Response to request under the Dutch equivalent of the Freedom of Information Act (‘Wet Open Overheid’) reveals lacklustre monitoring and reporting was in place for the time it takes to connect emergency callers to a police call handler. Response also reveals over 15,000 callers hung up while waiting to be connected to a call handler between January and August 2023, with the longest waiting time for an emergency caller in 2023 being over 23 minutes.

A few months ago, I had cause to phone the Dutch police, or ‘politie’. This process involves being connected to a centralised calling centre for all emergency services, at which point the generic operator asks you some basic questions to establish which emergency service to connect you to. The operator then connects you to the appropriate call centre for your local area and desired emergency service.

During my call, the initial connection to the generic operator was made quickly. I asked to be connected to the police and the operator put me through. It was at this point that I was made to wait for almost 3 minutes before I was finally connected to a police operator. The operator explained the delay by referring to a general lack of staffing.

In my view, a waiting time of 3 minutes to be connected to a police operator is unacceptably excessive for an emergency call. The experience had made me curious what the police’s performance for responding to emergency calls was. In the UK, this information is published on a monthly basis for each police force, but no such information is available in the Netherlands. So I decided to make a request for information under the ‘Wet Open Overheid’ (WOO), the Dutch version of the Freedom of Information Act.

Contrary to some FOI regimes (such as in the UK), Dutch public authorities are not obliged to accept requests sent online unless they have designated a particular email address or webpage. Requests can always be made by post, though. I submitted my request through the police’s online portal in the following terms.

Please provide me with the following information about the time it takes for the police emergency operator to respond from the moment the generic operator connects a caller to the police:

  1. Targets for the police emergency operator response times;
  2. Average waiting time in seconds for the police emergency operator to answer a call;
  3. Median of the waiting time in seconds for the police emergency operator to answer a call;
  4. Number of times a caller had to wait less than 10 seconds before they were connected with the police emergency operator;
  5. Number of times a caller had to wait between 10 and 60 seconds before they were connected with the police emergency operator;
  6. Number of times a caller had to wait more than 60 seconds before they were connected with the police emergency operator;
  7. Longest waiting time in seconds for a caller to be connected with the police emergency operator;
  8. Number of times a person hung up while waiting, before being connected to the police emergency operator.
My woo request to the dutch police

The response

Under the WOO, the police had to respond within 4 weeks of the date of my request. The police responded fairly quickly with an automated receipt, but I didn’t hear anything from them after that.

After 5 weeks of waiting, I decided to call the police’s WOO phone helpdesk. I was advised that my request had now been assigned to the ‘Landelijke Meldkamer Samenwerking’ or ‘LMS’ (National Control Room Collaboration), a department within the Dutch national police that manages the control rooms for all emergency services. I was subsequently contacted by an LMS staff member, apologising for the delay. They also advised that the information I had requested was not available in any documents and was not easily retrievable from their systems.

I was somewhat surprised by this. To me, it seems that the information I requested should be easily available, in any case as part of proper performance monitoring. It would seem to be in the police’s interests to know how long they are making callers wait in emergencies to establish whether sufficient staffing is in place. I called the staff member and he agreed that he would attempt to retrieve the information I requested from their systems, but that this would be a complicated process. I was happy to wait longer for this process to be completed.

3 weeks later, I still hadn’t heard anything back and was again advised that the process for retrieving the information was complicated and would take some more time. Again, I was happy to wait some additional time.

Ultimately, I ended up getting a formal response approximately 4 months after I originally made my request. The response stated that the information I requested was not available in any standard monitoring reports and was not easily retrievable, but that the police had made an effort to retrieve the information they could for the time period between January and August 2023.

  1. No response.
  2. Average waiting time was 11.96 seconds.
  3. Median waiting time was 11.00 seconds.
  4. No response.
  5. No response.
  6. No response.
  7. Longest waiting time in seconds was 1398 seconds (23 minutes 18 seconds).
  8. A total of 15,013 callers hung up while waiting, constituting 2.15% of the total number of callers (698,345).
LMS’s response to my request for information

I was grateful for the LMS staff members’ efforts. However, I was surprised that the information I requested wasn’t part of standard and consistent monitoring for the LMS, as it appears to be crucial information to determine the LMS control rooms’ performance. Perhaps my request has prompted them to make changes to include this information in their standard monitoring reports.

The WOO enforcement process

As for the lateness in responding, this seems to be a general ‘feature’ of the Dutch WOO request process. Recent reports suggest that public authorities take 172 days to respond on average (grossly exceeding the 4-week legal maximum). Requesters do not have the benefit of a WOO regulator, similar to ICO as the FOI regulator in the UK. Instead, if a public authority does not respond properly, requesters have to apply to a district court for an order requiring the public authority to respond. In my view, this is an inefficient system that does not stimulate timely responses by public authorities, as requesters are unlikely to have the legal knowledge required to make a formal court application. Additionally, it doesn’t solve the problem of late responses, as it takes time for a court to decide on an application and the ultimate outcome is an order that the public authority must comply with that particular request. In the UK, the ICO has the power to issue practice directions and enforcement notices when a public authority persistently breaches its FOI obligations. The Dutch system could clearly benefit from such a regulator.

Overall, it seems to me to be most effective to informally chase up Dutch public authorities if they don’t respond on time. Most staff members seem to be happy – albeit slow – to help. I would expect to only make a formal court application if informal chasers are ineffective or if I believe the public authority is intentionally dragging its heels.