-Fi/internet access options of Staff, Party, Guest, and any other internet access options.

Please detail the number of requests to each of the blocked requested sites.

Please list for each year, the 50 most popular websites accessed that were NOT blocked or banned. Please breakdown for each year and internet access, i.e. staff, party, etc.”

Blocked Websites

Due to the dynamic nature of the content on most modern websites, a request for a single web page nearly always results in content being drawn from many other websites, many of which are unrelated to the originally requested website. This content usually is in the form of advertisements which the Assembly Commission strives to block in line with corporate policy.

Websites Accessed

Each web page that is accessed by a user as a result of an internet search or by clicking on a link, results in multiple automatic redirects that are invisible to the user but are recorded by the monitoring software. Therefore, the reports drawn from this monitoring software will illustrate a proportion of hits that were unknowingly made by the end user.

1) Please outline for each of the past 2 years, attempts that have been made to access blocked websites at the Northern Ireland Assembly on their internet service.

The Assembly Commission has completed a review of its records and found that some of the requested information is held by the Assembly Commission.

Statistics are only available for those websites that were accessed from IT equipment connected to the Assembly Commission’s wired network.

Please note that the Assembly Commission’s statistics on blocked websites are held for a maximum period of six months after which they are overwritten.

A copy of the report covering the period 7/3/2022 to 5/9/22 is attached in Appendix A.

2) Please breakdown for year, and on Wi-Fi/internet access options of Staff, Party, Guest, and any other internet access options.

The Assembly Commission has completed a review of its records and found that the dataset requested relating to the Assembly Commission’s wired network is held only in its raw form. For the purpose of section 11(5) of the FOIA, a “dataset” means information comprising a collection of information held in electronic form where all or most of the information in the collection—

(a) has been obtained or recorded for the purpose of providing a public authority with information in connection with the provision of a service by the authority or the carrying out of any other function of the authority,

(b) is factual information which—

(i) is not the product of analysis or interpretation other than calculation, and

(ii) is not an official statistic and

otherwise materially altered since it was obtained or recorded.

The Assembly Commission anticipates that the dataset would require material alteration, reorganisation and adaptation in order to comply with this request.

Furthermore, the FOIA does not require the creation of datasets for publication, nor does it require datasets to be updated if they would not otherwise have been updated as part of the Assembly Commission’s statutory functions.

No data is available for those websites that were accessed from IT equipment connected to the Assembly Commission’s WIFI network.

The Assembly Commission has no other internet access options.

3) Please detail the number of requests to each of the blocked requested sites.

The Assembly Commission has completed a review of its records and found that some of the requested information is held by the Assembly Commission.

As noted in part 1 of this response, a copy of the report for the period 07/03/2022 – 05/09/2022 has been outlined in Appendix A, as attached.

4) Please list for each year, the 50 most popular websites accessed that were NOT blocked or banned. Please breakdown for each year and internet access, i.e. staff, party, etc.”

The Assembly Commission has completed a review of its records and found that some of the requested information is held by the Assembly Commission.

Please note that the Assembly Commission’s statistics on blocked websites are held for a maximum period of six months after which they are overwritten.

This report notes the ‘Top 50’ sites, by number of hits, accessed by users on the internal wired network for the period 07/03/2022 – 05/09/2022.

A copy of the report has been outlined in Appendix B, as attached.

You have the right to request a formal review by the Assembly Commission and if you wish to do so, please write to me at the above address. If after such an internal review you are still unhappy with the response, you may appeal to the Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF which will undertake an independent review.

The Assembly Commission may publish details of your FOI request and its official response within the organisational disclosure log. The request will be completely anonymised and you will not be identified in any way. This is to meet the requirements as laid out by in the agreed publication scheme with the Information Commissioners’ Office.

Yours sincerely

Data Protection and Governance Officer