A digital shift to accessing Freedom of Information (FOI) requests has been noted by the Guelph Police Services as 82 per cent of FOI requests came by electronic format in 2021.
Requests submitted through the online format jumped to 65 per cent in 2021, with 66 per cent coming from online requests, seven per cent by email and eight per cent by fax.
Of the 439 new FOI requests in 2021, only 18 per cent were submitted by mail.
The GPS released 95 per cent of the ROI response electronically, with only three people attending G.O. to retrieve their response.
In August 2019, the FOI online request system went live.
The annual report says of the 439 FOI requests the GPS received in 2021, the office responded to 430.
“The number of requests received in 2021 was up nine per cent as compared with 2020 and in line with the average of the last several months,” the report says.
The total number of requests received outside the FOI process in 2021 saw a sharp decrease compared to 2020, with 68 requests recorded in the past year compared to 87 in 2020.
The five-year trend shows 2019 has the highest recorded number of these requests at 91.
The funds received through FOI requests totalled $4,334 with the fee to open an FOI request of $5.
The FOI analyst responded to requests in an average of 17 days, well below the 30-day mark set out by the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (MFIPPA).
Only 19 requests did not meet the MFIPPA 30-day threshold, with those requests not meeting the threshold down eight per cent compared to 2020.
No complaints were received from the requests regarding turnaround time.
