Access to Information Orders
Decision Information
The requester (now the appellant) made a request under the
Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act) to the City of Ottawa (the City) for access to records relating to the evaluation of proposals submitted to the Request for Proposal (RFP) process for the provision of transportation services. In particular, the appellant requested all records, notes, reports, memoranda, scoring sheets, etc. prepared during the bid evaluation process by any employee of the City or any consultant and/or contractor employed by the City who was assigned to evaluate submissions received by the City in response to the said RFP.
Decision Content
NATURE OF THE APPEAL:
The requester (now the appellant) made a request under the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (the Act) to the City of Ottawa (the City) for access to records relating to the evaluation of proposals submitted to the Request for Proposal (RFP) process for the provision of transportation services. In particular, the appellant requested all records, notes, reports, memoranda, scoring sheets, etc. prepared during the bid evaluation process by any employee of the City or any consultant and/or contractor employed by the City who was assigned to evaluate submissions received by the City in response to the said RFP.
The City’s initial decision only granted access to some of the requested records. The City denied access to the records, in part or in full, on the basis of section 7 (advice or recommendations), section 10 (third party information), and section 11 (economic and other interests) of the Act.
With regard to the section 10 claim, the City notified the two affected parties of the request for access and sought their representations. Subsequent to the receipt of those representations, the City issued a further decision that permitted access to additional records of one of the third parties, in part, and denied access to the remainder of the records, again, on the basis of section 10 (third party information).
During mediation, the appellant indicated that it was no longer interested in information regarding one of the affected parties (the losing bidder), so those records were removed from the scope of the appeal. Mediation was unsuccessful in every other respect and the appeal was moved to the inquiry stage.
Initially, I sought representations from the City and the remaining affected party on the relevant issues. I received those representations and shared the non-confidential portions of them with the appellant. I also sought and received representations from the appellant.
RECORDS:
The records at issue in this appeal are grouped as follows based on the information they contain:
- A cost per point roll-up – page 16
- Options/rating comments – pages 17-24, 28-39, 48-53, 54-59, and 60-65
- Rating detail – pages 25-27, 40-44, and 45-47
- A draft evaluation – pages 66-88
- A draft analysis – pages 89-97
- Charts and slides – pages 98-110
DISCUSSION:
ADVICE TO GOVERNMENT
The City applied section 7 to exempt almost all of the records in group 4, at pages 66 to 88. These pages actually comprise two draft reports, both entitled evaluations of the financial proposals, dated February 12, 2002 and February 28, 2002.
General principles
Section 7(1) states: