Norfolk Police have decided to disclose the £10k invoice that they sent UEA at the start of the year.
The covering letter for the FOI disclosure is here. The constabulary's explanation for the transaction is as follows:
Whilst conducting their investigation into the acquisition of data from the computers at the University of East Anglia, the Investigation Team engaged the services of a company with the ability to forensically examine the relevant server from the UEA. The Independent Review, chaired by Sir Muir Russell, subsequently requested access to certain data on this server and the Constabulary facilitated the request by acting as a conduit to confirm the requirement and the cost of meeting it. Norfolk Constabulary was subsequently invoiced for all work undertaken and UEA subsequently reimbursed the Constabulary for the work that had been completed at their request.
More information about the relevant work is publically available on the website of the Independent Climate Change Email Inquiry at http://www.cce-review.org/index.php
the following documents are relevant:
Appendix 6 of the Inquiry Report – Data Mining – Access to the Original CRU Email Archive Written Evidence – Initial Report and Commentary on Email Examination
The invoice, along with some interesting correspondence is here.
It appears that Qinetiq billed Norfolk Police £8910 plus VAT for extracting emails from the backup server on 27 May 2010. This was charged to the cost centre for the police investigation, which we learn is called "Operation Cabin". Nearly six months later on 23 November, the officer in charge of the police inquiry, Julian Gregory, emailed Russell panel member Jim Norton:
We are catching up with invoices from Qinetic as they have been a little tardy in billing us and we have an invoice for £8910.00, which is for the extraction of data for Sir Muir Russell's review. Can you please advise who we should send this to?
The "tardiness" was obviously not real, and Gregory was presumably covering up the fact that the police had been sitting on the invoice for such a long time. This small untruth appears to be of little consequence to me.
The friendly response from Norton was that it should be directed to Brian Summers, the UEA registrar and he wishes Gregory and his team well. Later we see an email from Summers to Gregory advising that this will be paid. Summers and Gregory seem very friendly, with the UEA man addressing the policeman as "Greg". Somehow this makes me slightly uncomfortable.
Intriguingly, the invoice recharging the amount from Qinetic is dated a further four months later on 28 March 2011. This is slightly before I asked UEA for financial information about the inquiries (a request I placed on 15 April). I wonder whether there was some discussion of the financials prior to that date, or perhaps other requests? I shall have to do some follow-up there.
Lastly, the narrative on the recharge invoice says
Extraction of emails per Sir Muir review as per email agreement
Strangely, the covering letter says that there is no contracting relating to the work. However, it also says that some further correspondence is being considered for disclosure, so I shall wait to see what is revealed.
Bishop Hill