Dear Office of the Australian Information Commissioner,

The OAIC has appeared (via videolink or in person) before the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislative Committee (Senate Estimates) on 15 February 2022 (Angelene Falk, Elizabeth Hampton, Melanie Drayton) and 26 October 2021 (Angelene Falk, Elizabeth Hampton, Bruce Cooper).

As part of the appearance of the above named OAIC officials, to enable these above named OAIC officials to address any issues or questions Committee members might raise, the OAIC prepares a 'briefing book' or 'briefing folder' for each official appearing, that typically consists of a 'corporate folder', a 'privacy folder', an 'FOI folder', and other folders that contain 'Commissioner Briefs', 'Hot Topic Briefs', and other documents.

Excluding drafts and duplicates, I seek copy of such briefing folders or briefing books consisting of such documents provided by the OAIC to the above named OAIC officials for their appearances before the Committee on the dates specified.

Personal information of private individuals (not Commonwealth officials) is irrelevant.

Yours faithfully,

Julie

Hi Emily,

In your response, stopping processing of this FOI you state:

I am an officer authorised under s 23(1) of the FOI Act to make decisions in relation to freedom of information requests.

I am writing to tell you that I believe that the work involved in processing your request in its current form will substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the OAIC from its other operations due to its size and scope.

On this basis, I intend to refuse access to the documents you have requested. However, before I make a final decision to do this, you have an opportunity to revise your request. This is called a ‘request consultation process’ as set out under s 24AB of the FOI Act.

Why I intend to refuse your request - Calculation of the processing time
I estimate it will take the OAIC at least 150 hours to process your FOI request in its current form.
There are approximately 100 documents that were prepared for the Australian Information Commissioner's appearances before Senate Estimates on 26 October 2021 and 15 February 2022.

The documents are complex and are resourced from various sections of the OAIC. The approximately 100 documents comprise approximately 1,500 pages.

Of those 1,500 pages, a small portion of the documents pertaining to the OAIC’s FOI functions are published on the OAIC’s website disclosure log in 3 previous FOI requests received by the OAIC in 2020.

To calculate the processing time, I have taken the following factors into account:

• I estimate it will take one hour per 20 documents to prepare a document schedule listing the document number, date, number of pages and a description of each document. I therefore estimate it will take approximately 5 hours to prepare a schedule for 100 documents.

• Based on a sample of 10 documents (184 pages) and the complex nature of each document, I estimate it will take 2 minutes to examine each page to assess whether it can be released or whether it will be subject to an exemption (either in full or in part), and approximately 3 minutes to prepare an edited copy of the documents, including the redaction of exempt material. On the basis that there will be at least 1,500 pages within the scope of the request this task will take at least 150 hours.

• The documents contain a mix of complex and sensitive information obtained from various line areas which may require consultation with OAIC internal staff with subject matter expertise. Courtesy consultation with other Government agencies may also be required.

• To update the schedule to record the FOI decision and write a decision statement for the FOI applicant will take approximately 2 hours.

I have therefore calculated it will take at least 157 hours to process your FOI request.

Since you have stopped the processing clock, can you explain to me why:

* When you have sent a document listing of every document in scope (and some that aren't) along with your practical refusal intention notification, listing 80 documents by name for the February 2022 senate estimates appearance and 80 documents by name for the October 2021 senate estimates appearance (some of which are published publicly available documents such as Parliamentary Bills and Hansard Transcripts, to which no redaction consideration is possible, and because they are publicly available documents not in scope), some of which are duplicates between the two senate estimates appearances, you claim that adding the number of pages to these listings already made, and the date of the document, would take the OAIC more than 5 hours to do.

These documents were prepared electronically, and have been stored electronically, so it appears this task would have taken much less time than you have already taken to list the names of these documents and number them. A sample of the Commissioner briefs previously released in FOIREQ18/00211 (https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/e...), FOIREQ20/00187 (https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/2...), and FOIREQ20/00213 (https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/c...) indicates that to identify the number of pages and date of the document takes no longer than a minute per document. Similarly a request for exactly this type of schedule (https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/6...), along with the first page of every Comm Brief, for every senate estimates Comm Brief created between 1 July 2020 and 2 November 2020, which captured 52 documents, and provide detailed description of the purpose of each document was calculated to be able to be produced well under your estimate of 'an hour per 20 documents' to produce.

There is also a concern, given the exact identical claim of 'one hour per 20 documents' to create such a document schedule was made by the OAIC on 18 January 2019 (https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/5...) and 15 October 2020 (https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/6...) in respect of an entirely different time periods that suggests *this* was FOI was not scoped by you at all, but instead received a cut and paste response from previous practical refusal decisions unrelated to this FOI as an artificial barrier to access contrary to the objectives of the FOI Act.

Can you confirm that you have independently calculated the figures you have quoted, and not simply cut and paste them from past practical refusal notices, given their identical claims.

I would not have expected such dishonesty and unethical conduct from the FOI regulator - the OAIC is well aware it must perform and exercise its functions and powers under the FOI Act, as far as possible, to facilitate and promote public access to information, promptly and at the lowest reasonable cost.

This practical refusal intention does not met that standard and is highly misleading.

Ciao,

Julie

Dear Emily,

Based on those figures being word for word identical to prior practical refusal notifications for documents of different time periods, it is apparent on the evidence before me that those figures have not been independently calculated for this FOI and that you have knowingly inflated and distorted this figures on a false estimate.

I make a formal service complaint about your conduct with respect to your handling of this matter.

In the interim, in the interests of removing your obvious gaming of these provisions of the FOI Act that are actions taken by you contrary to the objects of the Act, I revise my FOI request as follows to remove your avenues of unethical gaming:

I request that the already provided documents of the OAIC, created under s 17 of the FOI Act, named 'Senate Estimates February 2022 Index' and 'Senate Estimates October 2021 Index' are updated to have the number of pages and date of each document added. Such a document was previously able to be produced using computers ordinarily available to the OAIC in FOIREQ20/00213 with even more fields than requested here (https://www.righttoknow.org.au/request/6...)

I also seek the first page of each Comm Brief as listed:
* Feb 2022 - Corporate: Docs 1, 3-11; Privacy: Docs 1-20; FOI: All docs except 17; Folder B: Docs 5-22
* Oct 2021 - Corporate: Docs 1, 3-11; Privacy: Docs 1-20; FOI: All docs except 17; Folder B: Docs 5-22

That means only 20 pages of Corporate, 40 pages of Privacy, 34 pages of FOI, and 36 pages of Folder B (130 pages) need to be considered, and that number of pages and date of document need to be added to already existing s 17 documents.

A greater amount of work on SE Comm Briefs was previously found under 5 hours in FOIREQ20/00213 and therefore your grossly exaggerated calculations are just that, especially as some exempt in full claims are likely based on past decisions of yours.

Having revised my scope the request consultation period has now ended and the processing clock restarts.

It is disappointing that an employee of a regulator had acted in such unethical misrepresentation and outright lying, even in the face of evidence of your cut and paste 'calculation'.

Ciao,

Julie

Dear Emily Elliott,

I wish for internal review of your decision.

Ciao,

Julie