Dear Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development,

I am writing to you to request information pertaining to your Information Technology infrastructure.

Namely, I am after records detailing the IPv4 (and if relevant,
IPv6) addresses used to access the public internet from within your network.

To clarify, these are the public facing addresses of your private network. I am only requesting addresses that are used to access the general public internet.

In addition, if it is such that a particular IP address serves a
particular area within your department (for example, one IP address is used for Media Relations, while another is used for Ministerial Communications), I also request access to this information.

To assist you in locating this information, I suggest it would be found in network documentation, or at the very least in configuration files of your
router and firewall equipment.

Please do not hesitate to reply if you require clarification to
fulfil this request.

I look forward to your response.

Yours faithfully,

Ben Fairless

Dear Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development,

I refer to my request sent via Right to Know. The full request can be found here: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/7...

I forgot to add that I would prefer this request be treated as a request for administrative access. If for some reason the request cannot be dealt with in this way, please treat it as a formal application under the Freedom of Information Act (from the date it was initially received).

Please can you confirm receipt of my initial request and this amendment?

Yours faithfully,

Ben Fairless

Dear Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development's handling of my FOI request 'IT Network Documentation - IPv4/v6 Public Facing addresses'.

I contend that the information exists in a recorded form. Information on the Public IP address that the Department uses MUST exist, at a minimum, in the device that connects the Department to the Internet. Otherwise the Department would be unable to communicate with other public IP addresses.

My FOI request advised the Decision Maker that they may find this information in "network documentation, or at the very least in configuration files of your router and firewall equipment." It would appear that the Decision Maker has not done this or has received incorrect information from the IT Teams within the Department.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/i...

Yours faithfully,

Ben Fairless

Dear Freedom of Information Coordinator,

REQUEST FOR INTERNAL REVIEW

I refer to your email of 5 August 2014. It is unclear if your email is an Internal Review Decision or not, however as it is non-compliant with your obligations under the FOI Act (specifically s.26 of the Act) I have assumed that it is not an Internal Review Decision.

Please find my response to your concerns below.

Original Email is a request for Internal Review
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I fail to understand how my email of July 31, 2014 is not considered as a request for Internal Review.

s.54B(1) of the Freedom of Information Act states that a request for Internal Review must be in writing and made within 30 days of the Decision.

The subject of my email contained the phrase "Internal Review" and the email contained the phrase "Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews." and "I am writing to request an internal review of Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development's handling of my FOI request". This should make it clear that it is my intention to request Internal Review.

Contention around "Documents"
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You contend that "the Department to is not obliged to create a document for the purpose of responding to a request". You go on to state that "The information you have sought does not exist in document form."

"Document" as defined by the FOI Act, includes:
(a) any of, or any part of any of, the following things:
(i) any paper or other material on which there is writing;
(ii) a map, plan, drawing or photograph;
(iii) any paper or other material on which there are marks, figures, symbols or perforations having a meaning for persons qualified to interpret them;
(iv) any article or material from which sounds, images or writings are capable of being reproduced with or without the aid of any other article or device;
(v) any article on which information has been stored or recorded, either mechanically or electronically;
(vi) any other record of information; or

(b) any copy, reproduction or duplicate of such a thing; or
(c) any part of such a copy, reproduction or duplicate;

If, as I suspect, the information I have requested exists in your Routers or Information Technology systems (either as configuration files or in Log files) it would fall under the definition of a "document" per the FOI Act. Source Code and other sorts of code would fall under (a)(v) (at least).

Whilst you are not obliged to create a "document" if it already exists (in the forms mentioned above) you are obliged to provide it.

Summary
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Please process my request for Internal Review from the date it was received by the Department (July 31, 2014). It would be of great assistance if you address the contentions I have raised in the Internal Review decision.

Yours sincerely,

Ben Fairless