Department reference: FOI-5185
John Black
By email: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Dear John Black
Freedom of Information Request FOI-5185
Notice of Practical Refusal under section 24AB(2) and invitation to engage in a
request consultation process
I refer to your request of 08 June 2024 to the Department of Health and Aged Care (the
department), seeking access to the following documents under the
Freedom of
Information Act 1982 (Cth) (the FOI Act). The scope of your request is as follows:
I request the invoices and receipts in relation to the "Medical Costs Finder" project.
Where the total amount exceeds $1000, or where there are related invoices or receipts
the total value of those (in similar vein to https://www.ato.gov.au/forms-and-
instructions/depreciating-assets-guide-2008/immediate-deduction-for-certain-non-
business-depreciating-assets-costing-300-or-less/not-part-of-a-set ) exceed $1000
On 19 June 2024 the department acknowledged your request and conducted an
informal scope clarification with you, advising that your request in its current form
could be an unreasonable diversion of resources to process.
The department did not receive a response from you, and as such began search &
retrieval.
Power to refuse request
I am an officer authorised under subsection 23(1) of the FOI Act to make decisions in
relation to FOI requests.
I am writing to notify you that I believe the work involved in processing your request
in its current form would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the
department from its other operations. This constitutes a ‘practical refusal reason’
under section 24AA of the FOI Act.
I am currently considering refusing your access request on the basis of the practical
refusal reason. However, before I make a final decision on your request, you have an
GPO Box 9848 Canberra ACT 2601
- www.health.gov.au
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opportunity to revise your request to remove the practical refusal reason. This is called
a ‘request consultation process’ as per section 24AB of the FOI Act.
Practical refusal reason
Section 24AA(1) of the FOI Act provides that a
practical refusal reason exists in relation
to a request for a document or either (or both) of the following applies:
(a) the work involved in processing the request would substantially and
unreasonably divert the resources of the agency from its other operations; or
(b) the request does not satisfy the requirement in paragraph 15(2)(b).
My assessment of the section 24AA(1)(a) practical refusal reason is as follows:
Search and retrieval of documents
The department has undertaken preliminary searches for documents in scope of your
request, as per the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s Freedom of
Information Guidelines [at 3.89].
These searches were undertaken by officers of the department with knowledge of and
responsibility for the subject of your request, having regard to the department’s record
management systems and the age of the documents sought.
This preliminary search has so far taken the department approximately
2 hours to
identify 600 documents potentially relevant to your request.
Extraction and scheduling of documents
To process your request further, the department would need to extract the
approximately 600 documents from its record management and/or computer systems
and manually review each document to ensure that it falls within scope of your
request.
On the basis that extraction and conversion of documents to an editable format would
take approximately 1 minute per document, I estimate that the extraction process
would take at least
10 hours to complete. Duplicate documents would also be
identified and removed during this process.
The department would then need to create a schedule of documents in scope of the
request. On the basis that it would take approximately 1 minute per document to enter
the required information into a table, I estimate that the scheduling process would take
approximately
10 hours to complete.
Assessment
As the delegated FOI decision maker for this request, I would then be required to read
and assess each page of each document in scope of your request against the FOI Act to
decide whether to grant, refuse or defer access to the information in any document in
scope of your request.
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If all documents identified as potentially relevant to your request were determined to
be in scope of your request, I would need to review
1,200 pages of material.
On the basis that assessment would take me an average of 3 minutes per page, I
estimate that it would take me
60 hours to make a decision on access to the documents
potentially in scope of your request.
Third party consultation
The department may need to consult with affected third parties in accordance with the
statutory provisions of section 27 of the FOI Act.
A preliminary review of documents potentially in scope of your request indicate that
40 third parties may need to be consulted in relation to you request, as per section 27
of the FOI Act.
I estimate that it would take the department approximately
40 hours for consultation
to prepare, send, receive, interpret and apply any correspondence with third parties,
noting that this estimate may change as further assessment work is undertaken.
Document preparation
Once I had assessed each of the documents in scope of your request, officers of the
department would then need to prepare the documents in scope of your request by
applying any relevant deletions or exemptions. Assuming this process would take an
average of 3 minutes per page, I estimate that it would take the department
60 hours to prepare the documents for decision.
The department would also need to prepare a statement of reasons as required by
section 15 the FOI Act. I anticipate it would take an officer of the department
approximately
2 hours to prepare this statement of reasons for my final review and
decision.
Summary
As outlined above, I estimate that it would take the department at least
184 hours (or
24 business days) to process your request, as summarised below:
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You could revise your request by narrowing the scope of the request and/or providing
greater detail about the documents you wish to access. Providing more specific
information about the format, timeframes, and substance of the documents you are
interested in will enable the department to conduct targeted searches for documents
of interest.
The request consultation period runs for 14 days and starts on the day after you receive
this notice.
Before the end of the consultation period, you must do one of the following, in writing:
withdraw your request
make a revised request, or
tell us that you do not wish to revise your request.
If you do not do one of the three things listed above during the consultation period,
or you do not consult the contact person during this period, your request will be taken
to have been withdrawn.
If you agree to revise your request in a way that removes the practical refusal reason
outlined above, the department will recommence processing your request. Please
note: as per section 24AB(8) of the FOI Act the time taken to consult you regarding the
scope of your request is not counted in the statutory timeframe provided for
processing your request.
Please contact FOI section on the contact details below if you have any questions or
require assistance responding to the practical refusal notice.
Legislative provisions
The FOI Act, including the provisions referred to above, are available on the Federal
Register of Legislation website: www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C2004A02562
Contact officer
For the purposes of this consultation, you may contact the FOI Section on
(02) 6289 1666, or you can email us at xxx@xxxxxx.xxx.xx.
Yours sincerely
Toni Patrick
A/g Assistant Secretary
Private Health Strategy Branch
16 July 2024
