Resources
Curated guidance links, sample FOI requests for testing, and answers to the questions we hear most often.
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Authoritative guidance
Use these as knowledge sources for your agent. They are public, free, and updated regularly.
Add your own internal FOI policy as a SharePoint knowledge source for organisation-specific nuances.
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Sample emails for testing
Realistic, citizen-voice requests written without the words “FOI”, “Freedom of Information”, “Subject Access Request” or “data protection” — so the agent has to do the work. Click any card to expand it, then use Try it in Outlook to open Outlook on the Web with the subject and body pre-populated.
FOI — Accept
5 examples
Five everyday requests with no exemptions engaged. The agent should triage as “accept” and tell the officer to hand to the existing FOI process.
FOI Accept · Public spend
Request for information — external legal advice spend 2024/25
From J. Patel
FOI Accept · Service performance
Pothole repairs by ward
From S. Mendes
FOI Accept · Workforce data
Adult social care vacancies
From Dr A. Okafor
FOI Accept · Enforcement stats
Fly-tipping fixed penalty notices
From L. Burgess
FOI Accept · Complaints data
Waste collection complaints 2024/25
From R. Choudhury
FOI — Exempt
5 examples
Five requests that each engage at least one FOIA exemption. The agent should identify the issue, refuse to action, and offer to draft a refusal letter for the officer to review.
FOI Exempt · Sweeping scope
Information request — restructure mentions
From P. Greaves
FOI Exempt · Hostile / repeat pattern
ANOTHER request — finance team details
From M. Cresswell
FOI Exempt · Third-party personal data
Information about officer — case 2024/RB/0098
From B. Thornton
FOI Exempt · Law enforcement
Surveillance information request
From C. Whittaker
FOI Exempt · Legal privilege
Legal correspondence — Bramwell Construction dispute
From N. Voss
SAR
5 examples
Five requests where the citizen is clearly asking for their own personal data. The agent should recognise the SAR pattern, refuse to action under FOI, and recommend re-routing to the Data Protection team to handle.
SAR · Everything on file
Information you hold on me
From D. Mottram
SAR · Housing case file
My housing case file
From R. Iqbal
SAR · Meeting notes about me
Notes from my meeting on 4 April
From P. Skarsgard
SAR · Parental SAR for child
My son’s behaviour record this year
From L. Adeyemi
SAR · Ex-employee personnel file
My personnel file
From K. Tomlinson
Frequently asked questions
Will the agent send replies to citizens automatically?
No. The agent only drafts. A human officer must review and send every reply.
Can it search across all our data to answer the request?
No — and this is by design. Copilot operates with the signed-in user’s permissions. FOI responses need a privileged, organisation-wide view, which is why stage 2 (action) stays with your existing FOI process.
What about confidential or sensitive guidance?
Add it as a SharePoint knowledge source and rely on SharePoint permissions. Be aware that the agent will only surface content each user is already allowed to see.
Do we need an AI register entry?
Yes. Treat this like any other AI tool touching information-rights work: assign an owner, document the purpose, and schedule a review.
Can we reuse the pattern for SARs or complaints?
Absolutely. The triage → hand-off → draft pattern works wherever the inbound work needs human judgement on access to data, but the surrounding reading and drafting is repetitive.
Can we build agents for other similar flows?
Yes. This is a worked example of a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) agent: a question or instruction comes in, the agent looks up a curated set of guidance documents, and it generates an answer grounded in that material. The same pattern fits anywhere you have an inbound query plus an authoritative body of guidance — for example procurement queries against contract standing orders, HR questions against your policy library, or planning queries against local development plans.