An information professional responsible for sharing sensitive commercial information with public bodies is calling for safeguards to ensure that confidential information is not inadvertently made public under the Freedom of Information Act.

Kevin Miles, head of knowledge management at Transport Laboratories Limited, which works with a number of public bodies including Transport for London (TfL), told IWR: "We are not a public authority, but 70% of our work is for public authorities, so our information is going to go into the public sector domain via our customers."

He warned: "Because of the complexity of marking information that we have a duty of confidentiality to, it may be disclosed - and if it were disclosed we would sue the public body for the disclosure."

He added: "I think this is a fundamental issue for records management staff in both the public and private sectors. If we can't get clear guidance from the DCA then we need to drive the issue ourselves and set the standards we need in order to do our work."

Miles has been asking public authorities that have provided FoI guidance how they wish to be informed of sensitive information within the documents and emails exchanged during the course of their business.

He said: "Some public authorities have told us they intend to consult us whenever any FOI request contains TRL information. Whilst I applaud the intentions I doubt they will be able to follow it through."

"If each public authority and their contractors and suppliers adopt differing standards or methods, staff in each public authority will be faced with a bewildering range of forms, appendices and hand-marked documents. In these circumstances I frankly doubt the strength of document scrutiny to ensure our thoughts are taken into account."

A representative for TfL commented that in the absence of any standard mark-up guidelines supporting the FoI Act, it has suggested that documentation produced by suppliers in the procurement process has an appendix highlighting any sensitive information. He added that while it would make it easier for the public bodies to spot confidential information if it was marked in a standard way, in the absence of guidelines the onus fell on suppliers to make sure confidential information was clearly flagged.

TfL is so far the only body that has asked TRL to identify sensitive information contained in tendering or contractual negotiation documentation, but Miles has concerns about less structured information contained in emails or minutes being revealed. "This represents a fraction of the information and correspondence exchanged during a research contract."